How a Branded Event Website Doubled Registrations for UNSW O-Week Events

O-Week creates an important first impression for new students at UNSW and it’s vital that events feel welcoming and inclusive to everyone. This starts online — attracting students to register for events via the UNSW website.

In previous years, this created a real challenge for UNSW. Their event calendar provided a clunky experience for students: events weren’t presented consistently, some redirected to third-party ticketing sites, and there was no way of sending event information or reminders to students. Put simply, it didn’t feel like “a UNSW experience”, which caused confusion and low registrations for events.

Behind the scenes, managing the admin for so many events came with just as many headaches. The 2.5 person team had a large amount of manual workload to manage for each event on behalf of their 20+ organisers. Any time an event organiser wanted information on attendance, they needed to contact the O-Week team, leaving staff inundated with requests during their busiest time of year.

In 2018, UNSW tackled these problems by partnering with Eventbrite to create a branded events hub, with the help of Web Presence. Web Presence is a branded events portal that provides multi-user access to Eventbrite’s online ticketing platform, managed within a single branded website for UNSW. This allows the Student Development team to maintain control and consistency over O-Week, while empowering organisers within UNSW to manage their own events. Staff have visibility over all events, without having to manage the day-to-day admin of every account.

This significantly reduces the manual workload for the O-Week team, while improving the attendee experience. A single hub improves event discovery, helping students find events to help them settle into campus life.

Having a branded events hub allowed the O-Week team to take charge of their events by:

The last thing any event creator wants to do is create barriers that put people off registering for their events — but sometimes that is exactly what event ticketing pages do. In order to keep all events together on the same page, UNSW used a calendar that listed events as sessions. No contact information was collected from attendees and students had to navigate multiple pages to find what they were looking for. If they did RSVP, there was no way for event organisers to contact attendees, so students didn’t receive reminders and couldn’t be notified if details of the event changed.

Some savvy event organisers within UNSW used third-party platforms to manage their event listings, asking staff to add a link to their calendar session. As this required students to navigate away from the UNSW page, this often created more confusion, particularly for international students.

Introducing a single, branded events hub to manage aggregated listings turned this around in 2018. “The UNSW Communities portal has been a huge benefit to students — it’s far more engaging and easier for students to discover and register for events,” says David Maxwell, UNSW Student Development Officer. “Now it feels like a UNSW process — everything is seamless and we’ve seen a dramatic increase in registrations as a result. Having the ability to send email reminders is reducing no-shows and improving engagement with attendees.”

Universities like UNSW understand the significance of their online brand. Google research indicates that 97% of Australian students rely on the internet to research and choose higher education — more than any other vertical studied. Presenting a poor online experience reflects on a University’s brand and can be off-putting for students.

Maxwell explains, “Universities spend a great deal of time and money selling the experience that students can expect, and O-Week makes an important first impression. It’s essential for UNSW to present a consistent image and demonstrate that our University is at the forefront of technology,” he says.

By introducing a branded experience to discover events, O-Week no longer feels separate to browsing the UNSW website. The time and money invested in marketing and branding is carried through to O-Week, providing an engaging and familiar experience for new students.