14 replies to this topic

[Honoured Guest]

I second the Barbican Centre's website. It's extraordinarily complex to navigate and for months I just gave up trying and only made very occasional "parachute" visits, via Google,to find the detail of events I was already aware of. Then one day I chanced upon the crucial "click" and so I can now use it. To be fair, large arts centres do have a much more difficult task in this respect because they present a plethora of one off concerts, talks, etc.

[fringefan]

ATG's site, which I use a lot, isn't great for lots of reasons.  One is that even if you try to search for the individual theatres in the group, of which there are many, you get hijacked by the main site and have to work your way, slowly and painfully, towards your goal.  When (or if) you finally reach the seating plan, it is very small, with tiny, barely visible, coloured flags beneath each seat, denoting price bands, which are dynamic according to the show, as of course are the prices themselves.  Probably unavoidable but this means that you can never tell how much it will cost to sit where, unlike with other theatres where you might always aim for a certain area or seat as the combination of cost and view suits you.  Furthermore when there are special offers advertised elsewhere (rather a blow to ATG members), members cannot book these on the main site without incurring booking fees which they do not normally have to pay.

For unreliability and crashing despite known demand, however, I'd have to nominate the NT's site every time a new Advance booking period opens.

[The Scorpion]

In terms of content, I would nominate BroadwayWorld.com. All the news is copied and pasted from other sources, without so much as a credit, and the interviews are terrible. They get obsequious fans with clearly no experience of journalism to do the interviews, such that you get really shallow results, with the fan merely agreeing with one-word answers to what has just been said, allowing the interviewee to go on their soapbox/PR-stunt for the entire thing. The review(er)s are amateur too.

[mallardo]

Re Broadwayworld, no one has more theatre content.  They are the farthest thing from amateur.

[The Scorpion]

mallardo, on 30 June 2012 - 12:35 PM, said:

Re Broadwayworld, no one has more theatre content.  They are the farthest thing from amateur.

As the saying goes, quality, not quantity.