National Theatre website

They certainly seem to be making aspects of their website a lot harder to use - they used to have one of the best and easiest to use young people ticket schemes in entry pass and now getting the 16-25 tickets is unnecessarily convoluted and unclear (I can never find the page on the website, so you have to search directly for them, log out of your account, release tickets, log back in, etc). Can't see how it's helping build their audience reach. 

Didn't know about this but it doesn't sound encouraging! I waited ages for a reply to my email asking why there was no longer a "matinee" filter for booking tickets and whether they could restore it. Goodness knows they have umpteen other filters, some arguably less useful and surely matinees are the only safe option when booking before a running time is announced and/or for those with concerns about travel back by public transport?

To my surprise the reply I eventually received said it was not straightforward to add this filter but they would request it. I did point out that having one would probably reduce the queueing time on busy days (eg when new booking goes live) as identifying suitable performances would be easier and quicker, and that other theatres offered this option.

It would be interesting to know why the NT changes things when they do - and helpful if they first sought feedback/suggestions from users, or at least asked for views afterwards so they could tweak settings if necessary - but that seems to be a communication gap.

Of course it’s easy to add this filter….it’s hardy rocket science is it!!!!! Of course the new website doesn’t have matinee filter. I have also emailed to ask for this (fully support showgirl on this!) . It’s annoying when people state things are “impossible” or “really hard” when you know full well that what they mean is they can’t be bothered. And they sometimes think you are a lone voice. Whereas they should think “if this person has taken the trouble to email perhaps there are more people being annoyed by this who just haven’t had the time/been bothered to email (because it takes a lot of effort to be bothered and most people won’t), so maybe it would be good to implement it!” ……

Because organisations have websites to help their customers access the information and services they provide, so surely they want to know when a website redesign makes that difficult? I don't dislike upgrades and resdesigns that are functional (as with the Almeida and Southwark Playhouse), but there's nothing wrong with regular users of a website pointing out when something isn't user-friendly.

I can't find it either. Colour me surprised. Not.

Thanks, it's on those two shows playing outside the NT, but oddly for Phaedra at the Lyttleton it's not there. Guess that's because it's still in Preview. Rather odd at the NT at the moment - as far as I can see none of the three auditoria have a show that is actually running not in Preview at the moment. Guess Running Times will appear on the website after Opening Nights for the future shows (although for something like Sky's Edge they should have an idea now given it's a transfer - I got it from the Sheffield website, but you'd think the NT might be able to show it on their website even if they hedged it with an "approx")