Whether you’re organizing an extravagant fundraising gala or you’ve just booked the cover band concert of the century, building an engaging, informative, and striking website is an absolute must when it comes to getting the word out about your event. You need to think of your event website as the ultimate multi-media invitation for potential guests. But instead of mailing out a simple RSVP postcard, utilizing pristine event website design is how you can simultaneously inform, enlighten, and excite your audience about the latest engagement your event management company is producing. If you’re looking to maximize awareness and anticipation for your upcoming juncture, here are ten essential tips for building the perfect event website:
1) Aesthetic is Everything
In the world of websites, first impressions are everything. And if your event website predominately displays stock photos of tuxedo attendees sipping champagne or dull colors that fail to convey excitement, you could be turning people off before they even have a chance to click your ‘About’ page. Your website needs a clear cut visual presentation that’s sophisticated and elegant, without being too busy or overwhelming. Don’t be afraid to be bold with a vivid display of colors, but balance out audacious designing with minimal, modern backgrounds. Make sure any images, graphics, or videos you use are specific to your event or brand, and not something that can be interpreted as forgery. Finally, be sure to choose a font that’s in line with the tone of your event or brand. It can be confusing if your medical research fundraiser has a website featuring generic, goofy, or gaudy typography.
2) Maximize Mobility
Mobile websites account for approximately half of all web traffic around the world, so you need to ensure that your event website is just as accessible to use and appealing to look at on someone’s phone as it does their computer. Having a fluid and efficient mobile website will also help with ranking higher in search engine results, as Google tends to give higher ranking preferences to mobile-optimized sites.
3) Don’t Overcomplicate
While your event website landing page needs to be visually and aesthetically pleasing, it still needs to be somewhat simplistic in terms of its accessibility. If someone is pulled in by the web design but can’t figure out how to RSVP, then all that elegance is for nothing. Include all the essential information potential guests need to know about your event on the landing page: what your event is, when it’s taking place, where it’s being held, why it’s happening, and how to attend or participate. Menu or navigation bars should be prominently displayed at the top of the landing page, and any other informative pages should be clearly labeled. Remember, web design can be bold and experimental, but essential information should be straightforward and easy.
4) Professional Promotion
Now that your event website is ready to launch, you need to get creative when it comes to finding stimulating ways to promote your events company website. Whether it’s coming up with unique and exciting ways to brand your event company’s logo or corresponding with local sponsors to spread the word, marketing your website is crucial to increasing recognition of your upcoming event.
5) Practical Resources
The more website resources you can provide for visitors, the merrier. This includes everything from offering simple registration or RSVP options, to providing an add-to-calendar button, to including multilingual options, which can also increase your SEO visibility.
The TED Talks' website, seen above, places a "Find an Event" directly above the fold on the homepage. This puts their speaker calendar front-and-center so every user can't help but take notice. In addition, a contact page is essential for ensuring any visitors’ questions, concerns, or comments are acknowledged and responded to, as well as including a subscription service or newsletter sign-up option, so everyone can stay up-to-date with any new details or information regarding your event.
6) Stay Social
Once you're finalizing all the details and dynamics for your beautiful event website, it’s time to set up any social media accounts necessary to spread awareness of your event and brand. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, or LinkedIn; all of these social media outlets can help you gain and retain attendee’s attention, while also unlocking acknowledgement and interest from newfound audiences and visitors.
7) Show, Don’t Tell
A thirty-second to one-minute video production that encapsulates the essence and excitement of your event will do more to increase anticipation and engagement than any photos or words can. In fact, more than 85 percent of Internet users in the United States consume online video content daily.
Take the time, energy, and effort to produce and feature a short promotional video that can be prominently displayed on your event website landing page, and be sure to share the video on all your social media accounts. The example above shows a super minimal approach, with a video directly above-the-fold on the homepage, as well as the date, location and a single "registration information" button.
8) Keep Them Updated
Providing online visitors with a chance to sign up for an informative newsletter or maintaining a blog page are just a few ways to help keep future attendees afloat on all the latest updates of your event and company. You want your event to consistently pop into people’s minds, which is why frequent social media updates and correspondence with anyone who subscribed to your event website are important to ensure that no one forgets about your impending event.
9) Document The Festivities
Just because the party’s over doesn’t mean your event website is. Provide opportunities for anyone who couldn’t attend the festivities to see all the fun they missed out on by posting a post-party photo gallery on your website, or posting any videos that recapture all the magic to your social media accounts. This will help ensure anyone who feels left out for not attending your event will not want to repeat that same mistake.
10) Optimal SEO
No matter how sensational or specific your event is, odds are there’s another similar happening taking place near your neck of the woods and around your same event date. The best way to increase visibility and awareness for your event is by implementing efficient SEO strategies to improve your rankings in organic search engine results. From keyword targeting, to content development, to optimizing your images, taking advantage of all the ways SEO can help you out is how you can separate your event website from the rest of the pack. You can see in the provided example from Sundance Film Festival that they've optimized their internal pages so they show up in Google knowledge panels.
Is your business in need of a better events website?
Do you want to help your event stand out? A website is a great way to build an audience, provide event information, sell tickets and more. Whether you need to start from scratch or redesign of last year's event page, Frahm Digital can help you succeed online. We've helped dozens of event companies around the U.S. enhance their digital presence, and can do the same for you.
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