How to Choose the Best Event App for In-Person Events

Dec 16, 2022 Shruti Shah

The innovation of Event Apps has significantly altered the landscape of in-person gatherings. What once began as a novel concept has rapidly transitioned into an essential tool, revolutionizing how we conceptualize, coordinate, and engage with events. From basic digital agendas to comprehensive platforms, event apps now offer a myriad of features catering to every aspect of the attendee experience. They have become integral to the success of events, stimulating interaction, preserving information, and delivering tailored experiences with unparalleled efficiency. 

However, in a market flooded with multiple players in event technology, some stand out for their commitment to innovation and driving event success. Whether you are already using event management software or seeking your maiden choice, understanding the essential features of an event app is crucial.  
 

How to Choose the Best Mobile Event App?
The Event App must be created with a vision to torchlight the course of integrating attendees into the onsite event experience. Having a hyper-personalized dashboard and real-time operational features is a must to meet the expectations of the attendees. 

Here’s how you should move ahead.

1. Identify Your Goals: Start your journey towards selecting the perfect event app by defining your objectives clearly and decisively. Without a clear agenda, all other considerations become moot. Determine if you aim to boost attendee engagement, streamline event logistics, gather vital data and analytics, increase sponsor visibility, or achieve all of the above. Consider the size and nature of your event, as well as your audience demographics. Setting precise goals will guide you through the selection process, ensuring the chosen app aligns seamlessly with your event strategy. 

2. Research: When exploring event app options, you cannot solely rely on the top search results of a search engine. Dive deeper by comparing features, pricing plans, and customer reviews across various providers. Evaluate the app's usability, reliability, customer support, and overall satisfaction through both positive and negative feedback. Reach out to your professional network or attend industry events for firsthand insights from peers with event app experience.

3. Fix Your Budget: Before diving into researching event apps, it is highly recommended to establish budgets that align with your financial resources and not get overwhelmed with the options available. Consider upfront costs and potential extra expenses like customization fees or premium features. Prioritize essential features and then narrow down options to maximize your investment's value.

Features to Prioritize:

• Evaluate UX and UI: When selecting an event app, prioritize user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design. Seek out clean, intuitive interfaces that enhance functionality and engage attendees without sacrificing aesthetics.
• Security and Data Privacy Concerns: Thoroughly assess each event app's data protection measures and compliance with industry standards to address security concerns. Look for features like secure login authentication, data encryption, and GDPR compliance to safeguard sensitive information.
• Integration with Event Management Software: While standalone apps can suffice in certain cases, complete integration with your event management software can revolutionize your event planning and execution. Seamless integration ensures that all aspects of your event, from registration to post-event analytics, work cohesively, enhancing efficiency and providing a more comprehensive event experience.
• Scalability: Regardless of your event's size, ensure the app can accommodate your growth trajectory. Native apps that remain static may encounter issues such as load constraints or user restrictions. It's essential to choose a scalable solution to avoid these limitations and ensure a smooth experience for all users. 

4. Finally Take a Demo: As you narrow down your options, prioritize scheduling demos or trials with your shortlisted event app providers. During these sessions, meticulously evaluate the functionalities while also considering the user perspective. Remember, the primary goal is to enhance attendee engagement, so keep this priority at the forefront of your decision-making process. Remain open-minded as you explore each app's features, ensuring they align with your event objectives.

What Should You Look for in an Event App 
Event organizers are constantly seeking simplicity and expect major capabilities to be readily available at their attendees' fingertips. The right Event App accomplishes just that with extraordinary, enhanced tools designed from an attendee's perspective. Loaded with features and born from innovation, it's imperative to choose an event app that aims to make events more impactful, far-reaching, and successful. 

1. Effortless Sign-On Experience: With a single sign-on, the Event App should unveil a treasure trove of easily manageable features. For seamless event management, this approach ensures swift navigation and efficient control for both you and your attendees.

2. Seamless Communication: While the average email open rate across industries is as low as 21.33%, the push notification read rate surpasses email marketing by 50%. Given the tactical advantage of real-time updates, having unlimited push notifications to schedule or send instantly is a game-changer. Your attendee event app should seamlessly deliver pre-event reminders, event updates, countdowns, and other crucial notifications directly to attendees' mobile phones.

3. Personalize the App to Perfection: Eccentric personalization options ensure that the app seamlessly integrates with your brand. Look for features that allow customization of the app with full private labeling at no additional cost. Organizers should be able to create themes, utilize company-approved images, backgrounds, and logos, and infuse the app with a creative brand tone. Additionally, the app dashboard should offer customization options for button designs, fonts, and colors, enhancing attendee navigation and interactivity. 

4. 360-Degree Attendee Engagement: The app should offer a robust selection of top-interactive features that serve various purposes, ranging from enhancing attendee engagement to achieving the event's success metric.  

• You should be able to manage, create, and edit unlimited live polls during the event with an easy-to-operate dashboard and release live poll results instantly.  
• Enhance speaker and content engagement strategy with elaborate moderator features to handle Q&A sessions seamlessly during the event or speaker sessions. 
• The app must include an option to create unlimited surveys with unlimited questions, enabling organizers to design surveys that gather precise and constructive feedback without any package limitations. 
• The app should facilitate personalized networking with in-built chat features, enabling attendees to view profiles and connect with fellow attendees. It's crucial that this functionality is easy for organizers to deploy and straightforward for attendees to use, ensuring a seamless networking experience for all involved. 
• AI-powered attendee matchmaking is now the cornerstone of networking at events, with simple features like matchmaking based on mutual interests and business drivers. The ability to book 1:1 meetings must allow attendees to connect based on their shared interests and objectives. This feature is essential for any event app to ensure your event inches closer to success.
  

5. Flexibility with Features: The event app should offer an option to manage the visibility of attendee lists, sponsors, agendas, and sessions with a single switch button at the organizer's end. Your attendees' personalized experience begins here, as you display what they want to see.

6. Direct Attendee Features: Having these seemingly small yet impactful features, such as a complete venue map for attendees to navigate through the event, creates an impressive user experience. Additionally, attendees should be able to personalize their profiles by adding their own banners and profile pictures within the app. With access to their upcoming event list, event information, and session schedules all on their mobile phones, the event attending process becomes seamless for them. 

 
The Edge of Eventcombo’s Attendee Event App 
Proudly boasting the above features, along with the following offerings, Eventcombo emerges as your go-to event app:   

• 'Invite to Event App' Feature: Send invitations for attendees to log into the Event App using a secure magic link, allowing them to effortlessly join the event without needing a separate login. 
• Community Feature for Continued Networking: Eventcombo goes beyond the event itself with its integrated Community model. Each event can be linked to the Eventcombo Community feature, extending networking opportunities before, during, and after the event. Community members can utilize this extension as a closed social media group to share event-related posts, reviews, and ideas. Think of it as a private LinkedIn for the event, exclusively available to the organizer and attendees. Members can view profiles, posts, and glean valuable information for networking purposes.  

Streamlining interactions and integration for event organizers, planners, and executors, event apps have become an indispensable component of event planning. In a landscape where events are crafted to evoke specific attendee experiences, the event app emerges as the ideal medium to achieve this goal. A well-chosen mobile event app has the power to make attendees feel valued, engaged, and transported into a meticulously orchestrated performance, your event.  
 
Take a demo for Eventcombo’s Event App today to upgrade your next event experience. https://bit.ly/3R9bkuP