Every event should have a dedicated app. More specifically, it should have an event app that’s tailored to its individual aspects, its guests, and its managers. In order to save you effort and time, Intellectsoft lists the most essential features of a solid event app.
Our suggestions will help your event succeed in new ways — helping your attendees connect better, offering new experiences powered by the latest tech, and making your event more comfortable for guests and staff alike. All with a single impactful tool, an event app.
Step 1 — Connect with Guests and Facilitate Networking
Connecting is the crux of any event. Using a multitude of different technologies, an event app single-handedly covers communication with your visitors before, during, and after the event.
An event app allows you to:
- Send push-notifications to provide essential information; notify visitors about unexpected delays, emergencies, changes; use them to display ads; and more.
- Include all the news and media about your event.
- Integrate social media to connect with your guest.
On the flip side, an event app will help your guests connect with each other. Here, you have plenty options available, including the following:
- Set up a Live chat or a group chat.
- Include a feature that allows your guest to save new acquaintances in the app.
- Integrate social media to help guest connect with each other.
Let’s look at an example:
- Upon downloading your event app, the guests log in with LinkedIn; the app syncs all essential information and creates their in-app profile.
- Whenever your guests meet potential business partners, they add them to their in-app contact list.
- Your guests can then perform a number of actions from the contact list. They can send messages to people they added, start a group chat with them, or arrange a meeting in a café on the event grounds in a few clicks.
- After the event, your guests can export the contact list from the app for further use.
Step 2 — Improving Event Experience
Elevating event experience is where mobile apps for events excel the most. An event app serves as a converging point for all digital and technological novelties, helping you to ensure your event is modern and memorable:
- Install beacons, and create contextual experiences. A lot of events take place at vast locations and have big TV screens to inform visitors and display media content. As a visitor approaches a TV with a beacon installed in it, the screen will show them important information (for example, guide them to a pavilion).
- Include Live streaming to reach out to the people who couldn’t come. Prompt visitors to stream themselves, too, and share the footage online — a lot of people enjoy streaming.
- Gamify your event experience with exclusive content in meaningful ways. For example, you are organizing a medical convention. Prompt your users to visit three important lectures and reward users with unique event merchandise. Then, provide appealing visuals by complementing the gamification with branded event badges.
- Use Augmented Reality in gamification and to bring your creative event ideas to life.
Step 3 — Event Management
A satisfying event is a well-organized event. An event app will ensure your event provides maximum comfort and minimum inconveniences:
- Use the paired power of beacons and your event app. Beacons would send out notifications when visitors approach them. They can also help your guests navigate the venue. If your guests value privacy, beacons are the best option: they work via Bluetooth, requiring user consent. Thus, those who want to stay private would simply use the in-app event map.
- Include a tickets purchase option, making the process of buying tickets frictionless.
- Turn your event app into an event pass, saving your guests’ time and making the overall experience of entering the venue smoother, quicker, and more pleasant.
- Send geofenced messages. For example, your annual event is happening at a different venue this year. With geofenced messages, you would remind your guests about essential locations, ensuring the event experience is comfortable and smooth.
- Use AR to provide additional context without cluttering the premises, stands, and designs.
- Include a detailed event map, brochure, and other essential information. After the event is over, let your guests download keynotes, videos, and other content created in the process from the application. Your guests won’t need to note anything, or carry any materials with them.
An event app and the event software underlying it will also make it easier to manage the event for everyone involved.
Event management apps can:
- Serve as a staff pass.
- Improve staff communication tools.
- Improve response time for emergencies and support queries
- Simplify event management with push notifications and spot-on usage of technologies
Furthermore, an event app’s dashboard will help you orchestrate the entire event, making the management process easier. In addition to pre-setting notifications and managing content, you will be able to see actionable analytics: what location was the most popular, the number of attendees and how long they stayed at a location, etc. In other words, if you want to tackle your Big Data, event software is an essential tool.
Among other possibilities, the dashboard will also allow you to poll your guests after the event to find out what they liked the most, which ideas worked and which need improvement.
Custom features in event apps
In the end, if you turn to custom app development for an event app, your imagination and goals are the only limit.
For example, If your event has a creative crowd, you can add branded stickers to the Live Chat feature (or the camera feature).
An event app will also allow for meaningful and creative marketing instruments driven by the latest technologies — like AR installations.
With a well-made event app powered by the latest tech, you have numerous possibilities to elevate your event experience, making it more memorable, comfortable, and unique.
If your event needs to open its doors to software at short notice, get in touch with us. Our mobile app platform is built with event apps in mind.