Sharing and embedding your ticket shop

Your shop is ready, your products are filled in, and now somebody has to come and buy. This article is about that last part: how you get your visitor to your ticket shop.

Here you learn where your address is, how you share it on your website and on social media, how you turn it into a QR poster, and how you embed the shop in your own page if you wish. If you would rather have an address of your own, such as tickets.yourassociation.com, read Your own domain.

First: what is a link, really?

A link (also called a url or web address) is the address of one page on the internet. Just as a house address points at exactly one letterbox, a link points at exactly one page. If you copy it out, or click it, you end up there and nowhere else.

Your ticket shop has such an address, and it looks like this:

https://{domein}/nl/s/hoevefeesten

Read it from left to right:

Part	What it means
https://	The kind of connection. The s stands for secure: what your visitor types in goes down the line encrypted
{domein}	The name of the computer the shop runs on
/nl/	The language of the page. nl is Dutch, fr French, en English
/s/	The little word by which the system knows: a shop comes after this
hoevefeesten	Your organisation code, the short name of your association

Why is the language at the front?

Because a link then has one meaning, and only one.

Many sites remember your language choice in a cookie (a small piece of text the site leaves behind on your computer). That works fine until somebody forwards that link: the recipient then gets the language they chose earlier, not the language you meant. A French-speaking member who receives the link from the Dutch-speaking secretary sees a Dutch shop out of the blue.

With the language in the address that cannot happen. /nl/ always opens Dutch, /fr/ always French — through WhatsApp too, after being forwarded three times too, on a shared computer too.

In practice that means: choose deliberately which language you share. If you put a link on a French-language page of your website, use /fr/. If you send one email to your whole membership list, use the language of that email. Your visitor can always switch in the shop itself.

What you need beforehand

• An account with access to your back office; to look at the address, any role that may see the settings or the orders is enough.
• A shop that is online. If the Online sales are on switch is off, your visitor is shown a "not found" error page instead of your shop. See Setting up your organisation.
• For embedding: access to your own website, and the right to paste code there.
• Ten minutes for sharing, half an hour for a poster.

Step 1 — Looking up your address

There are two places where you can find your address, and they give the same thing.

The quickest: go to Orders and click Open the shop at the top right. Your shop opens in a new tab. The address is at the top in your browser's address bar; click in it and copy it with Ctrl+C (Cmd+C on a Mac).

The complete one: go to Settings → Organisation. Below the form sits the Sharing your shop block, with the address of your shop ready to copy and an Open the shop link. If you have your own domain that is ready, you see that address here.

Check two things straight away before you go and share:

1. Does the shop open as you expect, with your products in it?
2. Is the language at the front the way you want to share it?

Then paste the address somewhere you will find it again — in a note, or in an email to yourself. You are going to need it often over the coming weeks.

Note: if you change your organisation code later, your address changes with it and every link you have shared stops working. Every printed poster too. So choose that code properly once and leave it alone.

Step 2 — Sharing your link

On your own website

Put up a button or a clear text link with the word Tickets on it, and let it point at your address. Put it at the top of your home page and with every event, not only on a "practical information" page nobody visits.

Almost every website system works the same way: you select the word that is to become a link, click the little chain icon, and paste the address into the field that appears. Set the link so that it opens in a new tab when your system offers that choice; your visitor then does not lose your own page.

Write on the button what happens: Buy tickets is better than Click here, and much better than More info.

In a newsletter

Same principle, with one difference: never paste the bare address into the text. Turn a word into a link. A long url in an email is broken over two lines by some mail programmes, and then it no longer works.

Put the link into your email at least twice: once as a button at the top, once as an ordinary text link at the bottom. There are readers who do not see buttons or do not trust them.

Always test your newsletter on your own phone before you send it to four hundred people. Really click the link.

On Facebook

Three places, and all three do something different.

A post on your page. Write your post, paste the address into it and wait two seconds: Facebook then fetches a preview card with the title and an image from your shop by itself. As soon as that card appears, you may delete the address from your text — the card stays and stays clickable. That reads more neatly.

The link in your bio. That is the field with your website in your page's details. Go to your page, open the settings or the edit button next to your details, find the Website field and put your address in it. This is the link people look for when they first look at your page and only then want to buy.

A button on your page. At the top of a Facebook page there can be an action button. You choose which one yourself — for a ticket shop Learn more or Book now are the usable ones. You find that setting at the button itself on your page; you choose a kind of button, paste your address and save.

Facebook's screens change every few months. If you cannot find something, look in their own help centre for "action button" or "add a button to page" — the action itself stays the same: choose a button, paste the address, save.

On Instagram

On Instagram you cannot put a clickable link in an ordinary post. Text in a caption does not become clickable, however often you repeat it.

What does work:

1. The link in your profile. Go to your profile, tap Edit profile and put your address in the field for your website. Refer to it in your posts: "tickets via the link in our bio".
2. A link in a story. There you can place a link sticker with your address in it.

If your offering changes often, it is better to put the link to your general shop in your profile than one to a single event. You then do not have to replace it every month.

In a WhatsApp group

Simply paste the address into the group. WhatsApp turns it into a clickable link by itself and shows a preview card.

Add one sentence saying what it is and until when: "Tickets for the cheese and wine evening of 12 October, you can sign up until Monday." A bare link in a busy group gets scrolled past.

Step 3 — Making a QR poster

What is a QR code?

A QR code is nothing other than a link, drawn as a black-and-white pattern of little blocks. There is no magic in it and nothing is sent: a phone that "reads" it simply reads that address and opens it. So it can do no more than your link, and no less either.

That is also the answer to "how do I know whether my QR code still works": as long as your link works, it works.

This is how you make one

1. Copy your address as in step 1.
2. Go to a QR generator. There are many free ones; search for "QR code generator". Choose one that lets you download an image (png or svg) without having to create an account.
3. Paste your address and create the code.
4. Preferably download it as an svg. That is a drawing you can enlarge without any loss of quality. If that is not possible, take a png that is at least 1000 pixels wide — a small picture becomes grainy when printed, and a grainy QR code scans badly.

Note: never use a service with a "dynamic" or "trackable" QR code. Those codes do not point at your address but at the service's, which then sends your visitor on. It sounds handy — you can change the destination later — but it also means that your poster stops working as soon as that service ends your free trial period, changes its name or gives up. With two hundred printed posters that is an expensive discovery. An ordinary, static QR code that contains your address directly keeps working for as long as your address works, and costs nothing.

On the poster

• Size. A rule of thumb that does the job well: a QR code that has to be scanned from one metre away is at least 3 by 3 centimetres. If your poster hangs behind a window and your visitor is standing on the pavement, make it considerably bigger — reckon on about a tenth of the reading distance. If in doubt: bigger.
• Quiet around it. Leave a white border of about four blocks wide all around the code. Without that border a phone camera finds the code harder.
• Contrast. Dark code on a light background. Not the other way round, and not over a photograph.
• Put text with it. A bare QR code is scanned less than you think. Put underneath it what happens if you scan: Scan for tickets. And put the address next to it in readable letters, for anyone who would rather type or whose camera will not cooperate.

Test it. Twice.

Before printing: print one copy on an ordinary printer, hang it on the wall, stand at the distance at which people will stand, and scan with your own phone. Have somebody else do it too, with a different make of phone.

After printing: take one poster out of the box and scan again. A printer may shrink your file, crop it or put it on a different kind of paper than you expected, and glossy paper under a spotlight reflects. This costs you one minute and it is the only check that counts.

Step 4 — Embedding the shop in your own page

If you want your visitor not to leave your own site, you can put the shop into one of your pages as a block. That is called embedding.

What is an iframe?

An iframe is a window in a web page in which another web page is shown. Think of a painting on your wall: the frame is yours, what hangs in it comes from elsewhere. Your visitor sees your page, with a piece in it that comes from your ticket shop.

The code looks like this:

<iframe src="https://{domein}/nl/s/hoevefeesten"
        style="width:100%;height:900px;border:0"
        title="Tickets"></iframe>

What each part does:

Part	What for
src	The address of your shop — here you replace it with yours
width:100%	The frame becomes as wide as the space it is given
height:900px	The height of the frame, in pixels. See the warning below
border:0	No little border around the frame
title	What is in the frame. Needed for a screen reader, so leave it in

Watch the height. A frame is not elastic: it does not grow along with what is in it. If it is too low, your visitor has to scroll inside that little frame to find the Checkout button — and that is exactly where your sale falls apart. Better too much than too little; 900 pixels is a reasonable start, and then test on a phone yourself.

WordPress

1. Open the page and click the place where the shop is to go.
2. Click the + to add a block and search for HTML.
3. Choose the Custom HTML block.
4. Paste the code above into the block, with your address in it.
5. Save the page and view it as a visitor.

Note for WordPress.com: on the free plan an iframe is cut out of your page when saving. That is not a fault of yours and not a fault of your block: WordPress.com only allows that code on a paid plan with hosting features. If your block is empty after saving, this is the reason. In that case simply link, as in step 2.

On a WordPress installation of your own it also applies that anyone who is not an administrator may sometimes not place this code and sees it disappear when saving. In that case ask your site's administrator.

Wix

In the classic Wix editor:

1. Click Add Elements on the left.
2. Click Embed Code.
3. Under the popular embeds choose Embed HTML.
4. Click Enter Code, paste your code and click Apply.
5. Drag the frame to the right place and make it generously high.

If you work in Wix Studio, the route there is Add Elements → Embed & Social → Embed Code, and the element itself is called HTML iFrame there. The action is the same: paste code, apply.

Two things from Wix's own manual that help here: your code has to use https:// (with http:// nothing appears on your published site), and the frame does not adjust itself to a small screen. So set your width to 100% and check your page on a phone.

Squarespace

1. Edit the page and click the + to add a block.
2. Choose the Code block.
3. Click the little pencil to open the block and paste your code.
4. Save.

Note: a paid plan is needed here. Squarespace only allows iframe and JavaScript code in a Code block from their paid plans (Core and higher). On a trial site or a free plan it does not work.

And one oddity that makes beginners think it is broken: as long as you are signed in as an administrator, Squarespace sometimes does not show your own code, while visitors do simply see it. Use their Preview in Safe Mode button, or look in a private window of your browser, before you conclude that it does not work.

Google Sites

1. Open your site and click Insert on the right.
2. Click Embed.
3. Choose Embed code and paste your code.
4. Click Next and then Insert.
5. Drag the frame large and click Publish at the top right.

You can also embed the shop as a full page: Pages → Add → Full page embed. That gives you more height and less scrolling inside a little frame.

Do not forget Publish. What you see in edit mode is not yet what your visitor sees.

The drawbacks of embedding, honestly

Embedding is not free, even though it costs nothing.

• The height stays a guess. A basket that grows longer than your frame leaves your visitor scrolling in a little frame. On a phone that feels awkward.
• Two scrollbars. The page scrolls, and the frame scrolls. People lose themselves in that.
• Your own site determines the speed. If your website is slow, your shop is slow — even though the shop itself runs smoothly. With a link your visitor is not troubled by that.
• Not every builder allows it. On a free WordPress.com site and on a Squarespace without a paid plan it simply does not work.

If it does not work, or if you are in doubt: simply link. A clear Buy tickets button that opens your shop sells better than a half-working little frame, and nothing can break.

Checkout happens in the full window

If your shop is embedded in your own page, your visitor chooses their tickets inside the frame. When they click Checkout, the checkout page opens in the full window of their browser, at the address of your shop.

That is intentional. Payment providers such as Mollie and Stripe do not show their payment screen inside a frame, and browsers do not keep basket data in a frame that comes from another site. After paying, your visitor lands on the confirmation page of your shop, with their tickets. You do not need to set anything up for this.

Common mistakes

Sharing the link with the wrong language in it. You send /nl/ to your French-speaking members. Look at the bit after the domain before you send.

Changing the organisation code after your posters have been printed. Every QR code on paper then points nowhere. Do not change your code once you have shared it.

Using a QR code from a free service with a trial period. After thirty days your poster points at an advertising page of that service. Use a static code that contains your address directly.

Making an iframe too low. Your visitor does see the products, but not the button to check out. Test on a phone, not only on your laptop.

Never clicking the link yourself. Test every place where you put it, on your own phone, before you let it loose on your audience.

What if …

What if my visitor is shown "not found" or an empty shop?

A "not found" error page usually means that the Online sales are on switch is off, or that the address is not right (watch your organisation code). Go to Settings → Organisation and look at the Your shop tab. See Setting up your organisation.

If it says "Nothing on sale yet", your shop does work, but there is not a single product on sale. See Products and prices.

What if I cannot find my shop in Google?

That can mean two things. Either the Published switch is off — your link then keeps working for anyone who knows it, but search engines are not offered it. Or your shop has not been there long enough; search engines need time.

In any case, do not count on Google for your ticket sales. Your audience comes through your own channels: your newsletter, your page, your poster.

What if my embedded shop stays empty?

Look in this order:

1. Is https:// in your code, and not http://?
2. Is the code still there after saving? Open the block again. If it is gone, your website builder is cutting it out — see the warnings above with WordPress and Squarespace.
3. View your page in a private window or as a signed-out visitor. Some builders do not show embedded code to anyone who is signed in.

If it stays empty: simply link. That is not a defeat, it is the way that works best.

What if the QR code on my poster does not scan?

Often it is too small, it is too close to other ink, or the file has been printed at too low a resolution. Enlarge it, leave a white border all round, and print again from an svg or a large png file. Test with two different phones.

What if I have to give my link in a print advertisement?

Put the complete address in readable letters, with the language in it, and put a QR code next to it. Whoever types, types; whoever scans, scans. An address of your own reads a good deal more pleasantly in print — see Your own domain.

Frequently asked questions

Can I create one link that goes straight to one event? Not to a separate page: your link always opens your whole shop, with everything you sell one below the other. For a product with time slots it can be more targeted: in your shop, click Choose a time for that product and then copy the address from the address bar. That link opens your shop with that product's calendar already open.

Does my old link keep working if I take an own domain? Yes. The address on the platform simply stays alongside your own domain. See Your own domain.

Do I have to print a separate QR code for every language? You do not have to. Choose the language of your audience and let your visitor switch in the shop themselves. On a bilingual poster there are two codes, each with their own language — in that case clearly put NL and FR next to them.

Is embedding better for my brand than linking? Hardly. Your visitor sees your logo and your colours in both cases, because those are in your shop itself. If you really want your own name in the address bar, an own domain is the better route, and you can combine that with an ordinary link.

Can I see how many people have clicked my link? What you can see in any case is what it has produced: your orders, with the channel alongside. See Following up orders.