The best Virtual Expos will be built on strong foundations of Design and great Content. Technology will just be infrastructure provider. [Part 2/2]

Disclaimer: User and Visitor used interchangeably. Male gender used as generic, to represent all genders.

Virtual Exhibitions. Cloud Expos. Digital Exhibitions. E-Expos. Online trade shows. By whatever name you may call them, they have been around for close to two decades. But it's only now, realizing the new reality forced upon us by Covid-19 led lock downs and the need for social distancing, that leaders in the Exhibitions industry are not only willing but eager to embrace them.

Let's leave our cynicism out and stop wondering about why they didn't think of virtualization of their platform earlier. These are times for hard choices and most hard choices move us forward. That's why I believe the already mature Exhibitions industry has an opportunity now to make a massive jump to learn again and become more sophisticated.

Conferences are relatively simpler.

It's easy to draw parallels with how conferences have aggressively embraced webinar and video conferencing platforms to go digital. Although products like Skype, Webex, GoToMeeting, Facetime, Google Hangout, GoToWebinar, Join.me, Teamviewer have been around for a while, barely 7-year old Zoom had changed the world in a matter of months [Zoom’s DAU - daily average users- number has reportedly risen from about 10 million in December 2019 to about 300 million in April 2020]. Many conferences have moved into Zoom and other webinar and web conference platforms with relative ease.

Will the transition for Exhibitions be equally easy?

I doubt. While both Exhibitions and Conferences are many-to-many interaction events, the dynamism and complexity of Exhibitions are different at multiple levels. Attendees come to conferences primarily to listen to expert speakers. Meeting fellow attendees is a bonus. By nature, this allows web conferences to deliver on its promise of knowledge, digitally.

A distinguishing feature of exhibitions though is the emphasis on experience and goal multiplicity. To achieve their goals, visitors behave differently. This alone makes their end experiences heterogeneous, which impact their decisions to visit again. This is why, the role of the exhibition producer i.e. the Organizer is pivotal. They are not just infrastructure providers; they are the curators of the experience the visitor leaves with and retains.

How will the Organizers transition to a world that includes a digital platform?

As I wrote in the part 1 of this article, most organizers are busy evaluating technology platforms to set up a virtual show. Seeing the opportunity, many companies - digital marketing agencies, software development firms, even event management companies - are jumping into the fray and are either claiming to have a ready solution or promising to build one quickly. Online conference software solutions are readying themselves for digital exhibitions, by adding a few features and refining their UI a little.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with that. Buyers in every business, when they have a sudden problem, must evaluate available solutions rapidly, in order to get off the ground without delay. That's how companies maintain agility.

However, I see there is a fallacy of speed involved here. If we drive with great speed without a map, we will cover many miles. But we may reach nowhere.

Great products - physical or digital - have the User at the center

In the context of an exhibition, the Exhibitor is the customer, the one who pays money and the Visitor is the user, the one who makes paying that money worthwhile. It is important not to lose sight of this when designing the digital experience.

In this part, I will share my thoughts from the Visitor’s perspective as he is the one that is first among equals in this complex system. In the subsequent article, I will talk about the Exhibitor’s perspective.

Since most visitors have no real experience with cloud exhibitions, they really won’t know what to expect from one. They may make some assumptions, but they really wont know until they visit or experience one. In fact, their assumptions may shape their expectation and the difference between their expectation and their experience may determine how they would react to subsequent invitations to virtual shows.

Since most organizers don’t have experience with digital expo either and the available technology platforms are largely untested, organizers have an excellent opportunity to plan ground up and set up something that truly resonates with visitors.

That’s why designing the digital experience is more important than choosing the technology solution. Make no mistake, I am not saying that the technology solution isn’t important, because it is.

But technology in this space is quite standard. There is no rocket science in banners, walls, video, webinar, master class, hand raise, live or non-live chat, video call, Q&A, chatbots, 3D walkthrough of the show floor, avatars, 3D booth views, 3D models of products, product launches, demo, web-VR, AR, live streaming on social channels, twitter stream, virtual briefcase, high fives and so on. The right visitor experience design will help us decide which of these will create value for the visitor and on one hand help him achieve his goal, and on the other deliver the magic and charm of the physical show he is used to. Bad design will make the technology solution deliver frustration at scale. Like any product, technology or otherwise, more features usually means less simplicity, less focus, less usefulness and more confusion.

Here are the key decisions the digital experience designer in the Organizer company needs to take.

A. Why would the Visitor bother?

Visitors come to a physical expo partly in order to be able to see many products, solutions and speak to sales, technical and management people from many companies at one place and to be able to quick comparison in a time compressed space. The alternative for them is to visit the plants and labs of all those exhibiting companies and you know how long that may take and how expensive it may become.

On the web, many exhibitors may already have a well designed website, which may give an opportunity of a better experience to the visitor, even if it's from one exhibitor at a time. If they want to see more companies at one place, they may go to Alibaba, IndiaMart or other b2b marketplaces.

Many visitors may not either be very tech savvy. Some may just not be comfortable looking at a screen for a long time.

What compelling proposition can we offer to make it worth their while? How can our design overcome their hesitation and discomfort?

B. Augment; not just replicate

This is the approximate anatomy of a physical show, designed to attract and keep the Visitor inside the exhibition hall in comfort, but long enough:

1. Infrastructure - space, location, electrical, plumbing, carpets, drayage, meeting rooms, waiting areas, Food court, toilets, sitting areas.
2. Exhibitor content - booth design, products and discussion areas inside the booth, the number and kind of people at the booth entrance and inside, marketing collateral.
3. Organizer content - Matchmaking/ Buyer-seller meetings, networking sessions, knowledge sessions, innovation zones, awards
4. Promotion and Visitor attraction - VisProm [e-mail, sem, display, OOH, print, radio]
5. Traffic management - Pre-registration, badging, onsite registration, opening/closing time, entry and exit points

Evidently, we don't need to replicate all. But which ones should we? What should we drop? What should we augment to bring out the best digital experience?

C. 3 days, 365 days or something in between?

The natural and human friendly restriction of the physical exhibition also makes life simple. It’s three days and eight hours each day. Then relaxing or connecting after hours, off floor.

As the internet defies time and space as non-essential constraints, how many days will we keep an exhibition open? Why? How will we manage visitors coming from different time zones?

If multiple organizers keep their digital exhibition open for 365 days within the same industry, which ones will the Visitor come to and why?

If we keep it open for say several days or weeks, will we essentially take out the magic and energy of the 3 crowded days?

If we keep it open for 3 days, will we sub-optimize the investment made by our company and the exhibitors?

D. 4 hours Vs 30 min?

The typical visitor to a physical exhibition, it is believed, spends a minimum of four hours walking the aisles and meeting exhibitors, sometimes simply because he has made the time, physical and financial investment by traveling to the show venue. And while he is there, 80% or more of his attention is on what’s inside the exhibition hall.

Now imagine the same visitor coming to our cloud expo from his office or home or even a train, with all the attendant distractions and opportunity for multitasking. He may make several visits during a work day and spend 15-30 min at a time. How will we ensure you hold his attention and make multiple visits worthwhile? How will we navigate the visitor’s journey on the virtual show floor, so as to maximise his own experience as well as value to many exhibitors?

D. 10 am- 6 pm or round the clock?

While the digital medium flattens time and it is technically possible to have a 24-hours show, how can we manage live Vs non-live parts, given exhibitors may not be able to man an e-booth round the clock?

Designing for Visitor experience - 3 dimensions

If we examine closely, visitor experience in a physical show rides on three dimensions primarily – Individuality, Immersiveness and Interactivity. The digital experience must deliver on all three – augmented by the unique capabilities of the digital medium.

A.   Individuality [of goals]: All visitors are not the same. A visitor may be Serious [~15-40%], Curious [~40%-70%] or Spurious [15-20%]. Each visitor has one or a few goals – either personal or company’s. What they do before and at the show, the time they spend, the booths they visit, who they would like to meet etc are often determined by their goals. As can be imagined, serious visitors are further down in their decision process and often do things at a fast pace. A Curious visitor's goals may include discovering new technology, new trends, making new contacts – sometimes misread as ‘just aimless browsing’. The goals also decide whether a visitor is solo or brings a colleague or a whole team to the show.

The beauty of an exhibition is that despite being a many-to-many platform with thousands of simultaneous interactions on the show floor, it allows each interaction to be highly individualistic and unique to the visitor.

How will this be baked into the design of the virtual exhibition?

B.   Immersiveness: Taken together, the show floor design, the content created by the show producer, the presence of people and products in a life-size world we humans are so comfortable with, the light and sound when relevant, create an immersive experience for the visitor which makes the hard work of physical travel to the venue, walking around for hours and getting happily tired appear worthwhile. No factory or showroom visit can replace it.

As that massive multi-dimensional, multi-sensory world gets compressed to a 17 inch screen [or even an 11 inch tablet or a 7 inch phone] how do we deliver the immersiveness? Is it just the use of web-VR or other 3D approximation of the real world? On the screen only or with an HMD? Or are there other design elements? How do we deliver an approximation of a physical handshake or a hug? One click video call? A virtual card exchange? Virtual handshake? May be. What if the visitor is from a different time zone and no booth staff is live? Will a chatbot or virtual assistant suffice?

C.   Interactivity: The physical show is full of opportunities for interactivity. The business card exchange, the coffee around a demo, the ability to attract someone’s attention by just an eye contact and a simple smile, the physicality of a machine on display of demo, all of those that make in person interactions fascinating.

By its nature the digital medium can allow high levels of interactivity and feedback. These may be different from physical interactivity such as the tactile feel of a handshake, but they can offer a lot of freedom to the visitor. The medium also adds anonymity for those who may prefer it, hardly present in a physical show

But in designing for interactivity, we will need to apply principles of Social Psychology, not just technology.

In the physical show, we design entry and exit points, aisles, food courts, floor markers, VIP rooms, sitting areas to manage the visitor flow and maximise interaction between a visitor and an exhibitor booth staff. While walking around, visitors use three criteria – familiarity, perceived usefulness and perceived interestingness - to choose whether to walk into a booth or give it a pass.

When a visitor comes to the cloud expo, how will this be translated into a flow that’s the most productive for him?

Obsessing with technology can make us overdo the interactivity and make the experience intrusive. How will interactivity be part of the digital experience design in a way that respects the business visitor’s goals and time and does not overwhelm him?

What show organizers need even as they evaluate technology solutions, is a strong commitment to experience design, something that comes to them intuitively in the physical show, but may be challenging in the digital world. They must remember that digital products have several fundamental differences from their physical counterparts and design must take those into account.

There are no easy answers to what will make one virtual expo different from and superior to another. The one thing organizers can do in these uncertain times though, is to be agile. To drop risk aversion. To experiment fast. The stakes are quite low, purely because most things affecting us right now are not in our control.

As English Civil Engineer Andrew Wolstenholme wrote in 2009 during the Great Recession, never waste a good crisis.