Event apps get downloaded by a third of attendees and opened twice. When a dedicated app earns its place, when a good mobile web agenda beats it, and how to get adoption if you build one.
The honest answer for most events is: not a separate one. A dedicated app asks every attendee to install software for two days of use, and typical adoption sits around a third of registrations — of whom a large share open it once, on the morning, to find the room.
In rough order:
All five work perfectly well on a mobile web page. None of them needs the camera, offline storage or push notifications badly enough to justify an install — with one exception, below.
That covers 90% of what an app would have done, for every attendee rather than a third of them.
Adoption does not happen by announcement. It happens when the app is the only route to something people want: the personal schedule, the Q&A queue, a session's slides, the attendee directory. Tell people at registration, again the week before, and from the stage in the first five minutes — with the reason, not just the link.
What will this app do that a web page cannot, that at least half my attendees will use more than twice? If there is no answer, spend the money on networking that works or on captions instead — both are more visible to more people.
Gathervo's attendee portal runs in the browser on any device, with the agenda, personal schedule, QR code and directory, and includes a mobile app on the higher tiers for events that genuinely need one. See the plans.
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