Trade Shows are the perfect opportunity for businesses to showcase their products and services, especially in the form of interactive digital experiences that engage attendees and make a lasting impression. Creating a successful interactive experience for these events requires careful planning, preparation, and execution.
In this article, we’ll uncover some best practices for building interactive digital experiences that are perfect for tradeshows and other in-person event experiences. These best practices will help you stand out from the competition and provide a memorable experience for attendees.
Have a Solid Blueprint
Determine your goals and theme/concept: Have a clear purpose and concept that aligns with your brand or business objectives so you can determine your goals and how you want your audience to engage with your experience.
Take inspiration from existing examples: Looking at other successful interactive experiences helps strengthen your own strategy and design choices. Get some solid examples from Ceros Inspire.
Create snackable content: Keeping your content bite-sized and easily digestible encourages engagement and sharing. Attendees will be hopping from booth to booth, so it’s important to deliver the right amount of information before they move.Â
Ensure scalability: Keep the bigger picture in mind so that your experience can be easily scaled and updated when needed.Â
Create a Solid Foundation
Understand hardware and physical space: If your experience involves physical installations or hardware, get a clear understanding of your device's requirements and limitations.Â
Get all your ducks in a row: Have all final/approved assets and source files ready to build with. This will save time and reduce the risk of errors or delays during the production phase.
Studio Production
Keep interactions to clicks only: Your audience will most likely interact with a tablet experience so it’s important to build an experience that is universal to what these devices are capable of (hover interactions will not work on tablet and mobile layouts). Hover interactions could confuse your audience and the user building out the experience.
Use simple animations: Keep animations simple and purposeful, rather than using them for decorative purposes so users can stay focused and find what they need.
Avoid or keep object states to a minimum: Too many object states can make your experience confusing and difficult to navigate, while also making the experience lose scalability.Â
Avoid SDK (Software Development Kit) and integrations: These add a layer of complexity and potential compatibility issues, so avoid them unless it’s absolutely necessary.Â
Note: these features will be disabled if you decide to export your experience for offline viewing as it requires internet connectivity to function.
Have good naming conventions for complex organization: Make sure all assets and elements are named in a clear and organized manner to avoid confusion during development. See our Best Practices for Naming Conventions.
Include 'timeout' hotspots to automatically reset the experience: This ensures that if an experience is inactive for a certain period, it is redirected to the intro page. To employ this, add a hotspot with an on-view interaction that goes to a different page after 5 minutes.Â
Export Your Experience
Create an offline view (.CDE) if needed: There are rare moments when providing an offline viewer for your experience can be useful for trade shows, events, or areas with limited internet connectivity. Contact your CSM/LAM/AE to see how you can have offline viewing available for your account. (For more information on how to export an experience as a .CDE file - please refer to this guide)
Building successful experiences for events and tradeshows requires careful planning and execution. By following these best practices, you can create an engaging and memorable experience for your audience that aligns with your brand and business objectives.