Cineworld – new site: Part two

It’s long overdue, I know – but here’s part two of the cineworld site review. My attention goes to the cinema listings page, which is another area I frequent on a weekly basis. Sometimes I arrive at the page with a film in mind that I want to see and sometimes I am looking for all films showing at a particular start time. It’s the latter mindset which makes this page frustrating to use – I want to scan films starting at 18:30 for example – I have the annoying task of reading through each film for this time and then have to remember when it starts (not to mention the cognitive noise in my head deciding if I like the film or not).

Here’s a screen shot of the Enfield cinema page. You can see each film has the show times for the next 7 days next to it:

This is ok if you only want to check the times of one film. But how about you are thinking of going to the cinema after work, and you want to see what’s on at 18:30 – because that’s the time you’d make it to the cinema. It’s impossible to get a snap shot of this in this format.

So what can we do? Maybe a todays film’s summary would help. So I scribbled down some thoughts and came up with this:

A summary table which could sit at the top of the cinema page, which focuses on film times for today. I think it would be well placed above the main film listings because of it’s summative nature and because it’s extracting data from the content below and serving a purpose for today’s cinema goers.

So this block would detail all the films showing today but in a tabulated layout so you could scan down the 18:30 time and see what was starting at a glance. What would also be handy for users is linking this time up to the “buy now” function to reserve tickets for this showtime. Also – note to Cineworld, it would be amazingly useful if this extended to Cineworld card holders too, and not just credit card customers.

I think this change would greatly improve the page’s usability for people coming to the site in what I feel are common mindsets of people when arriving at this page:

1. Browse by film: I want to see x film, when can I see it?
2. Browse by time: I want to see any film at a specific time, what’s starting at y time

Thinking about what users want to achieve when they arrive on a page is crucial to any website’s success – if you’re selling, even more so. Yes all the data is available on the page, but it can be manipulated in just one more format to make this page smarter.

So that’s my review of the Cineworld site – All in all, it’s a better site, but there are some improvements to be made. If I could reserve tickets with my cineworld card I would have had a look at the checkout. But I guess I’ll have to wait for that one.

Thanks for reading.