Challenge
From 2014 to 2016 dataxu hosted its annual user conference in New York City. In 2017 they extended the event to three cities. I was tasked with designing and building the event site template to register attendees and provide information about each venue. We needed to make each one unique, desirable, and easy to navigate to maximize registrations.
Solution
We agreed early on that each event deserved a unique microsite. So, I designed a system that would highlight each of the venues. I built a modular template in WordPress that featured custom navigation for each page and was also easy for marketers to edit. I chose the hero image as the way to make each of the pages unique and recognizable.
Here you can see the Chicago venue featuring a recognizable shot of the Willis Tower.
The San Francisco venue featured the Golden Gate Bridge.
The New York City venue featured the skyline and the Empire State Building.
Here is a preview of the speaker info as seen on mobile. It was crucial for attendees to easily scan through the speaker list from their phone while on the event floor.
Each site was customized with venue information and hotel room block. The template made it easy for marketers to customize this information for each venue ahead of the event.
The custom navigation was unique for the microsites and removed the clutter from the standard website navigation. This allowed attendees to focus on relevant event information and quickly access what they were looking for.
Results
- We sold out two of the three venues
- Marketers were easily able to update the sites leading up to the events
- The flexibility allowed the template to be reused for 2018
