IMAX.COM
Helping IMAX stand out in a crowded landscape where streaming dominates and carry the magic of the theatrical experience into the future.
Old Homepage
Problems to Solve
Streaming has been on the rise for over a decade, and in a post-COVID world, theatrical attendance has declined significantly. Yet IMAX continues to sell seats, finding ways to make the in-person experience feel essential.
Despite that momentum, IMAX struggled to communicate key details, such as showtimes, theater features, film formats, and more to its audience. Enthusiasts had taken to corners of the internet like Reddit to share this information, but there was no official, accessible source. IMAX.com was the logical home for it, yet in its 2024 state, those details were scattered and hard to find.
Old Get Tickets page
Lack of Clarity
Most casual moviegoers only seek out IMAX when a particular film is deemed a must-see. As a result, IMAX’s technological offerings (such as 360° planetariums, 3D screens, 70mm film, laser projection, 12-channel sound) while impressive, aren’t something most people research before buying a ticket.
On the website, this information was hard to find and even harder to parse. The showtime search UI was overwhelming, and the information architecture made the user flow unnecessarily difficult. Dates shifted erratically between titles, and available locations would appear and disappear when switching films.
Old Movies page
Showtime Windows
When films prepare to release, studios coordinate with IMAX for a set window during which their film will be the featured title. These windows vary in length — with multiple films debuting each month, a window may be a week or less. While scarcity and buzz are valuable, new customers often miss the window entirely, discovering a film only after it’s no longer available.
Individual theaters can also schedule limited additional runs, giving audiences a chance to catch what they missed. But because these are arranged at the venue level, they’re even harder to surface to users than the initial window.
Users had no reliable way to know when tickets became available, and the site offered no tools to help them stay informed.
Solutions
Addressing these issues required more than a single fix. It called for a focused, intensive overhaul across several key areas of the site. I led the UX strategy and design direction across each of the following workstreams, collaborating closely with product, engineering, and marketing stakeholders throughout.
Get Tickets
Users typically come to the site driven by one of three things: the film, the date, or the theater. The previous site forced users to start with the film, then narrow by date and location — but that’s not always how people plan. What if someone wants to see what’s playing a week from now? Or to see what their preferred theater is showing this weekend, even if it isn’t the closest one?
This informed our redesigned Get Tickets page, which lets users choose their starting point — film, date, or theater — and refine from there. On the Movie tab, the full run of each title is visible at a glance: no more advancing one day at a time through a potentially weeks-long calendar.
The Date tab lets users pick a single day and see everything playing near them. Since not every IMAX location has a showtime on any given day, this gives a far more accurate picture of availability than browsing title by title or location by location. Finally, the theaters tab lets users browse by their preferred venues — closest or not — and see what’s playing and when.
Since launch, traffic and conversion have grown substantially with a +34% in site revenue growth.
Coming Soon
Most theatrical marketing gravitates toward blockbusters, but for IMAX, that’s only part of the picture. Documentaries, anime, and titles specifically shot or optimized for the large-format screen cycle through regularly and can easily be overlooked. Missing a two-day window to see a Studio Ghibli classic in extraordinary clarity would be a real loss.
In redesigning the Movies page, we made sure to make it clear just how much there is to see in IMAX while being clear and upfront about when it’s showing and to what extent its viewing in IMAX is simply a must.
What is Now Playing is distinct from what is coming up.
What has tickets vs what doesn’t is apparent without having to click into each specific title.
Looking for past titles to see if there are any one off showings coming up? The All Movies archive at the bottom has everything you need.
My IMAX Accounts
The culmination of this work was the launch of My IMAX: a personalized account experience. Once signed up, users can curate everything IMAX.com offers around what matters to them. Users can set favorite theaters and see a daily rundown of what those venues are showing. Favoriting a film triggers a notification the moment tickets go on sale. Favoriting both a film and a theater surfaces ticket availability for that specific combination as soon as it’s released, whether that’s days, weeks, or years after the initial run.
For the casual IMAX fan, it’s an easy way to stay current. For the devoted enthusiast, it means knowing the instant they can secure their preferred seat at their preferred screen. Strong early growth with minimal promotion signals a promising foundation. With full marketing support, IMAX is positioned to become the definitive destination for audiences seeking the best theatrical experience — for any content, at any location.
