The online events and live meetings’ industry is overflowing with options, making it challenging for event managers to draw attention to their events.
Management Tips for Great Experience Design
In this crowded marketplace, attendees can afford to be picky. Event planners who put little effort into creating memorable experiences risk being quickly overlooked.
Experience design, for those new to the concept, involves carefully selecting and curating every aspect of an event to enhance attendees’ enjoyment. It’s a broad field that different event planners may approach differently. However, good experience design is unmistakable when done well, because it creates an atmosphere filled with anticipation and excitement, where every element seamlessly falls into place.
The specifics of experience design are different depending on the nature of your event. Here are a few top-level tips that will put you on the path to creating memorable events.
Start at registration
Good experience design begins before the event and incorporates the entire customer journey. That means having a seamless and effective event registration portal. Event registration is not only useful for collecting information about your attendees, it sets out your design statement, letting your attendees know what sort of tone and quality to expect from the event itself. All of this helps build anticipation for the event itself.
Ask pertinent questions in your event registration, and you can also use this stage to tailor your marketing and design to your attendees. For example, you might find that you have several "alumni" from previous events, in which case you can factor that into your communication before the event.
Or, start at the end
If you are completely new to experience design and are feeling a little lost, one way of structuring your planning is focusing on the end of your event. The endpoint of an event is when your attendees or stakeholders get something of value from you. This is a purposefully vague definition because the end of the event is not when the last attendee leaves the venue. It could happen in a talk before then or in the bar after.
Essentially, starting at the end asks you to decide what your event is for specifically. For example, is the value in networking? Or a certain speaker? Knowing your endpoint lets you orient the whole design towards it, which gives attendees anticipation beforehand and satisfaction afterwards.
Choose the right meeting software
With more and more events happening online now, there’s more choice than ever when it comes to the software available. When planning your event, you’ll want to ensure you’re using the right software that gives you what you need, as well as the attendees.
An excellent way to choose the software is to see what your attendees already use. If most people are using MyOwnConference daily, for example, you will want to consider using that for your event. It makes it easier for them to attend, as they already know how to use it.
Also, look at the features that the software has. Does it have everything you need to run your event? For example, you may need the ability to screen share or record the event for later watching. If so, make sure your chosen software has all of these capabilities before announcing the event.
Finally, you’ll want to ensure that you’re familiar with the software before the day. Testing it out with a colleague is advised beforehand. That allows you to spot any potential problems before the event.
Take advantage of social media
Anyone planning an event now needs to have a good social media presence. That’s where many would-be guests will look you up and hope to see what you offer. So when planning your event, get set up on all the relevant channels where your audience will be, making it easy for them to find you.
Once the social media accounts are set up, ensure that you’re using them often. These are great ways to hype up your event and get more people interested in coming to it. Creating easy-to-share visuals is key here, especially for visual platforms such as Instagram. These are another great way to spread the word.
Even during the event itself, those accounts will be useful. They are the quickest way to spread word of anything that changes, whether that is a session moving or a time shifting. So as you have those accounts, make good use of them.
Embrace tech
The kind of people attending your event are likely those who have participated in many events. So they are familiar with the standard modus operandi. Anything you can do to surprise or innovate is likely to grab their attention, and tech is a great place to start. There are lots of ways to implement tech solutions in your experience design, so many that there is a whole industry of third-party tech providers to consult.
If you’re looking to try out experience design tech yourself, start with the event app. An event app, if done right, can be the locus point for your experience design. It should be consistent with your visual marketing elements and entirely geared towards your attendees and their needs. Most of all it should work, so do not economise by going with less reputable hosts or designers, because a badly built event app makes the whole event look unpolished.
Strive for perfection
Great experience design is so sought after because it can be challenging to achieve. It takes dedicated work that many event planners are simply not set up to do. The bottom line is that you should strive for perfection in every element. Everything from pre-event emails to follow-up communication, from the holding screen before you go live to the wording of the closing slide, deserves the same attention. The devil is most certainly in the detail. If you get those right, then they bring the whole experience together.
Final thoughts on experience design
Creating a truly memorable event experience means treating every moment as part of a unified narrative that starts with registration and continues until the final handshake. Begin by defining the result you want and make sure every element of the event supports that goal. Select tools and technology that your audience already feels comfortable with and test everything carefully before the event begins. Build your presence in the places where your attendees spend time online and keep the conversation going before, during, and after the event. Enhance your design by welcoming pleasant surprises while maintaining a refined touch in every detail, because the lasting impression your guests carry comes from the small, unnoticed moments as much as from the spotlight moments. This is the essence of experience design.
FAQ
What role does the registration process play in event experience design?
The registration process sets the tone for the entire customer journey because by having a smooth and effective registration portal you communicate the style and quality of your event and build anticipation among attendees.
Why is it recommended to plan an event by starting at the end?
It is recommended because when you imagine what attendees will take away and define what success means you can design the whole experience to build toward that outcome and give participants both anticipation before and satisfaction after the event.
How do you choose the right meeting software to support your event’s experience?
You choose the right software by looking at what your attendees already use, checking that the software has the features you need (for example recording or screen-sharing), testing it ahead of time so you can avoid problems and ensure a smoother experience for everyone.
In what ways can social media enhance the attendee experience at your event?
Social media enhances the attendee experience by giving you channels to build interest before the event, by allowing live updates and changes during the event (for example room or time changes), and by providing shareable visuals that spread word-of-mouth among your audience.
What does striving for perfection in event design actually involve?
Striving for perfection means carefully planning every detail of the event from pre-event emails and follow-up communication through to catering choices and table settings so that all individual elements work together and give a cohesive, high-quality experience.
