Whatever the sector, a virtual event means that everyone can meet up online, rather than congregating in one location.
AppyFair’s features mean that interactions at your virtual event aren’t so different to in-person events:
- Exhibitor booths
- Meeting rooms
- Public forums for chatting and sharing content
- Session rooms
What’s more, our virtual events boast many benefits:
- Low carbon footprint
- Less waste
- Reduced costs (no expensive logistics, transportation, accommodation or food)
- Save Time (organizing a virtual event requires less time and less hands on deck)
- Ease of use
- Our statistics tell it all and in real-time
You will!
Thanks to AppyFair’s user-friendly back office, you are in complete control of your event! Our team will help you with the initial set up, then the floor is yours.
Of course, your project manager will always be available for questions and assistance you may need along the way.
Just like a face-to-face event, the preparation time depends on a lot of variables: the topic, the contents, your communications plan and sales strategy, to name a few.
We recommend that you schedule your first meeting with our team 60 to 90 days before the date of your event.
As we want to provide exceptional support and quality to our clients, we will run a maximum of 5 events on one day, so if you have a specific date in mind, it’s best to let us know as soon as possible so that we can ensure availability.
Some events need to be planned up to 6 months in advance (if they have a big communications strategy, a longer sales funnel for exhibitors, multiple conferences, etc.). Others only take 3-4 weeks to prepare!
Our advice? Don’t underestimate this preparation phase. Just because it’s virtual doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take your time! Make the most of having a fantastic tool to optimize your communications and sales, and create a buzz around the event.
Well, again, it depends on your event!
Some can be prepared by one person part-time, in 3 or 4 weeks, whereas others will need more people involved to work on the communications tools, to create exhibitor content, support the exhibitors and plan the sessions.
Generally, our clients have one person working full-time over a few weeks on their events.
Above all, like any face-to-face event, organizing a virtual fair requires organization!
Other than that, you don’t need any technical skills. Anyone who is at ease on a computer and the internet will be an AppyFair pro in no time!
This can be a tough decision, as you want to find the right balance to keep your attendees engaged, your exhibitors happy while making the most of the platform.
As a rule of thumb, we recommend 1 day for every 5000 sign-ups. If you have a lot of exhibitors, or a full session agenda, then this can be adapted to suit your event.
Our top tip: organizers often plan for a longer event because they think their exhibitors will be happier, but it could have the opposite effect if there are fewer attendees than expected. It is better to have 1 intense day, than 5 quiet days!
AppyFair comes with 3 spaces for you to prepare a great virtual event:
- the event’s website: an invaluable communications tool, and also where your attendees can register for the event and book meetings
- the event itself: a space where attendees can interact and access your content libraries during the event
- the back-office: this organizers-only space gives you the all the behind the scenes power to edit and run the event, just the way you want it!
But above all, AppyFair has a passionate team who can’t wait to help you prepare an amazing event!
Data can be hosted either in the United States or in Europe.
Today, an AppyFair event can welcome up to 1000 active users at any one time.
That said, we’re constantly upgrading our platform so we will soon be able to extend this capacity. Watch this space!
As soon as the event is live, visitors who are logged into the event’s website will see a button inviting them to connect to the event.
In our experience, registrations shouldn’t be opened too early, as it can lead to a high drop-out rate. That said, don’t start it too late either!
What really makes the difference is your communications strategy: effective communications will lead to quality user sign ups. You can do much better than a keyword campaign 1 week before the event!
Build a multi-channel communications plan which targets attendees who will hold a genuine interest in your content. With that in mind, we recommend you open registrations about 3-4 weeks before your event.
It’s up to you! AppyFair provides a tool to create and customize a form so that you can select the information you want to receive from your attendees when they register.
You can choose which fields should be mandatory and which should be optional, and whether the information provided should be private or public (visible to other event guests).
You can also request further information post-registration from different audience segments (i.e. just attendees or just exhibitors).
Please note: you, the organizer, are the person responsible for processing personal data and so must apply your privacy policy and comply with the regulations (the information shared across attendees, the length of time the data is kept etc).
Absolutely! Legally, as the organizer you are responsible for the control of the data you collect. AppyFair makes it easy for you to inform your attendees of this process, just like you would on your own website.
If you want consent for specifics from the participants upon registration, you can customize the phrasing of your consent agreement in the back office.
For our part, we systematically ask participants to accept the AppyFair terms of use.
Finally, you can make any data anonymous thanks directly to the AppyFair back office. This tool gives you the power to delete all personal data when you deem it appropriate in accordance with your privacy policy.
From your back office, you have access to information about how many users have registered for your event and who is connected to the platform.
You can also export a CSV file with all the information about your attendees, their assigned role and their activity at the event.
For now, we have not integrated an online payment solution to request payment from attendees to register for an event. We would consider having an integration discussion with you depending on our roadmap backlog.
Currently, you can redirect registrants to an online ticketing solution such as Eventbrite, RegFox or many others to allow people to register, then use our import tool to upload the list into our platform.
Yes, just like at an in-person tradeshow, exhibitors enjoy early access to the event! This gives them time to familiarize themselves with the platform, double check the content available at their booth and get ready to meet the attendees!
Say you’ve implemented a successful communications strategy which has resulted in 1000 sign-ups… Congratulations! But how many will actually come on the D-day?
Quite simply, it all depends on the ‘quality’ of these registrations. As a general rule, we see a return rate (real visits) of about 40%, or in the scenario of 1000 registrations, 400 real visitors.
You can improve on this stat by being proactive! On the days leading up to the event, you can have reminder emails scheduled and sent from the AppyFair backoffice. If done right, these reminders can see an help cause an uplift between 50% and 60% or more!
As soon as the event is set up, with the rooms created and the content uploaded, anyone who has registered for the event can see a teaser of the information on the event’s website, with the rest of the content revealed when the event opens its virtual doors.
Once logged in on the website, visitors can also pre-register for the conferences and book meetings with exhibitors.
Finally, they will be able to (and should be encouraged too!) complete their profile with a photo, and, if applicable, other information such as their CV or full contact details. This will help attendees to maximize the potential of their visit.
Like everyone else via the event’s website!
Once registered, you – the organizer – will be able to assign them to their booth or their session from the event’s back office.
Yes, AppyFair is it completely international. We even adapt to all the different time zones that event attendees are in!
From the back office, you can choose to offer only one or several languages. The exhibitors will then also be able to post their content in several languages. The display language for attendees will depend on their browser settings.
We also adjust schedules according to time zones. An appointment made at 1pm for a British user will be displayed at 8am in the schedule of a visitor based in Montreal!
Yes, the back office includes a live tracking tool which means that the organizer can see who is connected, and when (as well as who isn’t connected!).
You can also take a snapshot at any given time to check who is present and their status: busy, available, on a video call.
As the organizer, that’s up to you! Just check the relevant box in your back office to give exhibitors early access (or not) to their booth before the event opens.
You can also decide if they will be able to upload content, or if this feature is exclusively for organizers.
The same goes for the creation of the 3D model of the exhibitor booth: you can either let your exhibitors play with our online modeling tool or manage everything yourself!
Depending on the options selected in the back office, exhibitors can create their own booths, or else this task remains the job of the organizers. Either way, we’ve built an interactive editing tool has been created especially for this, so booths can be built in just a few clicks!
For more information on editing your stand and premium rendering, visit this page.
How can I follow up with attendees who haven’t logged in yet to remind them to connect to the event?
From the AppyFair back office, you can export a CSV file which includes the contact information of users who have signed up but not yet connected to the event.
This CSV file can easily be integrated into a template for email or SMS reminders, via your preferred tool, and can be used to send a reminder at lunchtime, for example.
You can book a meeting by following 4 simple steps:
- From the back office, select window of time when meetings can take place, and customize the booking confirmation emails for attendees and exhibitors
- Exhibitors can then log in and enter their availability for meetings within the allocated timeframe
- Attendees can book meetings via the event website with the exhibitors of their choice
- Attendees and exhibitors each receive a confirmation email with the option to add the meeting to their personal calendar (and it is automatically added to their AppyFair calendar)
Both parties will also receive a reminder notification 5 minutes before the meeting is scheduled to start.
Yes!
You can program messages that will be pushed to users at the time of your choice. These can be used to signal the start of a talk, or to highlight a particular sponsor, for example. These messages can include links directly to an exhibitor’s booth or to a specific session.
These messages can be viewed once or remain in the users’ notification history: it’s up to you.
Finally, you can filter these messages according to the users’ roles (organizers only, exhibitors, speakers, attendees, moderators).
If you’ve forgotten to schedule a notification, no problem, you can also send an instant public message whenever you want during the event!
Yes, in your back office you will see a tool for sending public messages, either as instant notifications, or messages that have been scheduled in advance.
You can also send group messages to a segment of your users (i.e. just exhibitors, speakers, moderators, attendees, or organizers). What’s more, your message can include links to encourage people to directly navigate to other areas of the event.
These messages can be viewed once or remain in the notification history of each user: it’s up to you, the organizer!
Log in problems do happen, but they can be easily resolved! The 2 most common reasons for users being unable to connect are:
- They’ve forgotten or misspelled their password, and have an email firewall or other anti-spam filter which means they aren’t receiving the email to reset their password
- When they first created their account, they should have received an email with a link to activate the account. It could be that they didn’t follow this link – either because they never received the email or simply forgot.
Either way, the organizer can save the day! From the back office you’ll be able to set up a temporary password for the user to be able to log in, and then change to the password of their choice. You also have the option to manually activate an account, if needed.
The T&Cs include a description of behaviour that can lead to an attendee being excluded from an event, such as the use of abusive or discriminatory language.
If a user doesn’t comply with these terms, the organizer has the responsibility and the means to ban a user from their event.
In a public chat forum, the moderators can also hide unwanted or inappropriate messages, or ban a user from a particular room if their messages do not comply with the terms of use.
Yes, you can access a complete statistic tracking tool in the back office, including tables and graphs, whenever you wish to do so, over the time period of your choice.
Yes, technical support is included as a standard with AppyFair during French office hours (that’s Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm – GMT+2).
Outside of these hours, you can add the presence of a certified developer (billed service).
A maximum attendee number was defined when the order was taken, and our hardware architecture was adjusted accordingly.
If slowdowns are observed on the platform for one reason or another, such as an extreme overage of attendees, our team can set up a waiting room, limiting connections for a given time until the platform is brought back to normal speed.
Your visitor limit was established with your AppyFair account manager to ensure that you weren’t paying over the odds for your project.
If ever the number of visitors surpasses this limit, the higher gauge will automatically kick in, and the billing would be adjusted accordingly with a flat fee of £185 excluding VAT.