Insight
The event websites ’ cheat sheet
Event website specialists ASP give their super six top tips on how to ensure your website always has the competitive edge
1 . Terrific traffic According to research carried out by SEO platform BrightEdge , SEO drives 1,000 % more traffic than organic social media . An incredible stat and all the more reason to get to grips at least with the very basics of SEO .
Create hook-ups On average the top Google-ranked search term has 3.8 times more backlinks to other websites then the second ranked website , making it pretty vital to ensure you have more backlinks than your event competitors . Backlinks are important for SEO because they signal to search engines that a website ’ s content is valuable and credible . This in turn builds trust with potential attendees and exhibitors .
3 . Fast impressions Looks are all important when it comes to websites . We have found that it takes 2.6 seconds for an attendee to decide if they like your website or not .
About 94 % of first impressions of your event website are related to its design . This can be from layout or colours through to too much info . What can also make users decide whether your website is where they want to be is whether the key information is immediately findable . i . e . show name , date , location etc .
What ’ s even more irritating than web traffic is load times . 47 % of users won ’ t wait for any longer than two seconds for your homepage to load .
Here are three ways you can speed up your load times :
• Compress images and videos
• Browser caching
• Minimalise JS , HTML and CSS codes
4 . Mission possible Website users spend an average of 6.44 seconds on your homepage , making it vital that your website is easy to navigate . No more than six elements should be on your navigation bar . Also , keep the drop downs on each part to fewer than five if possible ( and it is possible !).
5 . Get testing If you want to make your website a lead-generating machine , you need to delve into the magic of conversion rate optimisation . CRO typically involves A / B testing elements like colour , wording , content and navigational elements of your website to see what gets the best results .
In a recent A / B testing we carried out for an AI Summit , we found that if the organiser changed their CTA button from black to orange , they would get over a 25 % increase of visitors clicking through to their ticketing page . A massive uplift .
6 . RIP radio star Video may have killed the radio star , but did you know a good promo video with a nice CTA can also bring your website to life ? Websites with videos increase dwell time by a massive 88 %.
Keen to find out more about how to make your event website a fighting fit and able attendee converting machine ? EW n Visit : www . asp . events / ew
38 Issue 1 2025 www . exhibitionworld . co . uk