Project Details
As an event with over 30 years of experience that draws in thousands of attendees each year, the web presence of SLEEP was outdated and difficult to use. Much information was hidden, not included, and organized in a very limited way due to the unchangeable design of the old website. The two parent companies that partner to offer this event recently underwent website upgrades, so it only made sense to do the same with this event site.
Challenges
Very little information is available for the event more than ten months prior to the week it occurs. Creating a website that had it’s own visual identity that was shown through a very limited number of pages, but that could easily grow to accommodate the anticipated influx of data over the coming months, was key. An event is a team effort though, and many people from multiple departments and companies needed to approve the updates.
Applications
The first step in updating this tool was to come up with a completely new navigation and page structure that would fit all of the content for the event from ‘Save the Date’ through ‘Thanks for Attending’. We strived to make updates that would ensure our visitors could quickly and easily find what they needed. Advice was requested from different site users on the changes they would like to see, previous user feedback was considered, and modern UX was considered when reorganizing the content of the site. Updating what exists is one thing, but we needed to also consider what we had never posted online due to previous limitations, and ensure these were incorporated seamlessly. The result is a new site that includes frequent news updates, a meeting countdown, detailed ticket prices, and historical facts. In the future we will be able to add a full, interactive schedule with speaker information built-in, exhibitor/sponsor details, and more. All of this will make the event experience of our attendees smoother, and ideally increase registration rates.