How App Growth Summit Created Virtual Events - Which Actually Worked

In March 2020, App Growth Summit Los Angeles was the final live event for the mobile app industry before the global shut-downs caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The entire industry had to shift, because unlike many other industries, mobile app experts relied heavily on conferences to exchange information and ideas with each other. Enter: Virtual Events.

Everyone knows how Hopin, SwapCard, Bizzabo, and others had virtual event platforms, even Zoom tried to pivot. However, these solutions were never something we felt would be the same experience as our in-person events, or would represent our brand well. App Growth Summit events are highly-engaging, fun, and not at all generic. So, just doing what everyone else did and having a white-labeled, generic event platform for our virtual events wasn't going to cut it.

Luckily, I started my career building online products and businesses, so the entire world shifted into my OG wheelhouse. So, I got with a few of my long-time developers and started on creating our own virtual event platform, specifically created for App Growth Summit's needs.

Reconstructing Events for the Virtual World

The first mistake everyone was making (and still are making to this day) is to think that people have the same attention spans and time commitments to virtual events as they did in-person events. When someone attends an event in-person they made the physical effort to travel there (locally or long-distance), so leaving immediately isn't as likely. However, virtually, all someone has to do is close a browser window and they're gone.

Also, the existing platforms segmented User actions on different tabs and/or pages. If a User wanted to chat or check out the agenda they had to leave the area where the content was being streamed. Also, each piece of content was separate from each other. This created "UX/UI speed bumps" which took attention away from the User. This poor User Experience would result in unengaged and poorly retained Users.

This is basic UX 101. Keep people interested and they'll stick around. When you ask someone who's working from home, and dealing with work, pets/kids/both, significant others also home, global news about pandemics, worrying about family members, and a number of other daily attention-grabbing things that are happening around them, the very last thing someone can be expected to do is sit in front of their computer watching what is essentially webinar-after-webinar all day and sometimes for multiple days. They're just not going to do that. And other events have sadly proven that assumption is correct. People don't stick around.

We knew we needed to completely change how we produced events for the virtual world.

1. Keep Sessions Short: We knew we had to keep people's attention by having shorter sessions. We had 10-minute presentations, 15-minute fireside chats, and 20 or 25 minute panels. This forced the participants to trim the fat and deliver the information quickly and efficiently. This also made the sessions more action-packed and Users we getting everything they needed quickly.
2. Keep The Event to 3 or 4 Hours: By keeping the event shorter, we can limit the request on people's time to only 3 or 4 hours, while still giving them the same content value of a longer in-person event. There is no need to ask someone to sit around for 9 hours, or 4 full days, when you can give them the same exact value in a few hours. Our high User-Retention Rates proved we were correct. 85% of attendees were retained on average throughout the 13 virtual events we produced in the past 16 months. While other events become ghost towns, we still had an active audience.
3. Put Everything On One Page: One of the main rules of virtual usability is every time you ask a User to conduct an action, you're going to have some drop-off. So when you create a User Flow, Conversion Funnel, or you're trying to get a User to perform a certain action, you want as few steps as possible. We accomplished this by putting everything on one page. The content, Q&A, Networking Chats, Agenda, and Sponsor Information are all on one single scrolling web page with a permanent header of anchored jump points. So people can sign in, and just engage and enjoy without missing any of the action or information!
4. Create Options for Attention: We can't just have a video and a chat, and expect full engagement. So, we created a Slack-style Networking Chat which had everything someone would expect, which are chat channels, emojis, quote-replies, and DM's. Other event platforms don't offer this, but when you create your own platform from scratch...you can create whatever your attendees want and need. So we did! One of the Networking Chat channels is the "Speaker Green Room" where Attendees can chat it up with Speakers after they're "off stage" and keep the conversation going (something you can't do on other events, which shut off communications after a session).
5. Pre-Record the Sessions: This seem counter-intuitive at first to many people. They immediately think "Oh, but I want it live so I can ask questions." Au contraire! We have you covered! By Pre-Recording the sessions, and having the Q&A Chat directly next to the content window, we can have the Speakers logged in to the event and answer all of your questions in real time. This way, you won't have to wait to have your question answered, there won't be a delay with trying to see which questions to answer, and there won't be a drag on the content/agenda. By pre-recording, we can also ensure there are no technical delays or muted mics, or bad lighting. We can take care of everything in the recording process so what Attendees see is a fully-produced and highly professional result. Pre-recording also allowed us to create motion graphic introductions for each session as well as branded video mattes. Others events are forced to use an unbranded black border for their video content, but with our mattes we can show our logo, the names/titles/logos of the speakers, and the name of the session for those who might have just popped in.

Keeping the Brand Intact

We also wanted to maintain our schedule and "locations" we traveled to, even if we were in the virtual space. While other events just produced either "USA" events, or named their events arbitrary code names, we wanted to keep our San Francisco, NYC, Berlin, Brasil, etc "tour" locations. Rather than duplicating the same speakers over and over (and over and over) again, by keeping our "locations" we were able to still highlight the app growth experts in those areas. This enabled us to keep a great community feel in each location and continue to build the relationship with experts in each region. This way, when we return to in-person events post-pandemic these locations will all know App Growth Summit never abandoned them, and kept spotlighting their regional experts.

The virtual events have also allowed us to expand into smaller regions, or include experts who might not have been seen otherwise. Whether it was someone from Atlanta, Amazonas, Africa, or anywhere else we didn't produce events regularly, we could now bring them into our world with other app growth experts and continue to be the clear leader in the industry when it comes to finding and spotlighting app growth experts.

Love for Our Sponsors

Rather than try to sell sponsors on something they won't see ROI from (like "virtual booths," which never used, because attendees don't want to jump on camera with a sponsor), we instead highlight the sponsors as experts, and we have a permanent footer featuring all sponsors...all the time.

We also have a unique option on everyone's profile where any attendee can select which Sponsors they would like to learn more about. They just check the Sponsor they're interested in, and only then will their information be shared with the Sponsor they've selected.

We do this, because we have a strict no-spam policy in our Networking Chat, and don't sell attendees' email addresses (unlike other events). That said, when attendees aren't hit up by aggressive vendors, they seek out our highly-respected sponsors to learn more about what they do, and ask questions related to their individual expertise.

Lessons for All Businesses

These 5 philosophies and strategies have lead to App Growth Summit producing the highest-rated virtual events in the industry, and have enabled us to separate ourselves from the competition even more than we already were. There are lessons everyone can learn from here, and take with you as you look to create solutions to problems you might be having with your product or business. These are as follows...

1. Those Who Adapt Will Prevail: When times get challenging, or you have set-backs, these are actually opportunities to separate yourself from the competition. Most businesses are not innovative, don't adapt well, and aren't agile. If you can find the opportunity in change, and adapt quickly, then you can find potentially event greater success than you might have if the status quo were in place. Every challenge is an opportunity.
2. Think About User Experience Always & Forever: No matter what you do for marketing, how you've constructed your funnel, or what partnerships you have in place, or anything else...the main thing that matters is User Experience. This is because if your Users don't like your product or interacting with your product, then even the best ads are just a waste of time and money, the partnerships you have in place won't be mutually beneficial, and your overall business won't experience the type of growth and results you could if you consider how your users/customers/clients feel about interacting with your product, and/or your team. Everything is about the User. Always.
3. Efficiency and Optimization Are Keys to Success: Removing any conversion speed bumps or road blocks will help your business succeed. Whether you have an online event platform like we created, or have an online e-commerce business, or any product, getting your user/customer/client to achieve their goals as quickly and efficiently as possible will help your conversions, sales, and repeat business. Of course, by giving your Users the best experience possible, you are also creating evangelists who will spread the word for you, for free, about how great your product is.

Moving Forward

Now that we built our own platform, we have an additional and permanent piece of added value no one else has. We will continue to stream as many live events as possible via our AGS Virtual Platform, so people all over the world can view any/all of our events. People in Australia no longer have to fly to Singapore to watch the content, or if someone is in Alabama they don't have to fly to NYC. Just sign up on our website and watch the livestream in our platform, and chat with others from around the world! This will enable our influence to continue to grow. All this, because we saw the opportunity to adapt and improve our brand and business to not only navigate through the storm of the recent pandemic, but also the (hopefully) calmer waters awaiting us on the other side.

We are also expanding the platform to be a fully-functioning CRM which will manage all registrations and accounts for both in-person events as well as the virtual ones and streams all from the same platform. This way, anyone who wants to attend our events can also watch the livestream or vice versa! Everyone registering has access to re-watch the private livestream, so if they missed something while networking and/or chatting, they can watch it later, or watch something they really enjoyed again...and again!

But hey...don't take my word for it! Head over to www.AppGrowthSummit.com and sign up for an event near you, or one you want to check out, and experience it all for yourself!