As part of expanding Vivid Seats' tagging capabilities, I worked on both the backend implementation and frontend integration of a flexible tagging system. This project aimed to improve ticket discoverability, provide sellers with better pricing insights, and support internal teams with merchandising and automation tools. I helped build the backend infrastructure to support automated and manual tagging while designing how these tags would appear on ticket listings and details pages, ensuring a seamless and intuitive experience for customers.
Role:
Product Design Lead
Platform:
Responsive Web
Duration:
Feb 2024
Problem
Customers lacked detailed information about tickets, which made it harder to understand what made each ticket unique and resulted in higher cognitive load when purchasing.
Sellers struggled to price their inventory competitively due to a lack of visibility into relevant data.
Internally, teams like Mapping, Marketing, and Paid Search faced inefficiencies due to the inability to prioritize productions, manually merchandise events, or automate ad creation effectively.
Goals
My role in this project was to define how tagging could be implemented both on the backend and the frontend to improve ticket discovery, merchandising, and operational efficiency. The goal was to:
Enhance customer experience by introducing more meaningful tags in the ticket listings and details view.
Enable sellers to price their inventory more competitively by surfacing key tags.
Support internal teams by integrating tagging into mapping, marketing, and advertising workflows.
Process
I worked on designing and implementing the tagging framework across both backend and frontend systems.
On the backend, I collaborated with the backend team to design the underlying system that supports both automated and manual tagging. This involved defining how broker metadata would be handled and structuring a framework for internal teams to easily create and manage tags. While I can't share the specifics due to an NDA, this groundwork helped streamline operations and unlocked opportunities for the frontend experience.
On the frontend, using my knowledge from working closely with the backend teams, I focused on how these tags would be displayed across the customer journey, ensuring a seamless user experience that enhanced discoverability and made it easier for sellers to price inventory accurately.
Solution
On the backed, I helped build a flexible tagging system that supports:
Automated tagging using broker-provided metadata.
Manual tagging for productions, performers, and venues to support merchandising.
Hybrid tagging where manually created tags could trigger automatic tagging rules (e.g., detecting "Rescheduled" in event titles).
This system set the stage for the frontend integrations that followed.
Building on the backend capabilities, I focused on how the tags would be presented to customers, ensuring they were clear and impactful. This included:
Design System:
Established a design system for tags and badges, defining the visual hierarchy, colors, and placement logic to ensure clarity and uniformity across the platform.
Performer Page:
Designing badges to highlight key ticket statuses, such as presales, onsales and scarcity, enabling customers to quickly identify relevant purchasing opportunities.
Ticket Details and Production Pages:
Highlighting premium perks like "Parking Included" and "First Row," with descriptions that clearly communicate the added value of these ticket options.
Enhancing discoverability by seamlessly integrating tags into the pages, improving the visibility and relevance of key information for customers.
Collaborating with copywriters to ensure the perk descriptions were clear, concise, and aligned with the brand’s messaging, driving informed decision-making.
Impact
By introducing a robust tagging framework, we enhanced the overall ticket discovery and purchasing experience, driving key business outcomes. This investment in tagging not only solves immediate challenges but also lays the foundation for future merchandising opportunities, strengthening Vivid Seats' competitive edge in the marketplace.
