The event website has become an essential tool for event organizers, but it’s much more than just a platform to sell registrations and tickets. An effective site can impact the overall success of your event. It can even influence your attendee’s attitude before they arrive at the event!
Here are five quick tips to help you get the most out of your event website.
1. Clarity & Motivation
Your landing page should motivate people to act!
You have limited screen space so use it wisely. This is not the place for long paragraphs or distracting graphics. Keep it simple and stick to the basics.
It’s essential to clearly list the details of your event (date, time, location, description). An often-omitted key element is the event’s purpose. Why is the event taking place, and why should your visitor participate? How will participation feel?
Your call-to-action button (Register, Buy, Donate) should be highly visible and stand out from the rest of the page. Navigation tabs should be easy and clear.
Providing a clear overview of the event and emphasizing why someone would want to participate provides motivation for people to attend!
2. Create Engagement
Get people excited about the event! Offer Early Bird specials to motivate early registration and help get the ball rolling. Display any door prizes, awards, results, achievements, and clips from prior years. Create surveys or polls. Run a contest or raffle through the site, where participants can win prizes for sharing your event on social media. Invite people to upload their own photos, videos, or stories before, during and after the event. Consider including additional information on subpages such as travel information, restaurants, and things to see and do.
Offering opportunities for participant involvement lengthens the duration people spend on your site, strengthens interest in your event, reinforces brand loyalty, and is a simple and effective strategy in spreading the word.
3. Ease
It should be easy to register, easy to find information, and easy to pay. Include an FAQ, provide instructions; anything to ease the user’s journey is a win. Putting potential attendees through unnecessary hoops risks losing them. Keep your registration fields to a minimum and only force required questions when you actually require the answers. Include all the event details on the automated receipt sent after payment, which will cut down on confusion and follow up.
Keeping your channels of communication open fosters participation and brand loyalty. Include a navigation tab called Contact Us. Provide a phone number if possible. Otherwise, email addresses, contact forms, or social media messaging apps are acceptable, provided you acknowledge receipt of inquiries with a written reply.
4. Nurture Your Brand
Every element of your website, from structure and ease of use to content and style, contributes to creating an overall impression of your brand. The choice of images, videos, and graphics can help or hurt a brand, so choose wisely! Ensure your event website showcases your brand in its very best light.
A clean, well-thought-out and properly functioning website creates trust. Dead links, missing images, and out of date content are website killers and speak to a lack of professionalism. Mobile friendly is a must for any site today.
Your About Us page is the perfect location to share your organization or company’s story. Include pics of your team, board members and committee members. Be sure to include links to your company or organization website and social media channels.
5. Don't Reinvent the Wheel
From registrations to tickets, creating a seamless experience is complicated. Starting from scratch is often expensive and time consuming. Use tools that will take the guesswork out of the website design process and will lighten your load.
When choosing a platform or website management system, look for a reputable company with good reviews that offers support. You want a user-friendly, easy-to-create-and-update website that is mobile friendly, includes features and reports appropriate for your needs, and gives you access to data that can easily be imported into your system.
Integrate these 5 simple principles into your event website to increase attendance, loyalty, and awareness. Your attendees will arrive better informed, better prepared, with realistic expectations, and in the right mood for your event!
