How to Provide a Seamless Virtual Event Experience

Virtual events continue to be crucial for organizations seeking to deliver a unified message across multiple locations at once. It can be a global product launch, a large-scale hybrid conference, or a corporate training webinar… Today’s virtual event experience is more innovative and complex than ever before.

While virtual events present several unique challenges, none are more pivotal to overcome than empowering your audience. Make every individual feel valued throughout their journey is essential to a successful virtual event. This includes from the moment your attendees first discover your event website, to the days and weeks before and after the event.

We’ve compiled some tips to prioritize and excite your attendees leading up to your event. We ensure that feeling lasts long after your event has ended, too!

Event Promotion

Few pieces are more key to your event’s success than consistent marketing. Leverage your existing brand channels to grab attention and tell your event’s story! This will build excitement and encourage your attendees not just to sign up, but to stay glued to their screens in anticipation before, during, and after your event.  

In addition to your existing online channels, a well-designed, comprehensive registration website is necessary to make your event successful. On your event registration website, make sure to highlight the exciting parts of the event, like keynote speakers and top-rated sessions.

A great event registration website isn’t just about flashy images, though! Clear and consistent communication is the name of the game. Clearly explain items such as the event agenda and available pass types to ensure attendees know what to expect from your event.

Event Registration & Pre-Event

A seamless registration and pre-event experience will ensure your attendee’s readiness to attend after registration.

Here are a few tips on how to achieve exactly that:

• Streamlining the experience on your website is one of the easiest steps you can take to build your attendee’s trust. Wherever possible, keep them on the same URL or web domain; the fewer redirects, the more confidence your attendee will have in your registration process. Ensure your brand is represented consistently throughout so they understand they are exactly where they’re supposed to be to register for your event.

• Registration forms should only require the information you absolutely need. Conversion rates are proven to drop when the registration process is unnecessarily long and difficult. Remember, you can always ask for more information later.

• If you have multiple pass types to choose from, work with your team before registration goes live to ensure the differences between types are clearly communicated. Attendees need to be able to easily choose what’s right for them. An FAQ page can prevent confusion about event complexity.

• Once registration is complete, give your attendee a sense of pride and accomplishment by bringing them to a success or confirmation page. This is a great place to start building excitement around the event, so make sure you provide the opportunity for your attendee to share their excitement further on social media and invite their colleagues or friends to register.

• Further cement a successful registration with a confirmation email. This email should have all the information your attendee needs so they can refer back to it as needed. If possible, you can make the experience even more seamless by providing an “add to calendar” option with the date, time, and a link to the virtual event right on the calendar invite. Now, your attendee will be able to avoid schedule conflicts and is only a click away from joining your event.

• Empower your attendees to manage their profile and agenda after the registration process. Allow them to choose if they’d like to share their profile to the public or keep it private, and offer the option to “favourite” or sign up for the sessions they are most interested in. In doing this, your attendees will be able to keep track of their personal agenda, save their spot in sessions that have capacity limitations, and join waitlists as needed.

During the Event

Now that your event is finally on the horizon! You must do all you can to make sure your event is top-of-mind for your attendees—not just for your benefit, but theirs, too.

Apply your branding principles to this stage too. From the promotion and marketing materials to the waiting room, event platform, backgrounds, and beyond, a seamless virtual event experience features consistent branding and colours throughout.

Moreover, a consistently on-brand experience is an easy way to “wow” your attendees and keep them immersed in the experience.

Begin your event ramp-up by sending email reminders 1-3 days prior to your event. These can serve not only as reminders, but as ways to deliver important last-minute information and help build more excitement. On the day of the event, send another email reminder one hour before the event. And then, send an email again 5-15 minutes before it is set to begin. This ensures your waiting rooms are queuing up and helps avoid both late arrivals and subsequently late starts. Some attendees sign up for specific sessions only. Consider sending session-specific email reminders, in addition to or instead of general event reminders to them.

Selecting an easy-to-use, flexible platform for your attendees can also have its benefits, like encouraging audience participation. The best virtual event platforms include intuitive areas for chat and Q&A that can be moderated by your team. Elevate the user experience by providing links to all supporting and downloadable documents right in the chat, rather than having your attendees go searching for them.

Last but certainly not least: ensure your schedule includes break times, especially in multi-track events where you may have simultaneous sessions happening at the same time. Just like in an in-person event, your audience will need time to recharge, stretch, refill water bottles, or go for a quick washroom break before starting their next session(s). If you are providing longer breaks, consider adding some entertainment to your event. Live music, DJs, comedy, or professionally produced breakout videos can help take your virtual event to the next level.

Post-Event

Just because your attendees have logged off, doesn’t mean their journey is over! Be sure to send all attendees a thank you email explaining how to access event recordings and recaps with links.

Within the first 24 hours post-event would be a great time to also send out email surveys. You may collect data on both what went well and what could be improved in future events. This data can be indispensable in organizing your next successful event.

Conclusion

If you’re looking to build a stunning virtual event experience from start to finish, consider Attendease.

Attendease allows corporate teams to manage live and on-demand virtual sessions—for events both large and small—and to build a stellar experience for attendees so they are excited to join over and over again!

Attendease is foundational event software that:

• Provides a seamless, fully branded experience by livestreaming directly to your Attendease event website
• Integrates with any URL-based video conferencing provider
• Allows you to choose between a single or multi-session broadcast
• Automatically generates meeting links for all sessions
• Offers users the ability to register to specific sessions and build personal event agendas
• Automatically updates meeting links into email reminders and your event website

Streamline the planning and management of all your online meetings and events with our easy to use, fully-integrated platform. Book a discovery call with Attendease today to learn more!