A Complete Guide to Building A Virtual Event App In 2022!

Last Updated on February 26, 2022

Some brands that the masses never knew suddenly got attention due to the COVID-19 crisis. Some classes of apps have seen their use and installation too unexpectedly spike. These include food supply applications, entertainment on-demand applications, telemedicine applications and, of course, connectivity applications.

According to the Techcrunch study, in just one week in March 2020, video conferencing applications for both business and personal uses were downloaded over 62 million times. And the market is demonstrated and the digital conferencing or Virtual Event industry chat industry is sparking.

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• How to Create an Educational App

On the one hand, software such as WhatsApp, Snapchat and Instagram are able to help people keep in touch. However, Citrix, Skype and Google Meet, Google Cloud have always dominated the contact environment on the professional/official front.

Video conferencing platforms were considered an underdog even during technical meetings and video conferences for offices. 

Today, however, many of these platforms have become household names and have started being known as the pandemic’s social network! They have transcended the fact that it is a dark forum for professional interaction right into the field of one of the most favorite and regular networking channels. 

One benefit of such platforms is the option to host Virtual Events – which has completely revolutionized the way events are held during these dire times of COVID – 19. With the option of live streaming the events, they have completely changed the way we humans have seen events forever. From not risking the health and wellness of organizers, guests or the hosts to minimizing the losses of hosts – we feel that Virtual Conferences or Virtual Events are the new best thing.

Wondering how to get your own virtual event platform built? Well, keep on reading and you’ll find out all about it. But first of all,

What Are Virtual Events Exactly?

Digital activities are events held online in their simplest sense. Digital events use web-based platforms to connect hundreds of people to thousands of people worldwide and also provide interactive features such as voting, Q&A, chat boxes, etc. Digitell, Evia, Intrado, ON 24, Zoom, GoToMeeting and more are among the top virtual event providers.

Virtual events can cover anything, including individual events, but generally, four kinds of virtual events are available: virtual conferences, webinars, hybrid internal events and external hybrid events.

What Are The Benefits Of Virtual Events?

• They’re Less Expensive

Meeting planners and event planners still try to save money with reduced budgets. The total cost of bringing your event into motion is drastically reduced due to simulated events and 75% less costly to be exact. Planners save on personnel, location, set-up and download, accommodation for the attendants, lodging, travel expenses and much more. The cost of the virtual meeting platform is the only thing that planners have to think about paying.

• They Save A Lot Of Time

You will save yourself, workers and your attendants so much time, as your event is interactive. While virtual events entail a certain setup time (e.g. website of the event, registration, event marketing, promotional activities, etc.) this is significantly less than the setup time of a personal event. You don’t need any travel time either! Your staff and attendants will now use this opportunity to focus on all other relevant matters.

• They’re Globally Scalable

Planners often aim to increase the reach of their event to include more participants. This is simple with virtual events! By sharing a connection to your website and social media sites, you can easily promote the event. Without thinking of flying, people from around the world will enter at once. Hosting a virtual event enables planners to maximize their exposure and get everyone together from wherever they live.

• They’re Flexible

Since virtual events are held online, you can broadcast the event flexibly. Regardless of whether you hold a thought leadership meeting, a virtual city hall, a sales kickoff, or a particular form of event, the sessions will be interactive. The various languages are available to invite guest speakers.

• They Make Networking Much Easier

As interactive happenings tend to be more rapid because participants do not need to switch from a session to a meeting or stand to a stand, ties with other participants or speakers may be simpler than an in-person event. And since this is online, participants can record important details conveniently on their tablet or device, such as people’s names, titles etc.

• Feedback Collection Becomes Much Easier

Feedback is essential for virtual events like in-person events. Unlike individual events, however, participants are still online during virtual events, so that they can easily respond to polls or sessions in real-time. This feedback in real-time will not only allow presenters to determine how their session is going (especially relevant because these presenters cannot see the visual faces of participants in some virtual events), it will also help to evaluate your virtual event’s overall performance.

• Measuring Results Becomes Much Easier

Even if the data generated by virtual events depends on the platform and event management software you use, some data about your event and attendances can be more easily collected during your virtual events than during an in-person event. Why does this happen? Since it’s all done online, it is easy to track. For example, when your participants signed in, the number of participants, how they pay and much more, you will know.

How Do Virtual Event Softwares Work?

Not only does the video conference or video event software permit users to view HD sound and video, but it can also support up to 1000 participants during a single meeting. A meeting can be attended by participants from all over the world given they have an internet connection. You can also turn your camera or microphone off whenever you want. The organization plans to provide its users with all its functionality, whatever the number of participants.

Some of the features of a good app are:

• Screen sharing – Since participants do not attend the meeting in the same room as you, you cannot display your presentation. The solution was a helpful function called Screen Sharing, allowing participants to share their screen to present to others in the meet.
• Chat – Meeting participants can interact effectively through the built-in chat function. Both members of the meeting can choose to message simultaneously or individually to messages.
• Virtual hand rising – If a participant wishes to talk or express concerns about a specific subject, he or she may remind the host using the virtual emoji. The productivity of the video conferencing app is further improved and many people can’t talk simultaneously.
• Polls – The host will collect answers by creating a poll if he or she wishes to understand the participant’s opinion on a specific subject.
• Mute Participants – The host can silence any participants they like if they believe the participant disrupts the meeting.
• Record meetings – With just a click of a button, each virtual meeting can be captured easily. You can then transfer this recording to the cloud or store it locally.
• Encryption – All virtual meetings or event conferences have end-to-end encryption software that prevents unauthorised individuals from accessing the meeting. Without the host’s permission, even the organisation itself cannot attend a conference.

What Goes Into Development Of Such Virtual Event Platforms?

These are some of the most crucial steps that we follow to build a virtual conferencing app:

Backend Development – During the initial stages of development, it is essential to build a server to run your app on. It is always better to build your server from scratch instead of using ready-made technologies.

UI Design – The user interface of your app creates the first impression of your service. Therefore, it is vital to have an appealing and intuitive UI.

iOS and Android Compatibility – To increase your target market, your app must support both iOS and Android devices. You can use Swift to create your iOS app and WebRTC for your Android app.

Then there are two really important aspects in the tech stack to be used by such apps – the cloud network and video architecture.

A. The Cloud Network

The virtual meeting apps have an integrated data center infrastructure that is tightly supervised, tracked and constantly optimized by its expert team. The network is built to provide global connectivity and to allow users from all over the world to have seamless connections. For an instance, Zoom has 15+ data centers worldwide, and this network is expanding further.

B. The Video Architecture

Our architecture has been optimized to meet the video requirements and our back-end technology and cloud-based infrastructure are differentiated by four main features:

• Distributed architecture: This kind of architecture allows users to share meetings across their network, seamlessly to join meetings via private communication with the closest data center. Distributed architecture Instead of a centralized approach. That provides the scalability of the platform so that up to thousands of people can have a consistent video experience in one meeting.
• Multimedia Routing: Multimedia Routing provides the customer with several streams of videos from other participants, decreases computers’ power needs and ensures a highly scalable system. In general, MCU supports less than 100 participants and by means of multimedia routing 15x more participants than normal. Legacy systems tend, in comparison, to select a fluid before supplying it with a system which requires resource-intensive computing and limits the quality and scalability of these systems with a Multipoint Control Unit (MCU).
• Multi-bitrate encoding: Each stream itself can be modified to many resolutions in addition to stream routing. This removes the need to encode, decode and optimize the output and scalability of the streams for – endpoint. This also helps the platforms to offer video quality levels depending on the system and network capabilities.
• Quality of service application layer: Our proactive quality of service application layer optimizes video, audio and screen-sharing for each device and the available bandwidth to provide the best possible network-wide experience.

How To Monetize Virtual Event Platform?

It’s a smart idea to create an app for virtual events. Many goals can be accomplished with the creation of custom apps. Moreover, event organizer apps can be an additional source of revenue for your organization.

In particular, the most common monetization solutions for event management applications are as follows:

• Make The Platform Paid – The best way to make money. You have to provide real value in this case to make your app worth the money. Your app can provide some extra features, such as an AR/VR experience, a lounge area for chatting and networking or offering additional advantages, such as skip-the-line or free coffee. 
• Adding your minor service costs to ticket sales– This is the most widely used model of event aggregators. There is no point in charging extra charges for buying tickets using the app for your own case. Instead, you can give the participants more incentive to install the app for a reduced ticket price.
• Place advertisements – Place advertisements to screen during the app navigation processes for participants. This could be advertising banners or other things displayed during the event (depending on its type).
• Take advantage of partnerships – In ride-hailing apps like Uber or Lyft, for example, you can integrate so participants can get to and from the event without leaving your application. Similarly, you can collaborate and sell exclusive discounts or discount deals for all participants for other local businesses.
• Turn the application into a white label solution and provide other event organizers with a platform to use – For instance, you would only have to use the app once if you have developed a really nice wedding event planning app. Why keep it for yourself when you can adapt it to the events of other people and earn some money?

Conclusion 

Thus, whether you’re an event planning professional who is willing to maximise your efforts, a company who plans to organise a series of events to boost your progress or a vendor who is looking for new and exciting opportunities on the mobile development market.

Frequently Asked Questions for building a Virtual Event App (FAQs)