Guro Design

LaneOne

A mission to build the premiere brand in the experience economy.

Head of Design
Brand & Product Ownership
2nd most code contribution

$32M

2 year revenue growth

$50M

2020 Annual Run Rate

LaneOne reimagined how premium live event experiences are delivered by aligning artists, venues, and fans, and creating a healthier, more sustainable ecosystem. In the existing twelve billion dollar secondary ticket market, tickets are hoarded by resellers and sold for inflated prices. This frustrates fans and leaves artists and venues out of the loop. LaneOne's mission was to return value to the entire live entertainment ecosystem by reimagining premium ticketing. Backed by Ticketmaster, Live Nation and Azoff MSG with a marketing partner in American Express, LaneOne was primed to make a big impact from the start.

The company was born of an acqui-hire of the music application start-up, Applauze. This launched the company with a foundation of 6 full-stack developers, a marketing designer and a product manager. I happened to be the second hire to the newly acquired group, with the role of overseeing all brand and product design initiatives. The first order of business would be to define a brand design system that would echo the ambition and energy of the company's mission of redefining the premium ticketing experience. It was a short cycle but we were able to build the core components of the brand within a few weeks.

Pulse
RGB: 117, 113, 237

Pulse-light
RGB: 190, 189, 250

Flash
RGB: 246, 246, 246

Shadow
RGB: 226, 68, 41

We quickly worked through various style tiles and logo options, decisively settling on a specific logotype. As an infant brand it was important to display the complete name to promote recognition. The tagline, "Upgrade your night", would live alongside the logo in most instances. This re-inforced the brand offering which, along with the best seats in the house, would include benefits like early entry, lounge access and ride share to enhance the experience.

Moving units

The anchor of the LaneOne offering was premium seat selection. Thanks to our partnership with Ticketmaster and Live Nation, we would have access to the first section of rows for most the major arena tours occuring across north america (and some international). Ticket resellers would typically avoid hoarding LaneOne tickets as the margins were lower due to the higher face value. We would customized svg maps for each venue and show, allowing users to select seats by best available, eventually add individual seat selection via interactive map. Our timed on sales were exciting events, often times selling out most of the inventory in a matter of minutes.

Designing and building the front-end of the web application was familiar territory. We had a pretty tight feedback loop which allowed us to iterate quickly on the product and make improvements based on user data and feedback. We also used A/B and multivariate testing sparingly to extend our efforts in this vein. I was able to leverage my knowledge of rails to immediately contribute to the codebase and work with the engineering team to implement the designs using lean UX methodologies. I defined the CSS architecture based on ITCSS, using atomic design principles to make sure our application was scalable and visually extensible.

The MVP of the discovery experience was tour-based, cascading to event selection, then seating selection, and finally the cart. As an emerging brand we leaned heavily on artist and tour-based marketing to drive discovery and demand. This meant that our users were often coming into the funnel with a specific event in mind, which made the purchase flow more linear than a typical e-commerce experience. We would progressively enhance the browsing experience with geolocation, personalized recommendations, and notifications, but the initial funnel was pretty straightforward.

It wasn't long before we began to notice drop off at the cart stage. We hypothesized that this was due to the premium price point of our tickets and the fact that many of our customers were purchasing for multiple people, making it a more considered purchase. To reconcile this we implemented a new retargeting flow, an a-typical feature in the ticket sales space.

1. Registration Capture
Implementing a registration wall prior to seat selection to capture user information.

2. Notification
Reminding users of the event and that their offer was still available.

3. Re-enter Funnel
Pushing them back to their loaded carts or if inventory had changed, the event page with alternative seating options.

Ultimately this feature was tabled for larger priorities, but was primed to make a benificial business impact and would have been implmented in the near future.

The Experience

The second touchpoint for our users was the mobile app. Once the LaneOne tickets were secured users would be prompted to download the iOS or android version where they would find their tickets and access to their benefits. The app was intended to be a user's digital sherpa, guiding them through their experience. Outside of displaying event tickets we had integrated uber and lyft for ride share, provided mapping and access to the lounge, concession credit, and had a live chat feature for support. Future plans involved using wifi beacons to aid users in finding their seats, selling exclusive merch, as well as sharing media from past events. Below are some additional features that we launched that broke ground in the live event space.

Itinerary

As our benefits began to grow with the addtion of destination events, the need to highlight the CTAs for the benefits became more critical. We had effectively tacked placed buttons on the lower portion of the ticket that users would need to scroll to interact with. My hope was to create better awareness by adding the most time pertinent interaction above the fold, front and center when you open the ticket. Below the fold there would be the itinerary, an ordered sequential list of links that users could reference to learn about and interact with any given benefit leading up to and through the event.

First-on-Floor

The first on floor perk was offered for most shows with a GA floor section. It allowed GA concert-goers to enter the floor area up to 10 minutes before standard ticketholders, essentially allowing them to claim their spot adjacent to the stage, affectionately referred to as 'barricade'. To organize ticketholders in queues prior to early entrance our product manager developed a system to accomodate this which was similar to a pre-flight boarding check-in. First on floor ticketholders would be able to secure their line number in the app at a preselected date and time before the show. On site LaneOne Ambassadors would herd the crowds into designated areras and sequence them by check-in number.

Authentication

Counterfeiting is always a concern with digital tickets. A simple screenshot could grant anyone access to the venue given they arrived early enough. We would end up addressing this with a design solution, as it happened it turned out to be my first time using a lottie animation. By creating a holographic animation in After Effects and pairing it with gyroscopic motion data, we would be able to play the animation forward and backward by simply tilting the device. Using this interactive element our door concierges would be able to validate ticket authenticity within seconds. Love small design details that solve a problem in a subtle way.

Diversifying offerings

LaneOne's growth was accelerating exponentially after the first year, and we were set to diversify our offering into varying verticals: sports, theater, food tastings, cruises, festivals and destination events. After cutting our teeth delivering experiences for some of these new event types, we decided to commit and promote our own destination experience, Cabo en Vivo, a weekend of luxury experiences in Los Cabos, capped by a beach concert featuring the Doobie Brothers and Eagles.

Building the systems to support luxury destination events would require us to add a variety of new features to the LaneOne product. Partnering with Onboard Experiential would give us some event design and marketing support, but the brunt of sales and promotion would be our own responsibility. This meant having to support the creation of microsites, lodging reservation, varying tier groups and excursion marketing as well as net new features for the experience app.

Purchase flow enhancement

The event required a major upgrade to our sales platform to support diverse package options and lodging. Content covered packages across 17 hotels, seating and travel details, and excursions. A constantly evolving interactive SVG seat map was the biggest pain point under tight deadlines, but it was essential to the experience. Users were funneled through Laneone for room selection, seating, and transactions.

Microsite CMS

To add to the scope, we saw an opportunity: instead of hard-coding a promo site, we would build a modular site builder to streamline future event launches. This extended the timeline but ultimately gave us flexibility to update content on the fly. While the dev team worked on the admin tool, I designed the landing page using stock imagery, band admats, 3D renders, and composites. The hero centered on the iconic Cabo Arch, animated with a logo lockup and ambient seagull video for atmosphere.

Site Renderings

For planning and operations there was need to mock up the event site. I was fortunate enough to have drone footage from multiple angles I rendered the event area over a couple of stills using sketchup and composited flat imagery. While the fidelity wasn't perfect it was enough to give a sense of scale and layout of the event and something for fans to get excited about. Building the site elements and laying them out was quick work, but programmatically generating crowds to fill space was a tax on my laptop.

Curtain call

We had so much momentum behind our product before Covid hit. Our revenue was growing exponentially every week. Our team which had less than 2% attrition over 3 years was working like a well oiled machine. The opportunity of expansion into different verticals was primed and ready for launch. And our brand and fan based was growing to new heights as we continued to make a name for ourselves (ask any Harry Styles stan). Shutting down in the face of such uncertainty was the only option, but we will always be recognized as first on floor for evolving the live event experience.

Let's talk

I'd love to hear from you whether you need design support, maybe want to leave a comment or just say 'hi'. I'm currently available to work by the hour, on retainer or can offer a fixed project bid for budget flexibility. Hit me up!

Collin Oguro

Designerd

collin@gurodesign.com