Startup Elite has worked with many different event companies over the past years. One key area that often needs improvement and can drive new revenue is the event's website. In this presentation we touch on a few key topics that help event producers get a better idea of what they need to do to stand out. For more information please contact Startup Elite at info@startupelite.com For more presentations visit www.StartupElite.com Author: Markus Biegel Website: www.MarkusBiegel.com

1. EVENTWEBSITE DEVELOPMENTSTARTUP ELITE

2. EVENT WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT | BENEFITS
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Benefits of launching an event-specific website include:
- Enhanced branding opportunity with site-specific design
- New non-interfering / non-crowding content mix opportunities
- Increased value proposition to sponsors and exhibitors
- Improved search engine optimization (SEO) performance
- Ability to generate significantly more revenues
To launch a successful event-specific website requires having a strategic website
development plan that covers in detail the key elements: 1) content 2) features
and 3) connectivity.

3. EVENT WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT | INFORMATIVE CONTENT
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Event Agenda / Schedule
Attendees want to know what they are signing
up for and what type of time commitment
they will need to make. The bigger the event
the more important this information becomes.
Special Guests / Speakers / Appearances
Who is attending this event that I want to
meet, listen to and learn from? Include the
bios so that people can get excited about
attending the event.
Sponsor / Exhibitor Lists
Sponsors can add a lot of credibility to an
event and there is a tremendous value in
providing detailed information about all
of your exhibitors.
Team, Advisors and Partners
Give credit to your hard working team,
advisors and strategic partners. Most
importantly be transparent and show
who is behind this event production.

4. INFORMATIVE CONTENT | EVENT AGENDA / SCHEDULE
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Multi-Format Agenda / Schedule
Provide a complete schedule on your website in text and downloadable PDF format. Provide graphics that
market each individual workshop session and featured speaker. Make it easy for attendees to share the
event information through social media or to invite colleagues via email.
Concurrently Running Workshops
If your event has multiple workshops running concurrently it is important to provide the attendee with
workshop descriptions, speaker bios and other documents that will help them make a better decision on
which workshop will be most valuable to them. Categorizing the workshops with labels will improve the
user experience.
Convenient Information
Do the homework for your attendees. Provide them with information on nearest hotels, airports,
restaurants and maybe other city attractions that someone might want to see while they are in town.
Going the extra mile for your attendees builds loyalty.

5. INFORMATIVE CONTENT | SPONSOR / EXHIBITOR LISTS
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Sponsors don’t just add credibility to an event but they have paid the cost to be
involved which means that they should be integrated into the website in multiple
smart ways that allows your website visitors to make a real connection with these
companies. This may require the integration of dedicated sponsor pages and links
that direct to landing pages on the sponsor’s website.
A list of exhibitors is extremely valuable especially if there are a few hundred of
them. Some event organizers even capitalize on this by selling their exhibitor lists
to attendees. It is best practice to provide this information for free (with links and
contact information) as well as working with exhibitors proactively to promote the
event through their networks.
SPONSORS
EXHIBITORS

6. INFORMATIVE CONTENT | TEAM, ADVISORS AND PARTNERS
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Unlike sponsors and exhibitors; team members, advisors and strategic
partners don’t pay to have an affiliation with the event but giving them
credit is not only the right thing to do but it raises the trustworthiness
of the event. A lot of attendees will be reluctant to attend an event if
they don’t know who is behind it.
Listing detailed information about advisors is a strategic tool to raise
the credibility of the event. These people will not only attract sponsors
but they may also be featured speakers for the event. Make it easy for
website visitors to follow these advisors on their social media channels
without completely redirecting them away from the website.
GIVING CREDIT
ADVISOR CREDIBILITY

7. EVENT WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT | MARKETING CONTENT
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Strategically placed marketing copy that provides a clear call to action for a diverse target market:
Attendees
Buy: Encouraging potential attendees to buy their tickets (or RSVP) immediately and to entice them
into any premium packages, special seating, fee-based workshop sessions etc.
Share: Share the event via social media, email and through word of mouth with friends, family and
other business professionals.
Exhibitors
Getting potential exhibitors excited about the quality and quantity of attendees as well as the
opportunity to meet with fellow exhibitors and speakers.
Sponsors
Enticing sponsors to become an official part of the event by providing them with detailed
information about the event size, demographics and past event statistics.

8. EVENT WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT | BLOG
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A blog is a strategic marketing tool for any event website and it’s often easy to integrate. The critical
success factor will be based on the company’s ability to produce ongoing content to feature on the blog.
Articles
Writing and publishing industry-related articles has been the go-to content for business and event
blogs. Proper execution will depend on the company’s ability to hire writers or recruit guest bloggers.
Interviews
Interviews, especially email interviews, is one of the most effective ways to build content for your
event blog. You can interview speakers, sponsors, exhibitors or even people that won’t be attending
your event but play a major role in your industry.
The same content that drives people to read your blog and subscribe to it is the content that gets them
motivated to buy their tickets for your event.

9. EVENT WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT | FEATURES
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Registration Process
- The ability for attendees to quickly and effortlessly register and pay any fees that may apply.
- Prominently display sign-up prompts on every page throughout the website.
Discount Features
- Offering promotional discounts including early bird specials and group discounts for businesses
that want to send a team of people.
- Comprehensive discount analytics that allow you to track discount code usage from strategic
partners.
Multiple Registration Paths
- Implementation of multiple landing pages to target different types of attendees.

10. EVENT WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT | CONNECTIVITY
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Social Component: Get people activated to follow your social media channels,
share the website and engage with content.
- Prominently displaying one-click social media following options.
- Creating and featuring practical content that’s likely to be shared and discussed.
E-mail Capture: Offering newsletters and insightful premium content to get the
email address of non-attendees.
- Newsletters that feature interesting content from the event blog.
- Topic-relevant case studies for download via PDF.
- Highly valuable database such as an exhibitor list and contact information.

11. EVENT WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT | DESIGN
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Navigation: Navigation can make or break a
website especially for websites with many
pages. Simplify navigation, make it intuitive
and use a drop-down menu if necessary.
Branding: The branding throughout the
website needs to be consistent. Inconsistent
visual communication creates a negative
association for your company.
Content: Content is king. While a good website
has a lot of content you need to make sure that
it is presented in small digestible formats written
in a warm and welcoming tone.
Trust: A well placed video, featured attendee
testimonials, and a lot of “More Information”
links establishes the type of trust that gets
people to take action and buy their tickets for
your next event.
“A website with great features will drive traffic but without the modern and user-friendly
design the conversion will significantly underperform.”

12. EVENT WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT | COMMON MISTAKES
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Long Registration Forms
Nobody wants to spend their time filling out
lengthy forms that ask pointless questions.
No Ongoing Content
The website needs to have marketing objectives
beyond driving attendance for a single event and
that requires ongoing content strategy.
Unnecessary Content
Eliminate the content that does not support your
marketing objectives. All content needs to drive
the visitor towards a defined action.
Over-Optimized
Many features have the ability to improve
conversion but if they are thoughtlessly
implemented they will negatively affect event
attendance and brand reputation.
Too Many Ticket Options
Giving too many options will complicate the ticket
buyer’s decision making and cause inaction.
No Analytics
Without analytics you are missing a huge
opportunity to fully evaluate your overall
performance.

13. EVENT WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT | LONG FORMS
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Long Registration Forms will decrease conversions and that negatively effects your bottom line.
Yet the information you can extract from the long forms is valuable to sponsors, exhibitors and
other parties that you might want to share this information with.
To solve this problem you need to create Premium Content that people get free access to when
they fill out the long forms. This way you don’t hurt your conversions yet you receive the valuable
information that is so sought after.
People are willing to spend the time to fill out long forms if they will receive something that’s
valuable to them in return. There are a lot of Gamification opportunities when you use the right
technology to create your long forms.

14. EVENT WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT | CONTENT STRATEGY
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STEP 1: GETTING STARTED
- Content Mix Strategy
- Content Production Strategy
- Editorial Voice Guidelines
- Editorial Calendar
- Content Distribution Strategy
- Hands-on Social Media Management
- Performance Tracking Tools
STEP 2: AMPLIFICATION
- Implementing top trends and staying on the cutting edge.
- Developing unique co-branding opportunities.
- Launching user-generated content campaigns.
- Execute promotional campaigns for increased engagement.
You have to use strategy, creativity and savvy tools to engage with
your audience to ensure your brand is relevant and part of the
conversation.
Consistently creating and distributing content that’s informative, engaging and entertaining is a lot of work.
With the right strategy and processes in place this work can become streamlined and help the organization
achieve its event objectives without distracting too much from other operations.

15. EVENT WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT | ANALYTICS
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Analytics is split into four key reporting areas; Audience (who is visiting your site), Acquisition (how they
are getting to your site), Behavior (what they are doing on your site) and Conversions (have they
completed what you wanted them to), each of which is useful for difference purposes.
An analytics tool such as Google Analytics is free, easy to implement and fairly simple to learn given all the
available information on YouTube and other places online. It is a powerful tool that allows you to optimize
your marketing campaigns, improve your website’s content and design, help you identify your target
audience and ultimately assists in making the right budget allocations based on data that shows what
works and what doesn’t.
Wouldn’t you like to know whether that Facebook Ad campaign directly contributed to an increase
in ticket sales and provided an overall positive return on investment (ROI)?
NO MORE GUESSING. REAL DATA. REAL RESULTS.

16. STARTUP ELITE
FOUNDED BY MARKUS BIEGEL
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Startup Elite is a consulting firm specialized in early stage ventures.
From strategy review and development to hands-on
implementation, we help you achieve accelerated growth.
We are your partner in getting your business to the next level.

17. STARTUP ELITE
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