The trend of using online conference platforms has grown quickly, especially as more events move online or become hybrid. These platforms became popular when it was hard to hold events in person, and they've stayed popular because they let more people join from different places. This change isn't just a quick fix; it's a big shift in how we plan and think about events.
These platforms have improved a lot, offering features that make online events feel like in-person ones, but with added benefits of technology. They provide easy ways for people to network, track how much attendees are involved, and give detailed data about the event. This big change shows that online conference platforms are now a key part of organizing events.
Online conference softwares are digital venues designed to host events over the internet. These platforms enable individuals and organizations to conduct meetings, seminars, and large-scale conferences without the physical limitations of traditional venues. Their primary purpose is to facilitate communication and interaction among participants, regardless of their geographic location. This is a significant departure from in-person events, where attendees must be physically present. Online platforms offer various tools like live streaming, chat rooms, Q&A sessions, and virtual networking spaces, which mimic the interactive aspects of physical events. The key difference lies in the accessibility and reach of these platforms. They allow for a global audience, often at a lower cost and with less environmental impact than traditional events. This makes them not only a convenient alternative but also a more inclusive and sustainable option for event hosting.
Online conference platforms bring a dynamic and interactive element to virtual events, primarily through a variety of key features. These features are designed to ensure that virtual conferences are not only efficient but also engaging and insightful for both organizers and attendees.
Video Conferencing Capabilities: This is the core feature, enabling real-time face-to-face interactions. High-quality video and audio ensure that presentations and discussions are as effective as they would be in person.
Interactive Tools: These include live polling, Q&A sessions, and chat functionalities. They enhance participant involvement, making sessions more interactive and lively.
Networking Opportunities: Networking features such as virtual meeting rooms, attendee directories, and 'matchmaking' algorithms for connecting like-minded individuals. These tools facilitate the building of connections and professional networks, which are a vital aspect of conference attendance.
Attendee Engagement Features: Virtual hand raises, reaction emojis, and breakout rooms encourage active participation. They also provide immediate feedback to the organizers about the session's engagement level.
Analytics and Reporting Tools: These tools deliver insights into attendee behavior, such as session attendance and engagement levels. They are crucial for assessing the event's impact and planning future improvements.
Virtual Booths: These booths allow exhibitors to showcase their products or services, interact with attendees, and generate leads, mimicking the experience of a physical exhibition hall.
Each of these features contributes to the effectiveness of online conference platforms, ensuring they offer a comprehensive, engaging, and insightful experience, much like traditional in-person events but with the added benefits of digital technology.
EventX, founded in 2013, is strategically headquartered in Hong Kong, China. As a company focused on the Asia-Pacific region, EventX specializes in SaaS-based online and in-person conference and conference management solution, catering to the needs of businesses, marketers, and event organizers. The company has achieved a substantial global footprint, serving enterprises in over 100 cities and managing events for more than 5 million attendees worldwide. With an operational team of 100+ employees, EventX maintains a significant presence across multiple Asian locations, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, reflecting its expansive growth and commitment to delivering comprehensive event management solutions in the region.
With over a decade of expertise, EventMobi stands as a flexible and seasoned player in the event management software industry, adept at servicing a broad spectrum of events—be it in-person, virtual, or hybrid. The platform distinguishes itself with a rich virtual event suite, offering robust engagement tools, live streaming capabilities, diverse sponsorship opportunities, and in-depth analytics to track event success. Moreover, EventMobi enhances attendee interaction and networking through customized mobile event apps, ensuring that every event is an engaging and connective experience for all participants.
Founded in 2012, Whova has emerged as a key player in event technology solutions, providing a comprehensive mobile event management app complemented by a suite of tools for event management and marketing. Recognized for its award-winning event app, Whova caters to a diverse array of users including event organizers, conference attendees, and non-profit management entities. The app is replete with features like personal agenda setting, interactive maps, document sharing, and offline accessibility, making it ideal for medium to large-scale events that prioritize networking and participant engagement. Significantly, Whova stands out in facilitating hybrid event formats, offering multi-language support and robust virtual engagement tools to serve a broad, diverse audience.
Founded in 2016 and based in Carrollton, Texas, with headquarters in Mississauga, Canada, vFairs specializes in virtual event platforms, catering to sectors like education, retail, healthcare, and telecommunication. The company offers a versatile platform for in-person, hybrid, and virtual events, gaining recognition for creating engaging, brand-consistent virtual environments. Key features include live streaming, active chat rooms, virtual booths, robust post-event analytics, and interactive tools like live chat, webinars, and forums. vFairs is particularly suited for medium to large companies in tech, education, and healthcare sectors, providing an ideal solution for event marketing and planning teams seeking visually rich and interactive virtual environments.
Diverse Packages for Different Needs: vFairs offers specialized packages for virtual, hybrid, and mobile events, including features like custom branding, analytics, and live support, with options for unlimited registrations and on-demand access.
Customization and Add-Ons: The platform allows customization with options for extra sessions, booths, and specific accessibility features, catering to unique event requirements and offering tailored solutions.
Stova, established from the merger of MeetingPlay, Aventri, and eventcore, is a prominent player in the event technology industry. Founded in 2021, the company is headquartered in Frederick, Maryland, USA. Stova offers a comprehensive suite of event technology solutions, designed to support events of various sizes and complexities. The company emphasizes a partnership-driven approach, working closely with clients to ensure the success of their events. Stova's commitment to integrating technology with customer service positions it as a versatile and reliable partner in event management.
Eventee began its journey in 2015 as a PR stunt to promote a digital agency. By 2019, the company had shifted its entire focus to developing Eventee, closing its digital agency. Eventee's headquarters are located in Brno, Czech Republic, with an additional office in New York, NY, USA. Eventee is a modern and user-friendly platform designed for organizing in-person, virtual, and hybrid events. The platform emphasizes ease of use and is geared towards enhancing attendee engagement. Eventee aims to streamline the event management process with its intuitive mobile and web apps, providing a seamless experience for both event organizers and participants.
6Connex is a prominent leader in the virtual events industry, known for its innovative and comprehensive virtual environment solutions. Founded in 2008 and headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, 6Connex has revolutionized the way organizations conduct virtual events, webinars, and training sessions. The company has established itself as a pioneer in providing scalable and secure virtual event platforms, catering to a global clientele across various sectors including technology, healthcare, finance, and education. 6Connex's platform is distinguished by its exceptional ability to create immersive virtual experiences, simulating the dynamism and interactivity of in-person events.
SpotMe, a cutting-edge event technology company, has been at the forefront of transforming the event industry for over 20 years. Founded in 2000 in Lausanne, Switzerland, SpotMe began as an innovative startup focusing on in-person event networking before transitioning into a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform in 2011. With headquarters still in Lausanne and additional offices in Chicago, New York, Sofia, and Singapore, SpotMe has grown into a global leader in the event management technology space. The company has developed a reputation for crafting comprehensive and engaging event experiences, integrating mobile and web-based platforms to cater to a wide range of event formats, including in-person, virtual, and hybrid events. SpotMe's mission revolves around helping clients build better relationships by delighting event attendees at scale.
Branded Mobile Event Apps:
SpotMe offers customizable mobile event apps, allowing full branding from the menu to icons. These apps can be published in the App Store or Google Play Store, enhancing brand footprint.
Personalized Participant Journey:
The platform provides a personalized experience for each attendee, including personalized event pages, session recommendations, and timely notifications.
Interactive Networking and Messaging:
SpotMe facilitates easy connections among event participants with features like participant matching, built-in video calls, and a fun updates feed.
Engagement Tools:
Includes interactive elements like polls, quizzes, word clouds, and Q&A sessions, designed to engage the audience and gather detailed insights from individual participants.
Customizable Event Templates:
SpotMe offers a range of curated event templates that can be customized to suit specific event goals, allowing organizers to create a hyper-personalized event experience.
Cvent stands out in the landscape of event management solutions as a distinguished provider, catering to a range of event formats including in-person, virtual, and hybrid, as well as webinars. The platform is celebrated for its extensive array of tools, encompassing engagement scoring, meeting approval, budgeting, and beyond, all of which converge to enable a seamless and efficient event planning experience. This comprehensive suite of features is designed to streamline the entire event management process, ensuring that every aspect, from initial planning to final execution, is managed with precision and ease.
Founded in 2019, Airmeet Inc. has rapidly established itself as an innovative player in the online event hosting space. Headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka, India, this Bengaluru-based company has revolutionized the way events are conducted online. Unlike traditional platforms that focus mainly on broadcasting content, Airmeet emphasizes interactive participant engagement. By offering high-definition video and audio powered by Agora.io, the platform enables real-time, high-quality video chats without the need for additional software downloads or subscriptions. Notably, Airmeet has positioned itself as a secure and privacy-conscious choice, adhering to GDPR compliance and implementing end-to-end encryption. This focus on security extends to private events, where participant authentication is mandatory, minimizing the risks of spam and bots.
Founded in 2011, Bizzabo is a renowned event technology company dedicated to empowering event marketers. It focuses on bringing people together to enhance event experiences. Bizzabo's Event Experience Operating System (OS) caters to event organizers and B2B marketing professionals, offering an end-to-end solution for various event management aspects. The platform is versatile, supporting a broad spectrum of events, including in-person events with efficient check-in and custom badge printing, studio-quality virtual events, seamless hybrid events, and engaging webinars, thus providing comprehensive solutions for diverse event needs.
Bizzabo's platform enhances attendee engagement with features like live polling, Q&A, and session feedback, allowing for a more interactive conference experience.
Attendees can curate their personal event journey with a fully interactive agenda, enabling them to tailor their conference experience to their interests.
The platform offers powerful networking tools, including the ability to search and sort connections, start 1:1 messages, and utilize Bizzabo’s SmartBadge™ for instant messaging with new contacts.
Bizzabo provides unique opportunities for sponsors and exhibitors, such as custom splash screens and special offers, along with data to measure ROI post-event through generated leads and analytics.
Generally speaking, an online conference lasts for at least one or even two days. Imagine if the theme is tedious, your audience would not have a prolonged attention span for the entire event. Therefore, having an appealing topic and content is of crucial significance.
For a start, creating a well-thought-out event agenda and logistics is pivotal. A typical conference includes opening ceremonies, presentations, lunch and dinner sessions as well as breaks. In order to stand out from your rivals, it is advisable to add more colours to your online conference. Small group discussions and networking sessions, for instance, can be held during the event.
Aside from the content, when deciding the theme, it is equally important to take the tagline into consideration. “Creating Customer Connections”, for example, is a good slogan for a corporate conference, as it is not only catchy but it also utilises parallelism to demonstrate the theme in both precise and concise ways.
Speaking of ways to deliver your messages, most of the speakers would consider speaking with some technical terms and jargon as well as presenting with appropriate body language and gestures.
However, none of the above-mentioned methods is as effective as leveraging data, graphics, animation and videos to visualise your ideas. Compared with solely articulating your thoughts, having a good visualisation helps to deepen your audience’s understanding of the content, thus enhancing their attention span and memory.
With online conferences, nowadays visualisation can be achieved and fully utilised in an easier way, as every participant can both clearly and closely view the visual elements on the online screen.
Audience engagement is another crucial aspect that we should in no way ignore in an online conference. For the sake of facilitating engagement, live and pre-event polling can be embedded in the online conference. Not only can the live polling create a room for interactivity, but the pre-event one can also boost the audience’s show-up rates.
Since it can make the audience feel that the event is catered to their needs and expectations, they will be prone to show up to the online event, due to relevant content.
In fact, we can further think of some creative ways to enhance engagement. A reward system, for instance, can be integrated into the online conference. Attendees will be given some points for joining the event on time and other activities such as polling. Those points can be used to exchange some prizes, thus fostering audience engagement.
Networking can be regarded as a vital means for attendees to interact with each other. During online conferences, although the original lunch or dinner session is cancelled, there can still be room for discussion. Gamification, for example, can be integrated into the online event so as to add more colors and a sense of entertainment for networking.
To be more specific, it is not difficult to hold a photo competition for different themes. During lunchtime, instead of having a break to temporarily end the event, it can be replaced by a photo-sharing session. Given that some people might cook at home or have meals at some upmarket restaurants, they can take a photo of their food and share it with fellow attendees.
The one who can gain the highest appreciation from others can gain a prize. By doing this, attendees can interact in a more relaxing and enjoyable way, unlike only following the traditional approach of exchanging exchange online name cards and having discussions with other audience members in the breakout room.
As the saying goes, “sharp tools make good work”. Finding a reputable online event technology service provider is a prerequisite for a successful online conference. Without having an event technology company to provide relevant services for the event organisers, it is impossible to bring the event from offline to online.
Among all event technology firms, some of them can provide 3D demonstration, live streaming and real-time interactive functions. Conversely, some companies’ services are limited to only creating an online space for holding a virtual conference with fewer diversities in the product’s features.
Apart from that, a stable platform that can enable thousands of attendees to join the event at the same time is also another factor that we should take into account. Of course, having a good reputation like those platforms that are highly recommended and appreciated by many customers is also worth considering.
All in all, it is hoped that we can all be cautious about the details of online event management. As long as we bear the aforementioned elements in mind when running an online event, it is believed that event organisers can avoid making some unnecessary mistakes, thus hosting a fabulous event.
If you want to host virtual events that are interactive, you need to ensure the events platform it is held on is well-equipped for interactions and engagement. When choosing the best virtual events platform for your event, ensure that it has tools and features that:
This may differ from event to event depending on the goals and objectives. However, some of the factors event organizers would usually evaluate include Key Performance Indicators relating to:
Measuring the engagement of a virtual event is important as it can give insights into how event organizers can improve on future events. Conducting live polls is one of the main ways to measure the engagement level of a virtual event. These polls will be able to show the participation and responses of attendees.
Some best practices you may apply when hosting an online conference include: