There’s probably no higher pressure experience for a consumer than ordering tickets for a popular event online. Once the tickets go on sale, you’re competing against thousands of other people for the best seats. Time is of the essence! Once you enter the number of tickets you want and the search results come back, those tickets are reserved for five minutes. A countdown clock starts ticking down the time to complete your order. If you don’t finish within that time, your tickets are released and you have to start over again with much worse seats.

I recently ordered tickets for a Foo Fighters concert on Comcast Tix, the vendor for the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. They went on sale at 10am on a Monday, and I was one of the first into the site at 10am. I was excited to see that I had floor seats. I’ve never been so close to the stage before in a major concert.

As the clock started ticking down, the first screen asked me to enter my user name and password. I had ordered tickets from Comcast Tix before, but it was a long time ago. I don’t usually remember or take the time to write down passwords for sites that I use infrequently. I tried my standard password that I usually use in situations like this, but it didn’t work. I tried another variation, but that didn’t work either. Glancing at the countdown clock, I saw the time ticking away and started to sweat.

Maybe I had the wrong email address entered as the user name? I tried another email address. That didn’t work. I thought about going through a password reset, but by the time I got that, I’d lose the tickets.

Okay, maybe I’ll just try the option to complete the purchase with a new account. I filled out the form, but I got an error message saying that my email address was already in use as an existing account. Now I was really getting nervous. I only had two minutes left.

Finally, I hit upon the solution. I’d create a new account using my work email address. That worked! Now I had less than two minutes to race through the forms to complete my purchase or I’d lose the tickets. Glancing at the countdown clock as I raced to complete the forms, I felt like I was defusing a bomb. Finally I completed the transaction and got the tickets. Whew!

If ever there was a situation that needed foolproof usability, it’s the online ticket buying experience. I recognize the need to only hold tickets for a limited period of time, but the checkout process has to be extremely simple. An easy solution would be to give people the option to checkout without creating or logging into an account.

Especially when they charge you a $5.00 “convenience charge” and $2.75 “delivery charge” to print the tickets yourself online, they should offer a much better experience. That, or give you a $20.00 “poor usability” discount.