In 2023, I was working with Eventbrite, a platform that helps users discover and book events. With thousands of events across different categories, one of our biggest challenges was ensuring that the right events got the right visibility.

Certain categories—like music, comedy, and nightlife—had a much higher inventory than others. Not only did these events dominate the platform, but as a company, we also wanted to position Eventbrite as the go-to destination for these experiences.

This led me to an idea that would ultimately improve event discovery and engagement—Themed Pages.

The Problem: Too Many Events, Not Enough Structure

When users landed on Eventbrite, they were met with a massive selection of events. While variety is great, it also posed a problem:

• Popular categories like nightlife and dating had so many events that users struggled to find the most relevant ones.

• The generic event listings weren’t always tailored to specific interests, making it harder to drive engagement.

• We needed a way to boost the visibility of certain events while making discovery effortless for users.

The Solution: Themed Pages for Popular Categories

To solve this, I conceptualized Themed Pages for specific categories—starting with Nightlife and Dating Life.

These pages:
🎭 Curated a selection of the best events in that category.
📍 Offered a more personalized browsing experience for users looking for nightlife or dating events.
📈 Increased discoverability for events that might otherwise get lost in the large inventory.

Instead of burying high-value events in an endless scroll, these pages helped highlight them in a structured, engaging way.

The Impact: A 7% Increase in CTRs 🚀

After rolling out the Nightlife-themed page, we saw a 7% increase in CTRs for events in that category. Users were engaging more, clicking more, and finding events faster.

This validated our hypothesis: when discovery is easier, engagement naturally improves.

Key Takeaways

This experience reinforced an important product design lesson for me—sometimes, the problem isn’t lack of content but lack of structure.

Here’s what I learned:

🎯 Curation matters – Giving users a focused experience drives engagement more than overwhelming them with endless choices.
🔍 UX is about visibility – If an event exists but isn’t being seen, it’s as good as not being there.
📊 Small changes can lead to big improvements – A simple categorization tweak led to a measurable impact on CTRs.

Final Thoughts

If you’re working on a platform with a large inventory of content, think about how you can structure discovery to make it easier for users to engage.

For Eventbrite, Themed Pages became a simple yet effective way to guide users to the right experiences—and the numbers proved that curation is key to engagement.

Would love to hear from others—have you ever tackled a discovery challenge in a similar way? Let’s discuss! 😊