You’ve gone to the effort of organizing a whole event, working through the logistics, reserving a venue, the beverages and refreshments, entertainment, the whole nine yards… and then you fumble at the last possible minute by making your event seem as unappealing to potential prospects as you can.
Are you wondering what we are talking about? We’re discussing here how some web pages for events can be set up with a whole dump of text and nary a graphic or picture, making them seem daunting to anyone who’s not already in the know, and scaring people off from ever learning more about them, or signing up for them.
In other words, we are talking about the visual design of the promotional materials you set up to market your event, such as an online web page on a platform like AdmitONE. Yes, it might seem easiest to throw in a stock picture, some text, and call it a day, but you will (probably) not be surprised to hear, the effort you put into setting these up directly correlates to the response you get.
DOES VISUAL DESIGN MATTER?
In the simplest possible terms: yes, yes it does. Humans are inherently visual creatures, and we learn and make associations by looking at things. Put simply, the more visually distinct and memorable you make your promotional web page look, the likelier it is to be appealing to people, and the likelier they are to engage with its calls to action, such as signing up for your event.
This isn’t just a vibes-based statement either. The Stanford Web Credibility Project, which conducts extensive studies into what web content gets the most traction with audiences, asked more than 2,500 people to rate several websites on credibility. The results? Nearly half of the audience (46.1% to be exact) make judgments about a site’s credibility based on design elements, including things like layout, typography, and colour palette. Meaning these are not things you can afford to slack off on.
ABOUT THOSE PICTURES…
Obviously imagery and visuals are a huge part of the visual design. They absolutely matter, and the more appealing they look, the likelier people are to sign up for your event. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Put yourself in their shoes: aren’t you a whole lot likely to sign up for an event if the pictures make it look exciting, with a bunch of people in attendance and visibly having fun? Imagine if all you got for an event was a stock image and nothing else – doesn’t that make you less likely to sign up?
Platforms like AdmitONE allow organizers to associate multiple images with an event, allowing them the chance to put up not only the most attractive promotional image, but also put up multiple extra images in addition that showcase what the event itself will be like. Make use of features like these!
BUT IT’S ALSO ABOUT THE FONTS AND FORMATTING
As we talked about when bringing up the Standord Web Credibility Project study, fonts and formatting are crucial visual elements that add to how a web page is perceived. Use bold, italicized, and underlined text for emphasis; highlight headings by using bigger and bolder text; use line and paragraph breaks to keep text easy to follow and parse at a glance.
It’s all simple and basic stuff, but it can also be a pain to do! If your event is set up on a platform like AdmitONE, you get access to a WYSIWYG editor, that lets you add fairly sophisticated formatting to your text without the need for any special HTML or CSS coding. It’s definitely a factor to consider when deciding on your event organization.
We know organizing events is a huge lift. When you put in as much effort into it as you inevitably do, why skimp out on the final step of the process, the one that lets you put your best foot forward to your end customer? Visual formatting and imagery are big parts of what keep things appealing for your audience, so it’s best to not ignore them to the extent possible going forward.
