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February 1997
Click to Register
By Warren Strugatch
For once, the biggest news coming out of Fall 1996 COMDEX was not about product launches or business announcements but rather, people: Half the Las Vegas show's 431,000 attendees had registered -- and paid -- by clicking a mouse at the COMDEX site on the World Wide Web (http://www.comdex.com).
Attendees saved a bit of time, and show management saved a bit of money. More than a bit, actually, measurable in "thousands of man hours of staff time not spent entering data into the computer," according to Needham, MA-based SOFTBANK COMDEX Inc. Show Director Bill Sell, CEM. The site became a vital part of the event itself. Internet browsers found COMDEX Online and registered by the tens of thousands; returned repeatedly to get show updates and announcements; and visited after the show for information they may have missed in Las Vegas.
And one other thing: about six million users logged on when the show went "live," using multi-media features such as full-motion video and audio feeds. The virtual show was free, but advertisers paid COMDEX handsomely to reach the show-generated cyberspace audience.
"We're not just a trade show anymore," says Sell. "It's something beyond that. Our Internet experience suggests that the trade show is transforming into a long-term experience divided into three distinct sessions: pre-, during and post-. The next step for show managers is to help exhibitors take advantage of that transformation."
Sell may be a bit premature on the last issue. The industry is still too busy orienting itself to the new medium to offer much guidance to others. Still, progress has been impressive. In less time than it takes an infant to learn to walk, much less run, independent show producers and associations have moved decisively into cyberspace with hundreds of sites that convert hits into registrations and, in the high-tech realm especially, online exhibitions. Show managers who cut their teeth on drayage and union rules now schmooze Web designers about through-put rates and mirrored sites, drinking java and talking Java.
One-to-one marketing
Moving registration online has produced major benefits for shows that've handled it well -- providing secure encryption, easy navigability and human voice back-up. That done, related processes involving information distribution -- surveying attendee demographics, tracking visitor activity at the show and soliciting audience feedback -- can follow smoothly. The old bugaboo, online credit card transactions, seems to have faded.
Interactive technology has also revolutionized visit planning. "This is a really big advantage for attendees," says Ivan Lazarev, Vice President of Marketing for Registration Control Systems in Ventura, CA. "Usually you see a show beginning with all these people sitting down the first morning with coffee and the show directory, plus all the substitution addenda, figuring out who's speaking where and when. Now all this goes online. It can be done ahead of time, at the attendee's convenience. People can log on just before the show, or at it, and get the last-minute substitutions."
Once they're hooked, users can continue to consult the trade show home page long after the last crate's been packed and shipped off site. "If you can get them registered on the Web, you can pretty quickly recoup your costs in savings on such traditional expenses as printing, mailing, processing and telemarketing," says Doug Fox, an Internet marketing specialist in Richmond, VA. "But the real benefits are in terms of integrating your information system and using that to market more effectively. The future is in one-to-one marketing. Suddenly an audience of 400,000 becomes 400,000 individuals. You know who is buying what, who is loyal to whom. Instead of selling breakfast cereal using the same approach to millions, you're talking to someone by name, introducing them to a product or service you know they need. You know that because you know exactly what they bought yesterday and last year."
Building traffic
Getting cybervisitors to push the "Register Now" button is rarely plug-and-play, however. Show producers are finding that creating a site doesn't automatically produce visitors prepared to commit themselves. A poorly-designed Web site "will place obstacles in the path of the customer, and that's the one thing you don't want to do," warns Ed Brennan, President of Erin/ Edwards Communications in Glen Head, NY. "You want a quick download time, or your visitor leaves the site. And if you do lose the visitor for whatever reason, you want to make it easy for him or her to get back to the same part of the site, quickly."
Massive graphics -- and, increasingly, multimedia graphics that often require special viewing utilities -- may delight computer buffs and home-based surfers, but aggravate time-pressed business people and professionals. "If you're going to download something that takes a while, you better make it something useful, like a floor plan," says Seth Miller, President of his own Web design company in Boston. "Who wants to sit in a cubicle watching a detailed picture of a guy with a tattoo on his bicep slowly fill up the screen?"
Just like a well-designed trade show exhibit, a well-designed Web site needs intrinsic value and extensive promotion to draw traffic. "You have to make the site useful and different and fun," says Sarna Marcus, President of The Page Group in Bethesda, MD. "You need a site that builds community through dialogue between attendees and exhibitors, between attendees and other attendees. You need a site that gets noticed in the press, has its URL mentioned in press articles, and -- this is so important -- that is linked to other sites."
Trading links, as it's called, builds traffic and costs nothing. Marcus suggests, "You're looking for serious prospects. They don't browse, and they don't necessarily look up trade show sites on Yahoo! and other search engines. Serious prospects are directed from other sites through links and from industry-related directories."
Though some show producers, especially in the for-profit sector, see linkage as a potential profit center, most industry insiders and Net experts agree that a better profit prospect is advertising. Sites that draw millions of hits translate readily into advertising buys. Yet many sites draw only in the thousands, or less -- traffic too puny to interest most advertisers. The outcome may be niche advertising, generated by use of on-site search engines, predicts Fox. Visit a show site and search for "lens," or "film," or "focus," and an ad for a camera manufacturer pops up during download.
Art imitates life
As market acceptance of the Internet continues to increase, so do Web-site budgets. Show managers increasingly find themselves previewing the latest Web technology, much of it geared to recreating the show on the Internet. Virtual reality invariably draws a crowd. Want to let an attendee in Denver see an exhibitor walk around her booth in Dallas? No problem. How about 3-D movies, animation or real-time audio broadcasts? It's all available, at a price. The question is: Is a trade show still a trade show when people don't actually meet face-to-face?
"A big part of the show is to be there, to take advantage of the opportunities for networking and seeing the people you know or need to know," says Michael Veit, Director of Strategic Marketing for MHA Events Management in Norwood, MA. "Looking at a chat session taking place in Minneapolis (while you're elsewhere) does not replace the experience of being part of the conversation. I don't think anyone really believes you can replace attending a trade show with visiting a Web site."
Instead, the more successful cybershows are marrying virtual technology to human interaction. A sophisticated online registration program books a seat in the hall and transacts a credit payment, then a person calls the attendee back to confirm. A cyberspace convention center is staffed by individuals, rather than info@widget.co. Visitors can click to see the individual, hear the individual and leave the individual a message. A well-run scientific conference not only provides access to the research compiled by highly respected researchers, but lets prospective attendees listen to them speak, just to see if they're intelligible -- and, frankly, interesting. The more technology advances, it seems, the more human interaction matters.
Warren Strugatch is a business and travel journalist specializing in international trade. He is based in Valley Stream (Long Island), NY.
COMDEX Online http://www.comdex.com
The six million visitors to COMEDEX Online during last fall's show found one of the strongest trade show cybersites. The strength here is architecture, leading to excellent navigability. With the roster of COMDEX shows laid out like a floorplan, visitors can follow their interests with a minimum of clicking around. In pre-show mode, an "Open for business" button permits online registration and PEP (Personal Event Planning). The design accommodates the site's substantial depth, including abundant preview material. Multimedia content includes videocasts produced by Apple. Viewing software is available through a link to BackWeb Channel Serview. Keynote speeches are available post-show through RealAudio. Text summaries from show dailies are also available.
"Online registration was a major advantage, both for us and for attendees," says Show Director Bill Sell. "It not only saved us a ton of labor and energy, it lets attendees see their names exactly as they like, nickname or whatever. That's a customer service enhancement right there."
Internet World http://www.iworld.com
Not surprisingly, Mecklermedia's Internet world maintains a rich and deep Web site serving its trade shows and other media. Fall Iworld 97 operates on a "frames" view (dividing the screen into windows with distinct content) that provides excellent navigability. The vertical menu in the left frame offers 17 options that cover all the basics, with a how-to guide and "How Will Fall Internet World Help You?" logically at the top. Interactivity is splendid: There are opportunities to recommend speakers, obtain exhibiting information, and nominate candidates for an awards program.
"As the biggest Internet show, we have to practice what we preach in terms of having state-of-the-art Internet technology at our show, and on our Web site," says Carl Pugh, President and Chief Operating Officer of Mecklermedia's Trade Show Group, Westport, CT. "Anything having to do with obtaining and distributing information in mass volume is possibly an Internet application. So having interactive features is obviously crucial for us. We offer our exhibitors the option of having a high-speed Internet access from their booths, which means assigning them an IP address. In the past we would do this by mail, phone, and so on. Instead of two staffers working full time on this, this year it involved zero time -- it was automated.
"The site also enables us to provide updates to everyone interested in the show," Pugh says. "At the last minute we got a confirmation that James Gosling, father of Java, would be available to speak. We posted that news on the home page, and for two weeks 50,000 people a day saw that."
MacWorld and ComNet http://www.mha.com
Apple is one of the most graphically distinctive companies in the United States, so it is no surprise that graphics is a strength of MacWorld Expo, managed by Norwood, MA-based MHA Event Management. The site is frame-based and includes online registration equipped with PEP. The program escorts visitors through 11 tracks, plus a 12th that provides scheduling information. ComNet, also managed by MHA, is well-designed and handles the abundantly detailed information the site contains.
On both sites, interactivity rates as a key feature. "I don't think the Internet is ever going to replace actually going to a show, and that shouldn't be the goal of a Web site," says Michael Veit, Director of Strategic Marketing for MHA. "We're not looking to put up tons of content so people don't have to attend in person. We are looking to make the experience of attending better. One feature that does that is online registration and PEP. The engine we have on the site prevents people from registering for programs that are simultaneous. The interactive components are going to get more and more sophisticated as time goes on."
American Association of Neurological Surgeons http://www.aans.org
Just as surgeons expect all their tools and resources to be carefully maintained, so the content on this site is similarly maintained. Its strength is as a gateway. Abundant links and interactive forms facilitate the information flow. In this way the site keeps up-to-date a comprehensive calendar of neurosurgery medical education events. No fewer than nine Medline search engines are linked to the site. A voluminous summary of the prior year's meeting is archived in plain text format, and the complete archive of abstracts of the AANS is available for downloading, no password required. Annual meeting attendees can register online, submit abstracts and download exhibitor prospectuses usings Adobe Acrobat (a download link is provided).
"Making information available on Adobe Acrobat has been a fast and inexpensive way to communicate," says Susan Nowicki, APR, Director of Communications for the Park Ridge, IL-based association. "Someone interested in our annual meeting can see our prospectus, floor plan of the exhibit hall, deadlines for filing and attendee profile -- and we save the time and money involved in mailing. Also, we decided to make the abstracts available on a non-protected basis because there is so much interest in this material."
American Heart Association http://aha.expocity.com
This site marries technological know-how with a savvy understanding of the importance of human interaction. The attendee registers online and gets a virtual meeting kit, including badge, virtual business cards (vCards), a file for exhibitor cards and use of a Showtime e-mail system. A chat room is set up for real-time networking. Exhibits are staffed by real people: Visitors to a booth take back cards of employees of the company, rather than the impersonal info@widget.com. A well-written help section explains how the vCard works. By leaving a vCard at a vBooth, visitors invite exhibitors to send detailed followup information about their products and services. Since many vBooths link to exhibitor home pages, a handy bookmark link helps visitors track sites they'd like to return to in future visits. This site also features PEP for visitors who attend the conference.
SOFTBANK's Interop.com http://www.sbexpos.com
The graphical presentation of this site is clean and elegant, a rebuke to the overly busy sites that are increasingly popular. Foster City, CA-based SOFTBANK Exposition & Conference Co. Inc. carries the brand identity of each show onto the Internet; each show's logo appears simply against a white backdrop. Multimedia is a strong feature. The site for Interop.com, held in Atlanta last fall, has been extensively archived -- more than 10 video hours of keynote speeches are maintained through a link to Novell's home page. Text archives are also extensive and easy to access, both from show dailies and from a link to PC World. Though browsing this site can be daunting, with the many nested links and special software required to access videos, it offers generous post-show reports catering to information junkies who don't mind surfing.
Blenheim's ShowNet http://www.shownet.com
Maintained separately from Blenheim's home page -- which is prominently linked -- this site serves the company's roster of shows. The frame-based design keeps the visitor in house, with a home button returning the visitor to the lobby. That's a plus when it comes to attracting advertisers. Navigation is helped by a horizontal tool bar at the top of each show page, offering a standard button-based menu. In this user-friendly architecture, a vertical strip down the left organizes the show roster according to city, while a mosaic of show logos downloads quickly on the right. Click on a logo to view a table of dates. Online registration is available.
"Creating an online registration process is helping us create another line of communication with our audiences," says Kathy Wilson, VP/Marketing at Blenheim. "At PC Expo in New York, we registered one-third of our attendees online last year. Beyond that, it lets us communicate with our attendees through e-mail during the time between registration and the start of the show."
International Society for Optical Engineering http://www.spie.org
This site is what the Web is all about. It brings everything together: architecture, navigability, content and interactivity, and it serves as a multi-dimensional tool in this organization's efforts to manage more than 400 technical conferences a year. The four major meetings have their own buttons, with numerous links providing detailed information on the proceedings according to topics. Whatever can be done by mail can be done here online, plus much more; the site serves as a cyberspace gateway for the optical and photonics industry into highly specialized academic sites around the world. An industry search engine supports sophisticated searches among some 10,000 businesses. Brian Thomas, Manager of Technical Development and Webmaster, says a major function of the site is to support searches of a specificity not possible on such mass-market engines as Yahoo or Alta Vista. "We're providing the second-level filter for people in this industry who need to contain their search to certain university labs, research institutes, professional papers and association archives," he says. "Our site is where they go."
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