THE CLIENT | AUSTRALIAN TICKETING VENDOR

There is nothing more frustrating than a sold-out event – a missed opportunity and experience you had every intention of being part of. Our client alleviates this stress by matching customers with the tickets they desire, even tickets in limited supply. Australian concertgoers, sports fanatics, and event seekers have entrusted the client with their ticketing needs. The client thoroughly vets all sellers on their site, increasing reliability and driving consumer retention, so all tickets sold are legitimate and valid for use.

To minimize customer service complaints and decrease the time spent troubleshooting, the client offers 24-hour business support for vendors and customers alike. For this reason, they have evolved into the number-one Australian marketplace for tickets to the best concerts and sporting events.

Unfortunately, this is a difficult title to maintain. The ticketing landscape is saturated with online vendors hoping to corner their own portion of the shared target market. Steepening competition has brought back-end technology to the forefront of most competitive strategies, facilitating quicker check-out processes, refining customer portals, and building more powerful search engines to help deliver the most relevant and personalized events to each consumer.

ticketing systems automates competitive pricing

DEFYING GEOGRAPHICAL BARRIERS AND DRIVING PROGRESS

To drive their software development initiatives forward, the client enlisted the help of Chetu developers. Although Chetu is US-based, we have a growing global presence, and our communication model assuages the traditional deficits of cross-continental business engagements. We offered our Aussie friends a project manager in their native time zone that served as an interface between their team and our developers.

Our objective was to create a background process to automate event and ticket selection within the marketplace, fully-loaded with competitive pricing modules. The first order of business was to determine the correct frequency to manipulate marketplace data, tailoring pricing to special event rates.

We used Selenium Framework to layer the application over the logic system. Selenium script allowed us to easily execute all of our objectives. Then, we implemented Windows Task Scheduler to regulate pricing automation.

Selenium is an integrated development environment that facilitates web browser automation. Where there are rote, tedious tasks, Selenium has the power to mitigate. Considering the client's line of work is repetitious, we found Selenium Framework to be the perfect match.

The system required very little maintenance; incremental adjustments will need to be made when the client decides to change the user interface of the website. At that point, corresponding changes must be made to the app on Selenium to maintain cohesion between the two interfaces.

During the developmental phase of our engagement with this client, we leveraged the following technologies:

Window 7 OS
Selenium server
Java\jdk1.8.0_144
Selenium framework
SVN (Versioning control system)
Microsoft Office

We engineered the automation system to cater to the intended user. The application provides the flexibility sellers desire, giving them the power to manage and update their listings in real-time. They are able to change the marketplace data effectively by viewing an event pricing comparison to determine a competitive price.

THE RECIPE: SELENIUM, LOGICS, & UX

If the seller does not want to manage their listing manually, they have the option to input the parameters and sit back as the system executes the parameters automatically, matching the known input with the intended output.

The home screen includes a login module. Credentials open the gate to an individualized dashboard page where each listing is displayed with the corresponding market data. To combat logic concerns, we programmed a CRON job for each particular frequency. Each CRON job executes a particular parameter.

Here are the competitive pricing parameters that sellers use to automate their price manipulation:

Check if the section is generic with no specific row.
Check if the proceeds are above cost price/face value and have a profit.
If the proceeds are below cost price, raise the proceeds price with at least minimum profit and match it to their higher prices and undercut it by 0.01 dollars.
Check if we get to profit from proceeds.
Compare their prices and tickets quantities to ours.
If our price is lower than theirs then select other section.
If their tickets quantities are 2 or lower then select other section.
If their price is lower than ours then match the price and undercut it by 0.01 dollars
Lowering the price by 30% of its value will prompt message.
Price will be lowered by 30% of its value if (select parameter)

The client has since implemented the solutions, and they have turned significant ROI on their new logics module. Our automation application has given the client an enormous advantage within a saturated market of secondary ticket vendors. By implementing a more intelligent user interface, the client spends significantly less time navigating IT concerns and seller queries.

Despite operating in contrasting time zones, our relationship with our Australian counterpart progressed smoothly and communication was never an issue. Moving forward, we will continue to refine and build on the client's application, translating user feedback into intuitive code. Selenium Framework has given the application unparalleled sustainability and has proven to be a suitable support system for a fast-paced ticket exchange.

SELENIUM FRAMEWORK PAVES THE WAY FOR TICKETING AUTOMATION

THE CLIENT | AUSTRALIAN TICKETING VENDOR

DEFYING GEOGRAPHICAL BARRIERS AND DRIVING PROGRESS

THE RECIPE: SELENIUM, LOGICS, & UX

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