High-quality web design is always an excellent investment. It's not just a surefire way to attract more leads. It's also the key to engaging your target audience and convincing them to convert.
However, the simple fact is that many brands underestimate the potential of a well-made event website. They either see it as an unnecessary expense. Or, worse yet, they entirely forget about the benefits of investing in this type of resource for event and brand promotion.
So, what's the right way to create a digital promo page for your event? This guide will cover the top tactics for planning, building, and promoting a successful event website.
Map Out Audience Needs
What's the secret to successful website design?
Well, regardless of your industry or niche, the key element for making any website convert is to ensure it aligns with what your prospects want and need from your brand.
After all, catering to your ideal customers isn't just about capturing their attention and elevating their awareness about your event. It's just as essential to show how and why your event matters to them.
If you look at research, you'll discover that most people ignore irrelevant branded messages. Yet, if your offer comes off as pertinent, they're more likely to convert into customers and remain loyal to your business.
So, before you begin the design process for your event website, find out what your target audience needs. Then plan out your site's design and content around those needs.
Employ a user-centric approach. Furthermore, be direct in addressing your prospect's pain points or aspirations and showing how your event offers a solution.
For instance, Rebecca's Private Idaho emphasizes that the cycling race is the most beautiful one in America, aiming to use the info to attract an audience looking for an enjoyable racing experience.
If you do these things, your site is far more likely to drive conversions. Additionally, note that user-centricity improves discoverability and engagement, resulting in much higher success potential for your business.
Provide Straightforward Information
An event website isn't simply about engaging your target audience. It's just as much about convincing them to join your brand for an online or offline happening.
To accomplish this, you need to provide visitors with straightforward information on how to attend.
Be sure to inform web visitors about when and where your event will be happening. List any relevant registration info they need to know. And don't let them become negatively surprised by not being upfront about cost details — especially as that type of information holdback is one of the most prominent conversion killers out there.
ZipForward is an excellent example of how to do the latter, seeing as it includes price information right next to the registration CTA.
Prioritize Aesthetic Appeal
Beautiful websites convert better. Moreover, they're far more likely to elevate brand trust.
So, when exploring ways to build and promote a successful event website, try to prioritize aesthetic appeal.
Ultimately, your digital presence doesn't have to be complex or highly aestheticized. However, doing your best to create a visually pleasing, cohesive presentation will go a long way in convincing your ideal customers to sign up for your event.
For example, the Africa Tech Summit homepage is extremely simple. Yet, it doesn't just work well in giving visitors all the information they need about attending. It also sends the message that this is a great event for tech professionals. Additionally, it employs consistent branding elements, further contributing to the event's appeal and the organizer's reputation in an otherwise competitive industry.
Simplify UX
High-converting websites need to not only look great but also perform at a high level.
After all, web user behavior research consistently shows that UX design directly impacts web users' willingness to interact with a brand and its site.
Do you want your event website to be successful at encouraging sign-ups? In that case, don't forget to create an enjoyable user experience.
Ensure your site is optimized for mobile. Prioritize fast load times. Make navigation easy and logical.
Finally, create clear conversion mechanisms for your target audience so that they know exactly what they need to do next when interacting with your site.
Using a trustworthy AI website builder to create an event website is an excellent way to accomplish this goal. But, of course, you can also make UX decisions manually.
If that's the path you choose, prioritize understanding your target audience's buying journey. Moreover, try to align your online presentation with the logical path they need to take from event awareness to a conversion decision. For example, take a look at how Money 20/20 did it:
Use Relevant Keywords in Web Copy and Align Your Marketing Tactics
Where do people find out about events? In most cases, discovery happens either on social media, paid ads, or search engine results.
So, if you want to get people interested in your event and attract more web (high-quality) web traffic, your target audience needs to have a pretty clear idea of what they'll find on your site.
To reach this goal, you need to incorporate relevant keywords into your web copy.
Additionally, make sure your off-site marketing tactics also target these terms.
That way, you won't just engage web visitors who come to your site organically. Your paid marketing tactics will be more successful, too, thanks to a highly targeted approach.
Include Social Proof
Brand trust plays a huge role in people's buying decisions. In fact, most consumers won't even consider interacting with a brand unless they know it's competent and dependable.
For this reason, your website needs to incorporate some sort of social proof to yield conversions. But what social proof format works best in the event industry?
Well, there's no definitive answer to that question. So, instead of trying to keep up with current trends, consider the type of social proof your ideal customers would most benefit from.
If you're targeting professionals and businesses, then traditional formats — reviews and testimonials — should work perfectly. Or, you could highlight the experts who'll be present at the event, which is what IAPP does on its homepage.
On the other hand, engaging end-consumers and younger audiences might necessitate a slightly different approach. It is for this reason that music festivals regularly use aftermovie content on their event sites, as these do a perfect job of painting the atmosphere people can expect when attending the event.
Encourage Email Newsletter Sign-ups
Although the primary focus of a successful event website needs to be boosting attendance, the simple fact is that many of your web visitors won't be ready to commit.
Nonetheless, you can't let them leave your sales funnel just like that.
Instead, explore ways to get them to continue interacting with your brand. That way, you'll allow them to move through the funnel at their own pace, hopefully resulting in a conversion down the line. You can also actively present them with lead-nurturing content, which makes it more likely that they'll attend your event.
One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is to emphasize low-risk methods for your target audience to continue brand interactions.
An email newsletter sign-up element can be a great way to accomplish this. Or, if you target a younger audience who are active on socials, you could do something similar to Coachella and encourage them to keep in touch via these channels.
Measure Performance for Maximum Success
Finally, when building a successful event website, keep in mind that reaching exceptional conversion rates takes time. So, you can't expect your site to perform perfectly from the get-go.
Instead, you'll likely need to make slight adjustments to maximize success potential.
The best way to do this is by measuring website performance. Keep an eye on relevant KPIs, track user behavior, and measure your site's capability of reaching your conversion goals.
This won't just help you figure out where your website needs to do better. It might also uncover unexpected improvement opportunities to maximize conversion rates.
Final Thoughts
Great event web design doesn't have to be complex.
In most cases, you'll see exceptional results by simply being straightforward with your target audience.
Nevertheless, if you want your brand and offer to stand out, it's always a good idea to look for website optimization opportunities. So, don't hesitate to implement the tips from this guide in your design strategy. And feel free to adjust them to your brand's (and audience's) specific needs for maximum impact.
