I’m pretty sure you know your events.
You know how to pitch to the client, how to come up with great concepts, how manage the vendors, and how to organise the logistics. Yet, when it comes to the web, most event websites fall flat.
These websites remain amatuerish, lacking in any Web 2.0 functionality and sometimes don’t even provide enough data for the visitors.
I’ve been building event websites for years, I’ve pretty much seen the worse and been impressed by the best. It isn’t really that hard to build a great event website. And here’s how.
1. Web Design
You’ve come up with a great set of visuals to show your client. They love it. The carpets and chairs are in their exact corporate shade of blue. The backdrop is an inspired 3d work of art. And yet the event site looks nothing like what you’ve come up with.
Your website is the first stop the visitor makes before the event. It should look and feel like what the event will be about. Imagine a inviting someone to a tech conference and the website looks like it was designed 10 years ago. They’d probably expect the same from the event.
2. Comprehensive Content
You might think this portion is pretty straightforward, but I’ve seen it gone wrong countless times. Visitors need information, and as much as possible. Things that seem obvious to us may be a total unknown to a foreign visitor.
Other than comprehensive event information (programmes, speakers, etc), I’d suggest integrating applications like Google Maps for venue information. Visitors can interact with these applications and get more content and info out of it.
3. Registration
Web users hate to enter information online. It’s inconvenient and invasive, so the least you can do its make it simple and straightforward. Keep the fields required to the barest minimum.
While squeezing as much information out of your registrants will be useful to you, remember that you’re going to lose potential registrants every time the registration form gets longer. If registrants think you’re trying to data-mine, they’d probably give you false data anyway.
If you’re collecting payment, you should consider online credit card transactions. They cut down a major stumbling block in your registration process and usually its worth the 2-3% the payment gateway charges. Collecting money onsite tends to be slow and labour intensive. Not to mention there’s security to think about.
4. Add to Calendar feature
I’m surprised so many event sites don’t have this. This feature will allow visitors to add the event directly into their online or mobile calendars, be it Google, MSN or Outlook. Getting your visitors to put your event on their calendars is already winning half the war.
5. Social Media
It’s the current buzzword for a good reason. Web users are spending more time sharing and communicating than before. Always provide a basic social platform or feature for them to share your site and its content with others.
6. QR Codes
These little 2D barcodes will allow users to zap your website straight into their smartphone. It saves them the hassle of actually typing the URL into their phone browser (who does that?). It’s not always necessary but it makes it on my list as smartphones are really, really taking off.
Here’s something to chew on – Singapore has the highest penetration rate of iPhones in the world. One in ten people here (that’s total population) own an iPhone or iPad.
7. Web Traffic Analysis
If you’re marketing the event, you’ll need to know the numbers. That’s the only way to know if your eDMs or advertising channels work. I’d recommend the venerable Google Analytics for this task. Its comprehensive beyond belief and its free. You’ll need someone to integrate it into your website though.
8. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO simply means making your website friendly to the giant search engines out there (e.g. Google, Yahoo and Bing). It means making your website easy for the search engines to index and hopefully list on their search results.
While it isn’t a perfect science (no one knows exactly the algorithm Google uses to calculate your PageRank for instance), there are certain good habits you do want to practice when building your site. This article won’t cover what you can do for SEO (as it would be way too long) but make sure whoever builds your site doesn’t forget SEO.
9. Administration portal
It can be a real hassle dealing with delegates. They want their food preference changed, they want to swap out with another person, they want to change the name on their badge, etc.
Are you still keeping track of this on excel spreadsheets? You should be amending this directly on an administrative portal of some sort. And exporting the data to your beloved excel spreadsheet only when registrations end. Or better yet, mark attendance onsite directly into this system.
Conclusion
A great event website is not just an information platform; it’s an opportunity to engage and communicate with the delegates. It’s a great way to figure out your delegate’s online behaviour and market to them more effectively the next time around. Use this data to retain the client and impress the your potential ones.
Good infomation here, thanks.