Designing a delightful networking experience

And increasing click rates with 20%

Conversation Starter is a networking tool for business events. It works terrific: people have collectively planned over 21.000 meetings with each other. 🚀

Although it’s a professional application used to do serious business, should it also feel like any other business application (such as an invoicing tool)?
No. Neither do business events:

Business events are not cold transactions of knowledge and business cards. They are experiences that aim to delight participants from start to end.

That’s why we decided to redesign Conversation Starter and turn the interface into a delightful and friendly experience. We set out three goals:

1. A look and feel that’s delightful and friendly
2. Eliminating tiny annoyances
3. Email notifications from “a friend”

1. A look and feel that’s delightful and friendly

No half work here: we developed a new user interface from scratch. ✍️

• Less clutter and more structure
• Rounder shapes and softer colors
• A friendlier font with more whitespace
• Playful icons and text
• Colorful and attractive event landing pages ✨

New event landing page

New browsing interface

2. Eliminating tiny annoyances

As we developed feature after feature, tiny annoyances started to creep into Conversation Starter. Feels great to iron them out. 🤓

Detailed information about how to find a meeting point is now available at a glance. It’s now also easy to cancel a meeting.

Error messages specify exactly what’s wrong with your input.

If you’ve used Conversation Starter before, it’s now easy to reuse your information, including your bio.

Over the last 18 months we have implemented over 400 tweaks like these. If that sounds like a lot, remember that Conversation Starter is not just an application for event participants. It’s also an extensive application for organisers to manage their event.

3. Email notifications from “a friend”

This one is simple but high-impact. 😍

A couple of weeks before the event, participants receive an email from Conversation Starter with a call-to-action to start to plan meetings. Participants should:

1. Read the email
2. Click on the call-to-action link

Intuitively you would think a fancy HTML email works best. Nope. Despite people saying they prefer HTML instead of simple text, there are two reasons they don’t work well:

1. Google and Outlook put HTML emails in the “other” or “promotions” inbox tab, where they go unnoticed.
2. Fancy HTML emails are perceived by recipients as trying to sell you something. Just like people ignoring banner ads, people quickly skim through HTML emails.

That’s why we decided to use simple text emails that read as if they were written by a good friend (the event organiser in this case). A friend who genuinely cares about you and wants you to have the best networking experience. 👊

The result: open and click rates are both up with ± 20%. Sweet!

We hope you liked this post. If you did, hit 👏 to spread the word!

If you’re organising a business event, feel free to get in touch for a demo or have a look at our website.