10 Biggest Event Website mistakes – Part I

1. Speed.

Test your site using Pingdom or another website testing site.

Example of a speed test result. This site needs optimising
Example of a speed test result. This site needs optimising

Areas that need improvement:

Page size = this is too large, ideally needs to be around 500Meg or lower. Also a Load time of 3.42 seconds is too high.

What can be done:

Review every image and external piece of media on the site and ensure they are optimised.

Example:

Another example - http://cjm-conference.co.uk/
Another example – http://cjm-conference.co.uk/

 

If you look at this image on the home page it can be reduced easily reduced from 177KB to

 

CJM-Slide-1
Origional file – 177kb
CJM-Slide-1-28k
Optimised file – 28kb

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A good example  this site went from faster than 48% of all sites to faster than 69% of all sites by reducing the filesize of the slider photographs:

Screen Shot 2015-03-02 at 20.55.43

2. All event websites should be responsive. That is to say, the look of the site should adapt and change depending on the device you are look at them on – mobile, desktop or tablet.

rant-screen
Screen Version
rant-mobile
Mobile site

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are a handful of event websites I have found that are not responsive:

3. Ensure there is ALT text on all images and make this keyword rich.

When adding ALT text, avoid alt text like “Book Now”. Use instead “Book not for the Big Event, 21st June 2015”. For some great advice on CTA text (and therefore good SEO keyword rich alt text, please read https://www.linkedin.com/groups/CTA-text-is-vital-effective-4709170.S.5943668555064053761?trk=groups_most_recent-0-b-ttl&goback=%2Egmr_4709170.

4. Speaker photos are one of the most important element to any conference’s promotional material.

Improve the layout with Roll over and effects:

Bad example of speaker layout: http://cablecongress.com/2015-speakers/

Better example with links to speaker biogs and sessions they are talking at: http://www.festivalofgenomics.com/event-details/who-is-speaking/

 

More to follow….

 

 

 

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