Creating Engagement Before, During and After a Flagship Event

In early 2024, we won the tender to manage Nexus‘s fifth anniversary Gala Dinner.

Established in 2019 within the University of Leeds, Nexus serves as a powerful catalyst for innovation and entrepreneurial growth. This community supports impactful ventures, ranging from University spin-outs to established SMEs. Examples include Vet-AI, revolutionising animal health with its predictive SaaS platform, and Little Journey, enhancing children’s clinical experiences through interactive content.

The recent Anniversary Dinner, organised by HB2B and the Nexus events team, beautifully showcased the significant partnerships and groundbreaking innovation cultivated within its membership, exceeding all expectations.

For the event, we needed a central hub for event information, from keynote speakers to guest seating. To elevate the event while ensuring practicality, we designed a bespoke web app for Nexus that delivered all this and more.

Aims for the Web App

The brief was simple, create a web app that answers all our guests’ questions before they even ask them.

Central to the web app’s design was the aim to significantly reduce the volume of guest queries leading up to and during the event. This strategic efficiency empowered our event team to dedicate their attention to the smooth running of the anniversary celebration, rather than being tied up with repetitive questions. Furthermore, it allowed guests to fully immerse themselves in conversation, embodying Nexus’s belief that ‘innovation starts with conversation’. To achieve this, the web app offered extensive pre-event information, including:

Full agenda of the evening
The evening’s host & keynote speaker
Fireside chat speakers
Event sponsors
Seating plan (with a searchable function)
Menu (Meat or Vegetarian option)
Info & FAQs – including an interactive Google map

The Challenge

The web app was not an initial part of the tender pitch, but as we were working on the event marketing communications, we realised a lot of crucial information was scattered across multiple platforms, from multiple email communications to social media posts.

This fragmented landscape created a potential for attendee confusion, increased administrative overhead, and a missed opportunity to deliver a cohesive and engaging event experience. We recognised the need to centralise this information into a user-friendly hub.

B2B Event Management

Our Solution: Developing a User-Centric Web App

Recognising the need for a unified information source, we proposed the development of a user-centric web application.

Utilising the Glide platform, we were able to offer several benefits from a UI/UX perspective, making this the perfect choice for an event web app, without code. The out-of-the box platform employs tab-based navigation, a familiar and comfortable pattern for most users. This made it easy for guests to understand the app’s structure and find the information they needed.

The nature of a web app also means that the tech is device and operating system agnostic, meaning anyone can access from anywhere on anything without the need to download anything and be served with a beautifully responsive interface, no matter how they’ve accessed it.

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Bringing the Web app to Life

Leveraging the established branding guidelines, we meticulously aligned the visual design of the web app to ensure a seamless brand experience.

This involved not only adopting the core colour palettes, typography, and logo usage but also creatively adapting these elements for specific event components.

For instance, the event’s visual identity was translated into engaging agenda creatives, providing a clear and aesthetically pleasing overview of the event schedule. Similarly, speaker headshot designs were thoughtfully crafted to maintain consistency and professionalism while injecting subtle brand personality.

This holistic approach ensured that every touchpoint, from navigating the app to viewing speaker profiles, reinforced the event’s identity and provided a cohesive and polished experience for attendees.

The Nexus Anniversary Dinner was held between from 6pm on Friday 15th November 2024 at New Dock Hall in Leeds city centre, these results are from the evening of the event. Iphone mock up of nexus app

Measuring the Success

0 Users on the app on the day of the event

0 App page views

0 Seconds of average engagement time per app user

For Nexus’s 5th Anniversary Dinner, the app proved to be an invaluable asset. It streamlined everything from the evening’s agenda and seating arrangements to providing real-time event information. The feedback from our attendees was overwhelmingly positive, with many commenting on how user-friendly and informative it was. It truly enhanced the overall experience and contributed significantly to the evening’s success. We were thoroughly impressed with its capabilities.

Alan Gallacher, Senior Strategic Events Manager at Nexus

Man and woman dancing at nexus anniversary dinner

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