If you want to spark excitement for your upcoming event, get more creative with event branding and design. You can achieve this by building an effective microsite for your event. Microsites are uniquely designed to reach target audiences in a way that fascinates them and encourages them to anticipate your event experience.
Event microsites can be used as a landing page or landing site for event marketing campaigns, especially when promoting in-person events. That’s because they provide opportunities for focused branding and messaging, and they can help to boost event registration. They can also be used for hosting virtual events, which requires evolving the microsite into a full-fledged event platform after registration might have ended.
Here are some essential tips for setting up event microsites that will increase event registration and lead to a great user experience:
1. Determine the Purpose and Lifespan of Your Event Microsite
2. Optimize for Speed and Functionality
3. Use Bold and User-Friendly Design and Branding
4. Include Essential Information
5. Use Intuitive Menu and Navigation
6. Create User Accounts and Enable Profile Updates
7. Create Content or Resource Pages
8. Use Seamless Video Streaming & Conferencing Tools
9. Include Interactive Features
10. Make Your Site Responsive or Create a Mobile Event App
Continue reading to learn more!
1. Determine the Purpose and Lifespan of your Event Microsite
Determine what functions your microsite will serve and how long you will be needing it. Will it be for event promotion alone or it is also meant to host your event? Also, will it be set up as a ‘makeshift’ site or will it last year-round? Is your event a recurring event that will require you to rebrand the site for future use? These and other considerations will determine how you set your microsite up and the features to include.
2. Optimize for Speed and Functionality
For an event microsite to convert and guarantee a great user experience, it should run on optimum speed and bandwidth. To run the site effectively, consider the amount of traffic you expect on the site and the anticipated user activities. A slow page load speed will lead to a poor user experience, which can increase the bounce rate. That means you might lose some potential attendees because your page is not loading quickly.
Also, microsites that will be used to host virtual events need to have higher speed and bandwidth requirements to provide a seamless experience with the interactive features.
If your organization’s website has very good speed and bandwidth that can support your event’s requirements, you can host your microsite as a subdomain to your main site. Otherwise, host your microsite separately. However, consider linking your event microsite to your main website to boost SEO.
3. Use Bold and User-Friendly Design and Branding
The ultimate goal of branding is to capture the attention of your audience. Your microsite should use bold, user-friendly design, and a combination of colors and fonts that will create an attractive aesthetic. Help your target audience imagine and anticipate the event experience.
However, before you start designing, check out successful microsites and draw on your creativity to produce something unique and amazing for your event.
4. Include Essential Information
You need to include essential information on the microsite, especially on the home page or landing page. This should complement the graphics to convince your audience to register.
The essential information that should be placed strategically on the home page includes:
- Event Title/Theme
- Event Date
- Event Description
- Speakers & Facilitators
- Sponsors and Partners
- Calls-to-Action
- Ticketing and Checkout
There should be a perfect synergy between design, branding, and text. Each element should infuse into the others to create the kind of interface that will interest your audience.
5. Use Intuitive Menu and Navigation
Use the menu and navigation in a way that users can easily locate interior pages on your microsite. Depending on the purpose of your microsite you may have the following as menus or sub-menus:
- Agenda/Agenda Selection page
- Speakers Directory
- Attendee Directory
- Sponsors and Partners
- Conversation Forum
- FAQ Page
- Account Settings Page
- Donation Page
- Event Store
You can use other verbiage that is short and intuitive to represent the pages on the menu. A trick you can apply is to keep some pages off the menu until they are ready to go live. That way, you can keep working on the pages while other parts of the microsite such as the landing page are functioning. When it’s time to use the features on the site, add the pages to the menu and send an email announcement to your users.
6. Create User Accounts and Enable Profile Updates
When using your microsite as a virtual event platform, you will need to create user accounts to allow attendees to craft their unique event experiences. Use event registration data to automatically create user accounts and enable profile updates so that attendees can include more information that will enable them to interact more. That includes a headshot, organization name, job title, interests, and other information that can foster interaction on your platform. The user accounts will also enable each attendee to create a customized event agenda.
7. Create Content or Resource Pages
Create a page for attendees to access or download event content. The content may include pre-recorded presentations, video interviews, infographics, reports, white papers, and more. Such content might be uploaded before the event begins or while it is ongoing. For microsites that will stay year-round, there may be a need for continuous content upload, so the site should have the capacity to contain additional content.
8. Use Seamless Video Streaming & Conferencing Tools
Live video streaming is an essential part of a virtual event. If your microsite will be hosting the event, it should have the capacity to support video streaming. However, there are two formats of video streaming that you need to consider. One is the webinar format, and the other is the interactive format. Most educational sessions utilize the webinar format where only the speaker(s) or facilitator(s) appear on the screen. For other session types, the interactive format allows participants to turn their microphone and camera on and experience interactive video conferencing. This is usually used for breakout groups and video chats.
All video streaming formats must have other interactive features such as live chats, Q&A, and file sharing. You can also include emoticons or emojis to create a fun experience.
9. Include Interactive Features
Attendees, speakers, and sponsors should be able to connect and interact with one another in various ways on your platform. Therefore, you should include the following interactive features on your microsite:
- Live Chats
- 1:1 Video Chat
- Group Video Chats
- Exhibition and Virtual Booths
- Conversation Forum
- Gamification
- Polling
- Q&A
There could be more features to add depending on your event requirements and the needs of your audience.
10. Make Your Site Responsive or Create a Mobile Event App
Because of mobile users, your microsite should be responsive. This means that the site’s pages and features should automatically adjust to fit mobile screen sizes to create a smooth mobile experience. Alternatively, create a mobile event app to serve as the mobile version of your microsite. You can include additional interactive and gamification features on the mobile app to encourage more attendees to use it.
Last but not least, set up your microsite to run real-time analytics at the backend using performance measurement metrics that show how attendees are engaging with your site. That information will be useful to determine your event’s success. Also, before your microsite goes live, test everything on the site including speed and functionality. You can use volunteers who are not involved in the development to test and report their experience.
About the Author
Jordan Schwartz is president and co-founder of Pathable, an event app and website platform for conferences and tradeshows. He left academic psychology for the lure of software building, and spent 10 years at Microsoft leading the development of consumer-facing software. Frustrated with the conferences he attended there, he left Microsoft in 2007 with the goal of delivering more value and better networking opportunities through a next-generation conference app. Jordan moonlights as a digital nomad, returning often to his hometown of Seattle to tend his bee hives.