Over the past months, we have actively been collecting your feedback to upgrade the visitor side of the Expo to optimize its experience and improve the representation of your brand.  

As there are many parts to the visitor side, there will be multiple parts to this upgrade in the coming month.  

In this article, we would like to introduce the first update of the series and its store for you. 

Improved navigation

When entering an Expo, you will notice that we have relocated the main navigation into a sidebar. As a default, an Expo opens with the “Explore” page. This is an upgraded version of the previous starting page, but we will go in-depth later in this article. Additionally, you have the options to navigate to “My Expo”, “Events” and your user profile in the sidebar. We will elaborate more on those pages below. The navigation has also received a significant update on mobile, now following the pattern users know and love from their favorite apps on their smartphones. To improve navigation, we have added breadcrumbs to the top of the page to give users transparency on how they got to the page they are currently viewing. 

Global Search 

A brand-new feature, which we would like to present to you is the “Global Search”. You will always find the search icon in the top right corner. Here you can search for a specific brand, product or search for topics and categories that interest you. The search query scans all pages of Virtrex and can also be used to navigate between sections. 

My Expo (Previously My Agenda & My Products) 

To create a personal, curated space for the user, we have merged “My Agenda” & “My Products”. This page now consolidates all products, showrooms, and panels, saved by the user. 

Events 2.0 

Our most significant update was made to the concept of events, channels, and panels. When navigating to the “Events” tab in the sidebar, you will see a page showing all events present on an Expo. Here the visitor can directly see which events are live, which ones are already archived, and which events require a premium ticket.  

When entering an event, you will be redirected to the channel overview. Essentially, a channel is what you have known as a stage in the past; however, channels give you more flexibility when planning an event. 

At the top of the screen, you will see the channel navigation bar. Here you can choose to see all panels or filter the page towards a specific topic. Additionally, there is a calendar that enables you to set a specific date. After you filtered towards your preferences, you will then see all relevant panels below.  

Lastly, the panel page received some minor visual updates. The visitor now gets a more precise overview of the description and speakers and can see which panels are up next.