For those of you who don’t know, FITS, short for Sibiu International Theatre Festival, is Romania’s most important performing arts festival, hosted in the cultural center of the country, Sibiu.
As the third-largest performing arts festival after the Festival d’Avignon and the Edinburgh International Festival, FITS attracted artists from 37 countries and 5 different continents and hosted over 600 live events as well as 100 online ones.
To streamline the organization of the event, the team behind the FITS festival reached out to Eventya, for mobile app development. After a brief collaboration, the festival was proud to announce the FITS APP — the official event app of the festival.
As the first edition of the festival after the pandemic, there was a lot of interest around this year’s edition. So how did a mobile app contribute to re-envision Romania’s most important performing arts festival? Let’s explore below.
How an Event App revitalized the FITS Festival audience experience
2000+ downloads in just a few days
Only a few days into the festival, the event app was already downloaded over 2000 times, with users accessing the app over 25,000 times during the 10 day festival period. The bilingual app, available in both English and Romanian, enabled users to save their favorite events by syncing them into their personal calendars.
Festival’s Calendar
Users were delighted by the festival app’s feature-rich interface, especially since it included the real-time event calendar of the festival. It also offered an array of filters that helped the audience to easily sort through hundreds of events, and find the right ones. No wonder that the event calendar was the app’s most utilized feature.
Online Tickets
The second most important feature used during the festival was the one which allowed the audience to purchase their tickets directly within the app. Online tickets for events are crucial in a post-pandemic era, as they can minimize social interactions and cut significant printing costs.
Push Notifications
Push notifications have proven to be another essential feature of the festival app. The organizers were able to instantly alert the audience about any last-minute changes due to unfavorable weather conditions. Daily highlights and recommendations have also seen a boost in engagement, thanks to the FITS App’s push notifications.
Digital communication hub
The festival app acted as a digital communication hub throughout the festival, especially for the Covid-19 safety regulations the audience had to abide by. The festival app had a digital copy of these regulations, kept up-to-date by the organizers.
Dynamic homepage
FITS App’s dynamic homepage enhanced the user experience, highlighting the key moments and latest news each day. The audience also had access to each new edition of “Aplauze”, the official theater review magazine of the Festival.
Eventya, proud media partner at FITS
At Eventya, we were honored to be considered partners in an event of this magnitude, and support Romania’s most vibrant performing arts festival with agile and cost-effective mobile development. Especially since FITS App proved to be a success for both the organizers and the audience.
Our team also helped with some printed materials like flyers and stickers for the festival.
3 Reasons to Scale Your Event with a Mobile App
1. Increase social media engagement
Adding a social media component to your custom festival app can increase social engagements and expand your audience. Not to mention that your event will benefit from the pulling power of that all-important social proof.
The festival apps built on the Eventya app builder come with integrated social media features, allowing app users to share their experiences directly to their favorite platforms.
2. Boost ticket sales
There’s a reason why online ticket sales have grown in popularity in the past decade — they work. Enabling your audience to buy their tickets from the comfort of their mobile app is a proven way to increase sales.
No wonder that the Coachella App, Untold App, and Edinburgh Festival’s Fringe App all come with online ticket purchasing features.
3. Harness the power of data
Having a custom event app helps organizers collect an invaluable set of data and insights about their audience. You’ll get to know your audience’s habits and preferences, from app usage statistics to tracking promotional efforts.
In turn, these audience insights can be used to improve future events, boost online ticket sales, and offer a better experience to your audience.
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and see our cutting-edge features for yourself. If you decide not to publish your app, we won’t charge you a dime.
Credit Photo:
Photo by ROBIN WORRALL on Unsplash
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Photo by Carlos Muza on Unsplash
