Choosing A Virtual Event Provider

Virtual events have become a very popular choice for event managers as an interim solution to the travel and socialisation restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic. For many event managers, it is an entirely brand-new world and even for those who are not new to virtual events, you’re fighting for virtual time against all the millions of video calls happening every day.

So, what can you do to make sure your event is the best possible experience for your delegates and your speakers? You can choose an experienced virtual events provider to support you.

Every great virtual event needs the following

• Reliable, easy to use platform
• Audio-visual equipment for speakers
• Audience engagement
• Registration management
• Technical support for delegates

All of the above takes time and can be difficult to master alone. Today I’d like to take you through why you should choose a virtual events solution provider to assist with your virtual events.

1: Virtual Events Platform

This is the foundation of your event. There are many different virtual event platforms out there. From Zoom to Webex, but what you will find is that some organizations don’t allow a particular platform. If your delegate list is filled with these organizations, then you won’t have a great attendance rate and your stakeholders will not be happy.

A good virtual events solution provider will include an event platform that has full cross-platform capability which means that delegates can join from whatever platform they are most comfortable with and that is allowed within their organization.

In addition to being able to join from anywhere, delegates will want the platform to be reliable. I’m sure you have experienced it when you’re attending a virtual event and the app freezes or fails to load and you know your internet connection is stable. It can be very frustrating so a reliable and robust platform is essential.

Easy to use and intuitive are another two words you should associate with your virtual events platform provider. You’ll never hear a delegate compliment you on an overly complex and hard to navigate offering.

2: Audio Visual Equipment for Speakers

To really make your event stand out, invest in some audio-visual equipment for your speakers. Not only will they be seen and heard better, but they will feel more professional and energised by setting up the equipment and knowing that they are being supported and not left to fend for themselves. To step it up again, you could hire a small meeting room in the speaker’s home location and set that up as a studio with green screens, lighting, and more. This may even allow the speakers to feel like they are on stage and give them room to move around which will, in turn, keep the delegates’ attention better.

A good virtual events provider will be able to assist you with not only the equipment but also the logistics of getting to the speaker and assisting with set up.

3: Audience Engagement

Audience engagement is essential at a live event and even more so during a virtual event. This is for two reasons. It is easy to get distracted when you’re sitting at a computer watching an event and no one is checking to see if you are listening. And it is easy for a speaker to lose momentum when they aren’t getting instant feedback from their audience. We’ve written a whole blog post on what to do to keep your audience engaged so you can check that out here.

A good virtual events provider will help you to incorporate and facilitate your audience engagement efforts and encourage interaction from the attendees.

4: Registration Management

Managing the registration of delegates and responding to delegate queries is a time-consuming task and can take you away from more important items such as marketing your virtual event and generating more interest and registrations.

A good virtual events provider will provide registration management and delegate support coming up to and during the event. They will communicate to the delegates at certain times prior to the event to ensure attendance and after the event to get any feedback for improvements.

5: Technical Support During the Event

It is inevitable that a small number of delegates or speakers may have some technical difficulties during an event. This could be that a particular page isn’t loading, or a video stream has frozen, or it could be that their own computer has firewalls that won’t allow viewing of the event. These are all issues that require someone very familiar with these potential technical issues to get the delegates or speakers back up and running with the event as quickly and painlessly as possible.

A good virtual events provider with ensure that technical support is on hand to deal with these queries before and during the event.

So, when you go looking for a supplier for your next virtual event make sure to look for these key services and we hope that you’ll bring venuesworld.com into the mix as we’d love to demonstrate our comprehensive virtual events solution to you.