In the era of online event solution, creating an immersive experience for attendees has become a crucial aspect of hosting successful online events. While the absence of physical interactions may present challenges, there are numerous tips and strategies that can be employed to captivate and engage participants in the digital space.
By leveraging interactive features, and thoughtful design, online event planners can ensure to provide a quality experience to attendees. In this article, we will explore valuable tips to create immersive experiences in online events, ensuring that participants feel connected, inspired, and deeply engaged.
How to Create Immersive Experience in Virtual Events
Here are some of the best tips to create an immersive experience in online events:
1. Give People a Taste of What to Expect
By getting people to see your online event solution early, you can explore the space and find out how everything works before the big day. You can walk through an empty event space or send a link to a sample event running on the same platform. Let attendees experience what to expect and how to navigate a virtual meeting or event.
Making participants friendly can remove initial challenges and frustrations.
2. Choose Your Event Platform
Not all online event platforms are the same. In short, it takes a little thought when choosing an online event solution that will help you create a great event experience.
Research the various event technology options before making a decision. Compare the features and strengths and weaknesses of each tool. Consider whether you have everything you need to create an immersive seminar, discussion board, demo room, virtual booth, networking lounge, or any other space you want to host. Another aspect is the usability of the event platform. Think about your audience and how tech-savvy they are. Even if you find a truly immersive online event solution tool, if your audience has a hard time understanding it, they will become frustrated and won’t attend.
Use demos and free trials to understand how the platform works from a participant’s perspective. Think how easy it is to register, log in, update your profile, navigate the digital space, play videos, and interact with different elements. One of the big benefits of moving to virtual or hybrid events is that it’s often easier for more people to attend. Buildings may be physically inaccessible to many due to their structure, access and location, but virtual events are not subject to these restrictions, although other restrictions may apply. When designing your virtual event, consider accessible areas such as fonts, colors, sizes, and integration with accessibility software.
With the right digital event platform to support it, it’s easy to create an unforgettable event experience for your guests. It’s easy to navigate and interact with exhibitors, sponsors, and other stakeholders, a win-win for everyone.
3. Increase Interaction between Attendees
A virtual event can simply be a long talk or live stream that you can listen to. However, the most effective virtual events give viewers the chance to connect with the people around them.
If attendees can only watch presentations or flip through product brochures, they will be bored and frustrated. You should create a way for your guests to interact with others, including speakers, exhibitors, sponsors, and other attendees. Make sure the online event solution platform you choose provides ample opportunity to achieve this.
Create breakout rooms where you can chat live with others between sessions, just like you would over lunch at an in-person event. Add polls and interactive elements to your lectures and workshops. Schedule Q&A sessions and hearth chats so guests can ask questions and participate in the conversation. Set up a virtual booth where attendees can book face-to-face text or video calls with exhibitors to better understand what exhibitors have to offer. It’s about giving people the opportunity to participate so they can be more immersed in the event experience.
4. Personalize Your Event
Personalization is one of the best ways to immerse attendees in your virtual event.
Before you design your user journey, consider why attendees register for your event. Some want to build virtual networks, while others work together to consume content. These are two completely different experiences. Give your attendees what they want to maximize engagement and the ROI of your event.
5. Bring experience similar to onsite events
Make the most of traditional virtual engagement tools such as live polls, chat boxes, photo booths and networking lounges, and 1:1 such as video conferencing.
Then drive engagement even further with digital solutions that maximize the personal experience.
What do you enjoy about meeting on-site? Random meetups, of course! Imagine you’re walking down a hallway and bumping into someone you know. They will tell us about the speakers who inspired them and the activities they can’t wait to see. Hallway Chatter captures those moments online.
Enable key attendees and influencers to create user-generated video content related to your event. They will enjoy their moment in the spotlight. Viewers can also watch short content on their chosen topic from people they know, like, and trust.
6. Add Gamification
Gamification is the reward of participants for their actions in virtual business events. Earn tokens and points by participating in real-time Q&A sessions, promoting the event on social media, completing surveys at seminars, and visiting exhibitor booths. People are more willing to explore and get involved in what’s going on, especially when they can redeem their tokens or points for something that matters to them.
Brands using gamification in their virtual event platforms can drive traffic to their sponsors’ booths, increase session attendance, increase networking opportunities, and enhance the customer experience.
7. Provide Networking Opportunities
One of the biggest criticisms of virtual events is the lack of networking opportunities. Unlike physical events, attendees can’t walk around the conference venue to converse, exchange cards, or socialize with the people around them.
Take advantage of these networking opportunities to help provide a more social event experience for your attendees. Create dedicated virtual rooms for networking or host fast-paced networking sessions where people get to know each other instantly with a 5-minute chat. Choosing a platform that makes networking easy saves you the hassle of writing down someone’s email address. You can simply add people you meet to your virtual address book.
Conclusion
As the world continues to embrace online events as a primary platform for engagement, creating immersive experiences has become essential to captivate and engage attendees.
By following the tips discussed in this article, event organizers can harness the power of online event solution and the interactivity of the platform.
