How do you test and evaluate your event design?

1 Define your objectives

Before you start testing and evaluating your event design, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how you will measure it. Your objectives should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). For example, you might want to increase attendance, engagement, satisfaction, awareness, or sales. You should also identify your target audience, their preferences, needs, and pain points, and how your event design can address them.

2 Conduct pre-event testing

Pre-event testing is a way of validating your event design before the actual event takes place. It can help you identify potential issues, gaps, or improvements that can enhance your event's quality and impact. You can use various methods and tools for pre-event testing, such as mock-ups that involve creating a scaled-down or digital version of your event design and testing it with a small group of stakeholders. Surveys can also be sent out online or offline to your target audience or potential attendees to gain their expectations, preferences, and opinions on your event design. Additionally, focus groups can be held with a representative sample of your target audience or potential attendees to present your event design and ask them questions about their reactions, feelings, and suggestions. These tools can be used to conduct online or offline pre-event testing.

3 Collect post-event feedback

Post-event feedback is a way of evaluating your event design after the event has taken place. It can help you measure your outcomes, performance, and impact, as well as learn from your successes and failures. To do this, you can use surveys, interviews, and analytics. Surveys can be sent out online or offline to ask attendees about their experience, satisfaction, and feedback on your event design. Interviews can be conducted one-on-one or in groups to ask open-ended questions about their thoughts, feelings, and suggestions. Lastly, analytics can track and analyze data related to attendance, engagement, social media mentions, website traffic, leads, conversions, or sales. There are many tools such as SurveyMonkey, Google Forms, Eventbrite Reports, Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics that can help you create and distribute surveys or collect and visualize data.

4 Compare and improve

The final step of testing and evaluating your event design is to compare your results with your objectives and identify areas of improvement. You can use tools like SWOT analysis, SMART criteria, or KPIs to assess your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and set new goals and actions for your future events. You can also benchmark your results with industry standards, best practices, or competitors to see how you stand out or lag behind. By comparing and improving your event design, you can ensure that you deliver memorable and meaningful events that meet your and your audience's needs and expectations.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?