Cinepolis
Increasing Cinépolis’ Online Revenue by 25% Through Improved UX
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OVERVIEW
Cinépolis, one of the largest cinema chains in the world, came to WANDR with a critical business problem: their digital products were outdated, unreliable, and directly impacting ticket sales. Customers were abandoning the mobile app and website because purchasing tickets online was nearly impossible — pushing them toward competitors like Cinemex. Cinepolis needed a modern user experience that restored trust and revenue.
What started as a UX/UI redesign project quickly evolved into a deep, multi-year partnership across countries, platforms, and teams — ultimately becoming one of WANDR’s strongest Staff Augmentation and Global Design System success stories
THE CHALLENGE
1. Outdated digital experience killing conversions
Cinépolis’ original website and mobile app were described by stakeholders as “very old-style design” and “broken UX”. Customers frequently couldn’t complete basic tasks like purchasing tickets and had to physically go to the theater early just to secure seats.
2. Losing market share to competitors
Internal data showed users switching loyalty to their competitor Cinemex due to poor usability. Revenue was directly affected.
3. Zero digital transformation maturity
Despite their size, Cinépolis operated with an old-school, family-office structure with minimal design thinking process:
- No user testing
- No research
- No product methodology
- Decisions made solely by top leadership
This created a uniquely challenging environment for product teams.
4. A fragmented ecosystem and non-cohesive design system
Beyond the app & website, Cinepolis had, kiosks, Back office systems and Multiple country-specific digital products. And each of them were in separaste disorganized design file system spanning across multiple agencies and product teams. None of them communciated with each other and engineering teams often rebuilt components from scratch because nothing was centralized, documented or trusted.
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WANDR SOLUTIONS
Because this was a multi-year partnership (and still ongoing!), our scope of engagement has evolved tremendously from our initial UX/UI redesign to staff augmentation and being fully embedded into their product team to build out their global design system, their international platforms, and more!
Phase 1 — Modern UX/UI Redesign
WANDR redesigned Cinepolis’ website and mobile app, fixing critical conversion blockers and modernizing the entire experience. By fixing the broken ticketing flow and modernizing the UI, we reduced user drop-off and helped Cinepolis recover significant online sales previously lost to friction
Phase 2 — Embedded Product Team (Staff Augmentation)
Cinépolis struggled to hire and retain strong product designers, so WANDR embedded a dedicated team directly into their organization. Our team introduced modern processes, organized years of scattered files, and standardized handoff for engineering. Leadership actively leaned on our team to understand how high-performing product organizations operate, adopting our methods as the new internal standard
Phase 3 — Global Design System Transformation
Cinépolis had scattered, outdated, and inconsistent design systems across web, app, kiosk back-office tools and their localized apps for the 5 global markets (Mexico, India, Argentine, Chile and Spain). WANDR built a unified Global Design System with scalable components, documented interaction patterns, and established a reliable source of truth for designers and engineers, which dramatically improved consistency, sped up development, and reduced long-term maintenance costs.
Impact
⭐ Increased online ticket sales by 25% through a modernized purchase flow
⭐ Created Cinepolis’ first global, multi-platform design system
⭐ Improved cross-team collaboration and engineering efficiency
⭐ Expanded support across Mexico, India, Argentina, Chile, and Spain
⭐ Shifted a legacy organization toward modern UX maturity
Conclusion
WANDR didn’t just redesign a product — we rebuilt Cinepolis’ digital foundation. With a modernized UX, embedded team support, and a global design system, Cinepolis now operates with the consistency, speed, and customer focus of a modern digital organization.
“The quality of the design system was impressive. Also we found new insights about our customers”
