Have you finished your event and there’s a nagging feeling that there’s a handful of tasks you haven’t closed off? Here’s 7 things that I think everyone should consider after your event has finished.
We love events, right? They bring people together. Everyone learns something new. They are fun and exciting.
But they can be hard work too. Planning, programming, permits, people… and so many individual tasks that come together to create a smooth event.
No stranger to events, Regional Business Toolkit has supported events across Victoria for since 2014. From wedding expos, to conferences, agricultural shows, fun runs, garden festivals and more. Caolan is also a director of a not-for-profit event company running some of Victoria’s premier events.
In that time, there’s something we’ve noticed.
People run out of steam after an event, and don’t update their website.
So if you’re running (or have run) an event and you’re wondering what kind of things you should be updating – here’s a handy list of 7 things that I think you should consider doing to your website after your event.
7 things you should do on your website after an event
Say thank you
If you only do one thing, just say thanks.
This is a great opportunity to get some new content on your website by publishing a blog post, or creating a stand alone page (or just putting a paragraph of text on your homepage).
But more importantly it’s a critical opportunity to acknowledge all the attendees, sponsors, and stakeholders that came to your event.
Don’t forget to recognise the staff, volunteers, presenters and suppliers that all worked behind the scenes to make the event a smooth running success.
I suspect that there were weeks or months of planning that went into your event, and people probably paid a significant amount of pocket change to attend. Make your appreciation just as significant, whatever that looks like for you.
Encourage feedback
The week after your event is the perfect time to ask for feedback and suggestions for next time. Your event is still fresh in their minds and it’s still fresh in yours.
Create a link on your website to your preferred feedback mechanism. That might be:
- A form on your website (I love Gravity Forms for this)
- A Survey Monkey form
- A Google Form
- A dedicated feedback@ email address
- Someone’s phone number
Provide links to useful information
People arrive on your website after the event for a couple of reasons. Either:
- they loved the event and they are curious to know “what next”, or
- they got their dates wrong and turned up a week too late. 😮
Either way, you can help them by providing of additional information.
Consider including:
- Copies of presentations (slides, videos, etc)
- Links to speakers, musicians, projects, launches, or other key elements that were part of the event
- Link to relevant websites or other events in your space
- Provide an event summary with the most popular “key take aways” from the event
Update the event details on the website
Have you ever looked at a website and realised the event content was two years out of date? I have. And it makes the website look forgotten and forlorn.
Making updates to your content doesn’t have to be a huge task.
Consider hiding or deleting some content (like the schedule, or bios), or making a few tweaks to the text and adding next year’s dates. Simply changing the tone of the language from “will run” to “did run” might be enough.
Look forward
You’ll know that the content on your website goes through several different event phases.
Now that your event has concluded, you are already in the ‘lead up’ phase for your next event.
This is a great time to start building anticipation, securing sponsorship, getting speakers, and building a database or community of people who want to be kept in the loop.
At the very least post a “save the date” message to your website to create some forward momentum.
Remove links to booking and registration sites, etc
Perhaps this is part of the “update event details” task above. But we’ve seen it often enough that it deserves it’s own section.
Remove booking/registration links on your website!
It happens. People arrive on a website 3 weeks after an event, find a registration form, and try to book. It’s generally just a silly mistake and they didn’t realise the event was done and dusted.
If you remove the links or registration forms you save everyone any embarassement or additional work.
Continue the conversation
If your event ran as well as I hope it did, then people will be talking about it for weeks afterward.
Perhaps you’ve created a Facebook Group where people can continue the conversation, or there could be a regular meetup in town. Maybe it’s just a matter or promiting your Facebook or Instagram page where people can connect.
Either way, use your website to help bring those conversations together, and turn your event from a “once-and-done” to a “step-in-the-journey” by growing a community of people chatting together.
[A BONUS] Craft a Report for your Sponsors
You’ve finished your event, and you’ve already poured through your Google Analytics. You can see a huge spike in website visitors, and worked out which pages were most popular, which channels drove the most traffic, etc.
But the thing I see almost no one doing is crafting a dedicated report for their sponsors.
Sponsors work with you for a variety fo reasons. Perhaps they want access to your audience, or they want some positive PR, or they really support your cause. But traditionally your event sponsors are buying ‘eyeballs’ from you in some way, and at the end of the day someone will want to know if they should continue to invest in your event next time.
Use your Google Analytics to get data like:
- How many people visited your website in the lead up to the event
- How many people viewed sponsor logos or sponsored editorial
- Click throughs to sponsor websites or campaigns
- Audience demographics (who your website visitors were)
- Event outcomes such as the number of people who pledged support for a cause
- and more.
If you bundle this with a report of your offline activities then you’ve have a some great data. Now you can have the “Thanks for sponsoring us this year, this is what we did…” conversation and lead into getting a commitment for next year. 😜
Wrap up
Ok. So now you have 7 things to consider doing after your event (or 8 if you include the bonus).
If you do 2-3 of these things you’ll be in front of 80% of the other events we’ve seen. And if you do all 7 things after your event then you and your team are probably kicking goals in lots of other ways too.
Get support with your event
As you can see most tasks are easy to do, and all of them can be prepared ahead of time. But let’s face it… you are probably spinning another 73 plates right now wrapping up your last event or preparing for the next one.
If you need a hand implementing any of the items above, or if you’d like the opportunity to work with us directly, then click here to schedule a quick call to learn a little more about your event.
