Your event website really needs to do two things:
- Make it easy for people to find out crucial information about your event and book tickets.
- Be found.
But, as most things in life, it’s a little easier said than done.
Let’s start with the website itself.
Event Website: What You Need to Do
You can put up an event website the second you’ve got established details — preferably what, where and when.
Like any website, your event webpage will need to perform a few functions. These broadly fall into two categories:
Branding and content – These two things rule the day when marketing your events.
When people land on your event web page, they need to see your logo and whatever branding imagery you’ve established for the event. You should already have an idea of who you’re marketing to, and your branding for the event. These visuals should be front-and-center when people arrive.
Whatever the main image is on your web page should be the same, or at least similar, to the main banner image on your emails, social media pages, etc. People need to know immediately that this website is for your event.
The content part is easy. When people reach your first landing page (or only landing page, as is the case for most event sites) they need to see all of the important information straight away: What, Where, When, Where to Book. Don’t make people scroll or navigate through menus to find it out. Just put it right there in front of them when they arrive.
As you fill out the event, you can add more to the site. You might want to put pages up for the topics you’ll discuss, or profile pages for key speakers. This secondary information can be hidden “below the fold”, or in sub-menus, but easy navigation is always the key in web design.
Event SEO Best Practices
Your event website shouldn’t just be for people who are already interested in your event. It should be optimized so that search engines will recommend it to people who fit into your target market who maybe aren’t already on your radar.
There are thousands of pages written about SEO best practices online, but some things to consider when designing your site are as follows:
- Come up with relevant keywords to use in your site headers and content that people might look for in a search. For example, “Car show Dallas”.
- Use these keywords in your event description.
- Write a meta-description. This is a description which doesn’t appear on the page itself, but which search engines will find when looking through the site. Make sure it includes your keywords.
- Create back-links. Link to the page on your blog, your business’ website, and your social media pages. The more high-quality pages that link to your event page, the easier it will be to find.
