The client

Knowledge and Networking (K&N) is a £225mn division of Informa plc that runs 2,000+ multilingual conferences, webinars and training events a year with over with 150,000 attendees in more than 70 countries.

The challenge

For the organisation:
‍With 200+ events running on different technology platforms, the branding design and experience of the event websites was inconsistent.
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For the staff:
With a huge team of people creating events (managers, event producers, marketing, sales, operations) and websites that need to be up to date, the content was constantly changing.

With only a small team of developers to make changes to all of the event sites, productivity levels were obviously suffering.

For event attendees:
With content often out of date, such as the speaker list or agenda times, the users of the website were often left confused.
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Couple this with an overly-complicated sales set up that made users prefer to call the customer services team to purchase tickets rather than go through the online experience. The overall look and feel of these websites was in need of some serious love.

Life cycle of an event website

9-12 Months before the event
Update event website from last year.
Thanks to all who attended and upload event content such as highlights, talks speeches, photos and videos.

6-9 Months before the event
Create the value proposition for the event. Set event dates and location.

Upload first draft of the event agenda including topics.

4-6 Months before the event
The site becomes richer, removing last years content and adding this year's.

Upload second draft of the agenda including topics and streams.

Upload the speaker and sponsor profiles including profile photos/logos and biographies.

1-3 Months before the event
Finalise the agenda, streams, topics and session times and session information.
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Finalise all speakers and sponsors. Finalise all profiles including profile photos/logos and biographies.

During the event
During the event the website is largely untouched except for some minor updates to agenda changes or speaker cancellations.

Project set up

Weekly sprints
Thursday:
Deploy to the live environment.
Planning session.

Friday:
Business as usual.
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Monday:
Business as usual.
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Tuesday:
Lunch-time, cut-off for anything going to be deployed live to stop the rush, putting people under pressure and reduce the chances of deploying faulty code.
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Wednesday:
Showcase preparation, showcase and retrospective.
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Contact with the staff
After the first few weeks of the project, we relocated our whole design and development team to be sitting with a large group of the event production teams. This allowed for daily contact with the people who know these events best and would be using whatever solution we created.

Weekly showcases were open to anyone who wanted to attend in person or via conference call. All showcases were recorded and emailed out with the agenda of what was to be covered.

This ensured we were fully transparent in our working practices and always available should anyone have any questions or feedback.
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User testing
A room in a user testing company was set up with microfones, cameras, screen recorders and anything else necessary. This was put to use throughout the whole project to test the websites and the admin system.
Ad hoc/guerilla testing was also very common as the users of the admin sat next to our desks and designs were always shared and tested.

Event attendance
With a list of all the events happening on a board in front of the team. We often suited and booted and went out to talk to the attendees. This was extremely helpful for testing designs, features and helping to define the next steps to take.

CORE

The event management tool
Putting the power back in the hands of the people!

Core was designed, tested and built hand-in-hand with the production teams. Interviews, requirements gathering and user testing sessions with the teams in London, America, Germany and Australia ensured we were always working in the right direction.

The initial idea was to create a set of templates for the events. As the events vary greatly in content, and layouts change over time depending on the life cycle of the event, it was decided that a modular design would suit better, giving the production teams more flexibility.

When the project was complete, the creation of an event website went from needing a development team to create a site and make any edits, to allowing the event production teams create a site and have it live in only a few hours, without the need of a development team to launch or maintain the websites. WIN!

Complete control
Role based access giving those in charge full control and access to all that’s important.

Module based layout
Drag and drop functionality allowed production teams to adapt their websites when necessary.

Databases
Speaker and exhibitor databases to allow producers to share profiles across events.

eCommerce
With a researched, designed, tested and validated user journey, online sales increased by 300%.

Online sales up 300%

Out with the old...
The old sales platform was very rigid and forced producers to create every combination of products and sell them as packages. This left customers very confused and unsure of what they were trying to purchase.

Calls to customer service were costing the company a lot and they knew they needed to fix this problem and streamline their online purchasing experience.

‍In with the new...
After lots of plan, do, check, act a new design was created and tested with the production teams and customers.

This sought to split up products, allowing the user to see everything as single items and add and remove the products they wanted such as training days or additional summits.

This design also allowed the set-up of discounts for early bird prices, group discounts, package discounts for groups of products and discount codes.

Following the launch of the new design, online sales increased 300%.

The outcomes

Online sales increased 300%

Time on site increased 40%

Bounce rate decreased 48%

Minimum viable product of CORE delivered in 4 months

A website can be created and pushed live in a few hours without the need for any development team to launch or maintain any aspects

Site updates in a matter of moments

Increased event attendance

£200,000 operation savings

Share prices increased by 8% between November 2015-2016

Achieved £6m in sales within the first 5 months of their platform going live
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The project is also being recognised by the business world, having reached the final in four industry awards within digital design, branding and consulting.

Online bookings up 300%