Case study: Festra

The brief

What the client came with

The business had web traffic only, while 68% of its users were on mobile web.

PROBLEM 01

68% of traffic on mobile, no app

More than half of all users arrived from a smartphone. But mobile web converted three times worse than desktop: people left and never came back, and with no push notifications there was nothing to bring them back with.

PROBLEM 02

Painful checkout on mobile web

Paying from a phone meant redirects and typing card details for every single order. There was no one-tap purchase the way an app does it.

PROBLEM 03

The web never remembered the user

Anonymous traffic with no profile: the site ignored taste, city and history and showed everyone the same lineup. An app keeps a profile and adapts to it.

01. Research

Research and customer interviews

We studied 8 competitors and ran 12 user interviews.

Key finding: people want a service that tells them their artist is playing in their city, and that sells the ticket without a huge fee or hidden charges.

Where competitors fell short: nobody closed the loop of "follow an artist, get an alert when sales open, get a reminder before the show".

Competitive analysis

App	Personalization	Presale alerts	Offline
Bandsintown
Songkick
Spotify Events
Festra

Research outcome

competitors analyzed

interviews conducted

key insights

02. MVP test

We tested demand on an MVP first

We built a light version and put it in front of real users: do they follow artists, do they reach checkout. Only then did we invest in full development.

Tested on a real audience: we measured interest in a personal feed and in buying a ticket. The hypothesis held.

No risk after that: full development started only once the MVP had confirmed demand.

What the test showed

Users followed artists and completed ticket orders inside the MVP. Demand for a personal lineup was confirmed, and full development began.

03. UX/UI design

22 screens in Figma plus a clickable prototype

Research fed a design system, and the whole UX was mapped out before development started.

Onboarding in 3 steps: a person picks genres, interests and city, and gets a personal lineup right away.

One tap to a ticket: saved shows sit in their own list, ready to add to a calendar or buy from.

Before / After

What changed for the business

The mobile audience was already there, but with heavy churn and lost revenue. The app moved those metrics.

Before

Web traffic only, while 68% of users were on mobile web

Mobile web checkout lost buyers at every step

The web remembered no taste, everyone saw the same lineup

No app in the App Store or Google Play

After

A native app on iOS and Android built for the mobile audience

Ticket purchase in one tap with a saved profile

The profile remembers taste, city and follows, the feed is personal

The app shipped to the App Store and Google Play

Push brought users back and cut churn, +47% of mobile revenue

Outcome

Results in numbers

First quarter after release, compared with mobile web

47%

growth in mobile revenue in the first quarter

People on phones finally make it to checkout

38%

increase in ticket purchase conversion

Users see their artists in their city right away

100K+

events synced daily

Across every city in the US and Canada, refreshed every day

Festra: event ticket discovery across the US and Canada