What is the queue?
The queue is a preventive tool which can prevent too many transactions being dealt with in the ticketing system within a short period of time. This could cause too much pressure on the ticketing system. The capacity of a ticketing system to handle multiple transactions at the same time varies greatly per system. The capacity of the ticketing system is without exception (much) lower than that of the platform on which the website runs. In exceptional cases, the queue can also serve to protect the server from the website itself.

Much information available on the website is linked to the ticketing system, think for instance of prices and seat availability. Although bookings are the most work for the ticketing system, each web page contributes to the pressure on the system to a certain extent.

Estimated pressure on the system and the difference with Google Analytics
Because it is a preventive tool, the potential pressure on the system can only be estimated approximately. It is impossible to measure exactly how many people have opened a page: we only see when new pages are requested. This value is also approximate.

How many visitors you measure partly depends on how much time you give someone to view a page before clicking on an item. Google Analytics uses a very short period (less than a minute). Our technique gives someone more time, up to ten minutes. If a visitor stays inactive (no click) on a page for longer than ten minutes, they would be send back to the queue.

As a result, you will have lower visitor numbers according to Google Analytics  than our technology. There is nothing wrong with both numbers, but the way in which the estimate is made is very decisive for the outcome. We have added a graph in the dashboard that indicates the pressure according to our visitor count. This gives you a good overview of the number of visitors on the site and in the queue.


What causes a queue?
A queue is caused by the fact that many pages of the website are requested from many different computers. Usually by people who are interested in the content of the website. A peak can for example be caused by a newsletter, or because something on the website is mentioned in a TV programme.

In addition to people visiting the website, there are also systems that are automatically "visiting" websites. We call these types of systems "bots", but they are not necessarily malicious. Google, Bing and other search engines index the web by requesting pages, and therefore fall into this category.

However, there are also malicious bots, which generate (a lot) of traffic for various reasons. Of course, bots do not buy tickets, but it is unavoidable that a queue is caused in this way. We try to filter out these bots by using clever techniques, but that is a race that is virtually impossible to win. Our technology, however, ensures that nothing breaks down permanently and the website can be quickly visited again after such a wave of unwanted traffic.

Can the limit be raised?
If visitor numbers are artificially high (e.g. through a newsletter), this does not result in more transactions 1-on-1. That would be nice, but is, unfortunately, not the case. If this was indeed the case, the limit could be increased. In reality however, the standard limit is already set high enough to deal with these crowds in a proper manner. For regular newsletters, it is therefore not necessary to increase the limit. Also, one should note that raising the limit is a risk: transactions do not spread evenly over time, and if there are many visitors, the chance of a peak pressure in the ticketing system increases, which can cause failures.


However, in the case of live streams, visitors are visiting a page of the website (but are not ordering at the same time, so there is no pressure on the ticketing system. Therefore, it is no problem to increase the limit in that situation. Some of our clients have already set up the limit to 5000 for live streaming events, and this was something our platform could perfectly handle.

Can it be improved?
We regularly work on improving the technology of the queue system. We also work on the communication in the queue and the dashboard: waiting is less annoying if you know why you wait and if you can estimate how long it will take. 

Therefore, you can set a news item with type "Notice in queue", which will be displayed on the queue page.



Keywords: Queue Wachtrij Queueing Waiting Busy Presale Website