How to Create an Event Website Like Eventbrite: All You Need to Know in One Guide

Many successful businesses are flourishing in the event industry. So if you think about how to create an event website like Eventbrite or Tiqets, you are on the right path. Why? People get tired of the overall digitization and look at real social interactions. Here is where the event websites and apps come at hand. 

Do you want to introduce the next big thing in the event industry? Read on and find out where you should begin.

What is Eventbrite?

The event website bridges the virtual and real worlds. That’s why websites like Eventbrite over more attention. This platform mixes event management and ticketing features. Being a cloud-based, Eventbrite helps to:

• create, organize, promote the events
• sell tickets online and scan QR codes instead of printing
• customize registration pages and invitations
• provide analytics on the sales, attendance, traffic and revenue
• customize event feed with personalized recommendations
• support in-app purchases via different paying systems

The features look impressive. Although, user needs vary as well as users don’t tend to like a complex UX. It all comes down to fact: there are many niches for event websites.

Checking out the Eventbrite alternatives

To play things right, let’s look at Eventbrite’s competitors. Event websites and apps have a shared understanding of customer needs. They improve user experience with fewer features or offer unique options. Here are a few of such websites and apps:

• Weemss is a cloud event management tool that offers registration, online check-in and seat arrangement. The user gets an event page and the attendee gets a personal pin-protected page. The platform is multi-language, secured and supports marketing tools for promotion.
• Splash is an event marketing platform that helps to run and promote events. Users can customize event information, reports, and add integrations. Splash focuses on business in-person events.
• Tiquets is a ticketing app that helps users to search for, buy and use tickets to attractions around the globe. The uniqueness of this app is in ticket storage on the user’s phone and skip the line during the entrance.
• TicketTailor is the app for creating an online box office for your event. The process is simple: create an event, design tickets and start selling. Users can manage the event and track performance via reports.

How do apps like Eventbrite drive revenue?

The monetization of websites like Eventbrite comes from the percentage cut from sold tickets. The more your users sell tickets, the more income you will get. Eventbrite, for example, offers price tiers with different features and fees.

That sounds logical. But the choice of monetization type is a bit tricky. You should balance the percentage cut and functionality. Why? Because users pay attention to the cost before checking the whole feature list.

 

Review the pricing policies of Eventbrite and its alternatives before working out your price tiers. For the reference, you check also the following monetization options:

• Subscription. You set a charge for using the event website for users (who create events.) To engage a larger audience, you suggest different tiers that vary in feature sets.

• Fee. Reduce the time spent on the user segmentation, and provide all features for free. The user can be charged for the event or ticket customization, and a number of sold tickets.

• Mixed pricing. Provide access to advanced features only on the subscription level. It may include extended customization or promotion capabilities. Or you can reduce the fee for the tickets in the premium tier.

Can you become the alternative to Tiqets?

For the skeptics who think: “Nobody needs another Eventbrite or Tiqets alternative.” The answer is not actually. There are a lot of all-in-one event websites, but EventMB’s research shows an interesting angle. 74% of users choose technologies from different event platforms instead of all-in-one solutions. So your event website can win over the audience if it offers something fresh and valuable. 

What’s more, recent research revealed the value of in-person events for business marketing. Take into account this information while you are thinking about the target audience.

 

Let’s not forget that your future audience will include the users (who create events) and users (who attend). To be more precise, we proceed further with a user referring to an event creator and an event-goer referring to attendees. 

In that line, your event website can be tailored for a specific location or event type (i.e., concerts, conferences, charity, networking, award ceremonies, festivals, trade shows, and open mic battles). 

Features are another essential aspect. The event websites like Eventbrite or Tiqets offer a mix of options. Although, your platform can execute some particular functions better than they do. Focusing on a specific option can become your “thing” and makes you stand out of the competition.

On the technical side, your event website bridges the gap between the users and attendees. The secret sauce of your platform success has three ingredients:

• smooth performance
• support of desktop and mobile devices
• customized event designing and analytics

Be ready that desired results will cost you a lot of effort. To succeed, you need to define your audience, the feature that will solve their problems and smooth performance.

How to create an event website like Eventbrite?

Don’t get rushed to start the development process. It is wiser to start with research so avoid any apps reinventing. Here are the key elements to consider as you frame your event website project:

• Collect a list of websites or apps that are potential competitors. Analyze the features, costs and business needs they solve.
• Explore the customers’ testimonials. Both positive and negative reviews are a good source for ideas to improve the existing apps or finding the spot for a new one.
• Test the shortlisted event application. Check how the website works and what functions can be improved. So you define your future feature set.
• Choose the platforms. Think about the platforms your event website will work. Consider also how you can scale the functionality to support business growth.
• Define your budget. Narrow down the expenses on development, maintenance, and marketing for your event website.

What are the essential features of event website?

The success of an event website is two-fold. It requires users and event-goers. Keep in mind, your website should connect these people and enhance their interaction.

Let’s review the feature list for users:

• Registration and event management. Don’t forget about the basic options: preview, edit and delete. Think about adding the option of description with audio and video content.
• Ticket management. Think about offering an option to create customized tickets or e-Tickets with free QR codes. Despite the ticket type, the users will need a form to collect attendee details.
• Event cancellation helps to inform attendees about cancelation by sending an email.
• Reporting and analytics help to track events, tickets, event-goers, and income. The users will appreciate the filters for sales channels, time frames, event type.
• Communication. Messaging and comments on events will drive attendee engagement.
• Payments like PayPal, Stripe, Braintree can be embedded into the event website.
• Refunds. Offer a policy that will clearly state the reasons applicable for a refund.
• Verification has to work in two ways: check whether a user is a real person and verify an event-goer before proceeding to payment.
• Risk management is insurance from fraud and disloyal business owners. To save your headache later, develop a defensive mechanism beforehand. For instance, event-goers can report the event for the cancellation, fraud, copyright, and the like.

And here is the list of features for event-goers:

• The registration process should be smooth and easy. Better to include sign in via phone number, email and social network accounts.
• Search and filters. Improve the event-goer flow with a quick search for the events by type, location, price, date. For the mobile app, this can be done with Google Search API for Android or the Lookup API for iOS.
• Event feed depicts the list of events that comply with the attendee’s preferences, location and date. 
• Ticket management. The event-goers also need to see what tickets they’ve bought. That option enhances the cancellation and refund requests.
• Book timer holds a ticket for an attendee until the purchase is finished.
• The waitlist option notifies an event-goer about an available ticket for a tracked event. 
• Event tracking is a part of a personal account. Here an attendee follows the event to which the bought ticket. You can add more options so the other events could be tracked too.
• Push notifications are a gentle reminder about the upcoming event or special offers.

Challenges of building websites similar to Eventbrite

Think about how to create an event website like Eventbrite without delays? Then you should consider possible holdbacks and minimize them. 

 

 

UI/UX of an event website

To get user attention you got only 10 seconds. One misstep in the home page design and you lost your event-goers. Ensure that your website is modern and loads fast. The event pages shouldn’t look like a university essay with unrelated images. Such an appearance spoils user experience and spurs people to leave your website.

What to do?

• Set your website logo and name at the top of the homepage. Make sure it is consistent on all the other pages. 
• Once you selected the color palette and font, stick to them across all the materials and marketing assets. 
• Make your copy short, easy to read on any device.
• As for the pictures: show the venues, speakers or photos from previous events. If you can hire a photographer for taking event photos, just invest in that. The stock pictures can be your resort, but they have a negative impact on the ranking in Google. 

Complicated registration and purchase process

The numerous fields in the registration form inspire the user to leave the website faster than they finish it. Besides, the studies show that every additional step reduces the transactions to 10%.

What to do?

• Reduce the steps in the registration and checkout processes. 
• Make your event website optimized for mobile. Many event-goers come from mobile devices.  So the registration and purchase shouldn’t have any extra zoom and scrolls.
• If you want to get more sales, consider the registration and purchase options without creating an account beforehand.

Privacy and data security

Many companies have suffered from data breaches. To enlist a few, Facebook, Twitter, Adobe, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Canva, Quora, Uber, eBay. To avoid clients’ data to be stolen or exposed and paying fines, take the security matters responsibly.

What to do?

• Buy the SSL certificate and set up HTTPS on your event website.
• implement 128-bit encryption into your website.
• Add the privacy policy and terms of service your website or app collects. Offer business professionals a separate space for their terms of service.

Why hire a software development company?

Today you can find the guides and tips nearly for anything. So be ready to come across the instructions on how to create an event website like Eventbrite or Tiqets. 

Everything is quite simple: buy a domain and hosting, choose the premium WordPress theme and set it up, add event management-related plugins, customize the theme to your preferences, create categories, listing and so on...

Note that it still requires coding skills. The WordPress event website is hardly seen as Eventbrite competitive. So the moral of this story: to ensure the success and relevance of your initiative, hire a software development agency.

So what are the benefits of hiring IT outsourcing company?

• The dedicated team realizes your project idea into the website effectively and quickly. They suggest the methods and programming languages to streamline the workflow and website performance.
• The development agency takes care of different tasks (i.e., coding, UX design, QA testing) at the same time. That makes the process more productive and ensure the release date within the estimated time.
• If you want to get feedback from the early adopters, you need a website with limited functionality. Here comes the minimum viable product (MVP) strategy. The outsourcing agency can help you with developing the features required for an early launch. Later they can work on adding more functionality to complete your event website.

Recap

The event industry enlarges its importance and popularity. That makes creating an event website like Eventbrite a profitable investment. Yes, there are many platforms helping people to attend various events and places. But they haven’t monopolized the industry. 

Have the idea of an event website that will overshadow the existing market offers? Drop us a line! Apiko team will assist you in defining the technologies for your project's success.