Release Tickets in Waves
If you don't want to release all your tickets at once, simply add the number you want to make available at one time to your inventory. When the second release date arrives, update your inventory to reflect the new number of available tickets. By controlling your ticket inventory with Advanced Options, you can make the best seats available first, or release them in any order you desire.
Limit Ticket Quantities Per-Person
For high-demand items like concert tickets, you may wish to prevent customers from purchasing too many at once. This is as easy as entering a maximum quantity into the appropriate field when setting up your tickets as a product. Customers won't be able to go above this quantity in a single order, but can place additional orders to buy more tickets — if you want to prevent this, you can require registration to make the purchase and use the Customer Groups feature (described next) to automatically move customers who have bought their allowed number of tickets into a group which can no longer view the ticket page.
Offer First Ticket Choice to VIPs
Perhaps you'd like to allow some customers to become VIPs on your store so you can give them certain privileges, like first access to new ticket sales. This way, your most loyal customers can have first choice of seats or be assured of a chance to purchase tickets that are in short supply. Shift4Shop has an easy-to-use Customer Groups tool for categorizing your customers in this way. Customer Groups can be used to control product visibility so only members of a certain group can view a product. You can also use this feature to offer reduced pricing and other advantages.
Customers can be manually added to a group, or placed in one automatically based on criteria you can set. For example, you could have all customers moved into the VIP group once they've spent a specific minimum amount on your store. For an online concert ticket store it may be best to advertise the availability of VIP status and let customers buy their way into the group by purchasing a pass, which you can set up as another product (and selling VIP passes will also raise your revenue). All customers who buy the VIP pass can be automatically added to the VIP group. If you allow unregistered visitors to shop without creating an account, selling VIP memberships also encourages customers to register, as only customers with accounts can be added to the group.
If you'd like to create a limited early ticket release for VIP customers, simply restrict product visibility to the VIP Customer Group when you publish the product page for your latest event tickets. After the VIP early purchase period has passed, change the product visibility so it can be seen by all customers.
Let Customers Pre-Order Tickets
Pre-orders are another option for allowing early birds to secure their tickets ahead of the rush. Shift4Shop's Pre-Orders module makes it easy to accept pre-orders on your store and have those orders automatically updated to new orders you can process once the tickets' release date arrives.
You can make tickets available for pre-order when setting up their product page. Your store will need to be using a tokenized payment gateway to save customer credit card information. When a customer pre-orders a ticket, the charge will be authorized on their credit card and then the payment will be captured once the tickets are released and made available to buy. For concert tickets, this is the eCommerce equivalent to camping out in front of a brick-and-mortar ticket seller to hold a place at the head of the line!
Once the pre-ordering period is over, the tickets' product page will automatically update with an "Add to Cart" button to replace the "Pre-Order" button. The Pre-Orders module also works alongside Customer Groups so you are free to offer pre-ordering to your VIPs before other customers, or reserve it for them entirely.
Waiting Lists for Concert Tickets
Some customers may not want to pre-order, but would like to be informed as soon as tickets become available to buy. Shift4Shop's Waiting Lists and Back-in-Stock Notifications module makes it easy to let customers sign up for a waiting list and get notified as soon as the tickets are for sale. The customer simply has to click the "Join Waiting List" button and enter their contact information. Once you add available ticket inventory, this button automatically changes to "Add to Cart."
Since the "Join Waiting List" button can automatically reappear as soon as the tickets are sold out, Waiting Lists also come in handy in case a customer cancels their order before fulfillment. In that case, their canceled ticket would return to inventory and inform customers on the waiting list that another ticket has become available. Of course, any canceled tickets would be first-come-first-serve and may be grabbed quickly before everyone on the waiting list can return to your store, so this is more of a secondary use for this feature.
Prevent Unauthorized Refund Attempts with an RMA System
Sometimes customers are going to want to return their tickets or get a refund, as maybe something has come up and they're no longer going to be able to attend the concert. Your return policy is up to you — and should be clearly laid out when you write your store policies — but you're not likely to want to accept returns in most circumstances. For example, you may only want to offer refunds up to a specified date before the concert.
Shift4Shop's RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) feature allows you to process refund attempts in an organized manner, request information from the customer, and accept or reject refunds as needed according to your policy. Any refunded tickets you accept can be added right back to your inventory (which will trigger the Back-in-Stock Notification if you're using Waiting Lists). Of course, this is better for digital tickets, as returning physical tickets would require the customer to ship them back to you and they may not arrive in time to go back on sale. This is one reason not to accept returns for physical concert tickets.
How you refund the customer is also up to you, but Shift4Shop also has a powerful Store Credits system that allows you to offer credit toward the customer's next purchase rather than dispersing a refund.
Naturally, it's possible that a customer that bought tickets and was then unable to attend the concert may try to get a refund even though the date has passed. The RMA system will help you prevent this, and your return policy alongside the fulfillment confirmation records in your Shift4Shop store will help protect you if the customer attempts a chargeback.
