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Trade fair website development

For exhibition organisers, trade show teams and associations running an annual show who sell stands from a floor plan, need exhibitors to manage their own profiles, invoices and manuals, register thousands of visitors with badges and entry types, and hand each exhibitor their scanned leads when the doors close.

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The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

A two-day trade show fills one hall with two hundred and forty stands, runs a seminar theatre with sixty seats recorded by the organiser, and expects six thousand visitors.

  • Stand sales start ten months out from a floor plan in a design file: the sales team marks stands sold by colouring them in and emails the plan round each Friday, so two sales people sell the same corner stand in the same week.
  • Exhibitor contracts are documents, invoices are raised in accounting by hand, and the exhibitor manual with build-up times, electrics and badge forms goes out as an attachment nobody can find in February.

Where it gets harder

Exhibitor profiles for the show guide are chased by email for three months, arrive in every format and are retyped.

  • Visitor registration runs on a generic form that does not distinguish trade buyers from students or press, so the badges on the day say nothing useful and the entry rule for trade-only hours is enforced by a steward guessing.
  • Seminars are first come, first seated, so the popular session has eighty people for sixty seats and the fire officer is not amused.
  • Badges are printed in a batch the week before, and the registration desk hand-writes three hundred on the morning.
  • When the show closes, exhibitors ask for the leads from the scanners they hired, and the organiser forwards a spreadsheet from the scanning company a week later with half the fields empty.
  • Sponsors ask what their logo placement delivered and nobody can say.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom trade fair build normally covers:

  • The show edition as the organising unit So next year's show inherits the floor plan, categories and packages
  • An interactive floor plan with stand numbers Sizes and a status for each, available, reserved, sold or held, with a reservation that expires
  • Stand packages such as shell scheme Space only and corner premiums with prices entered by the organiser
  • Exhibitor booking from the floor plan or by the sales team Producing a contract, an invoice through the connected tools and a record of payments
  • An exhibitor portal For the profile that feeds the directory and show guide, the invoice history, the exhibitor manual with deadlines, badge requests for stand staff and forms for electrics, furniture and build-up slots
  • A public exhibitor directory searchable by category Hall and product
  • Visitor registration with entry types such as trade Press, student and VIP, qualifying questions, approval where required and badges that state the type
  • Trade-only hours enforced by badge type at scanning
  • A seminar programme with the room figures the organiser records Bookable by visitors and scanned at the door
  • Sponsor packages with the benefits listed and a sponsor portal
  • Matchmaking that suggests exhibitors to visitors From their declared interests and lets them request meetings
  • Lead capture by exhibitors scanning visitor badges with their phones
  • A post-show export of each exhibitor's leads and the organiser's attendance report by type, day and hour

How discovery works

Discovery follows last year's edition from the first stand sale to the lead export with the show director, a sales person, operations and marketing: how the floor plan is managed, what the packages are, what the manual contains, how visitors are qualified and badged, how seminars are seated and what exhibitors expect afterwards. Each becomes a named stage in the scope document: sell stands, exhibitor profiles, visitor registration, show days, leads exported.

Deliberately out of scope

  • The venue's own contracting, the stand contractors' design tools and the organiser's accounting, which are connected where it earns its place. Hired scanning hardware is an integration opportunity scoped per provider

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

An organiser running six shows a year in different halls, with a shared exhibitor database so a returning exhibitor rebooks from last year's stand, multi-hall floor plans, paid visitor tickets for some shows and free trade registration for others, hosted-buyer programmes with scheduled meetings, and sponsor reporting across the portfolio. That is a different build from one annual show in one hall, and the scope document says so plainly.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from last year's edition, including the floor plan file, stand packages, exhibitor manual, visitor form and the lead spreadsheet
  • A written scope document naming each stage from stand sales to lead export, with what is out of scope
  • Design of the public site and directory, the floor plan, the exhibitor portal, visitor registration and badges, seminar booking and the on-site scanning pages on phone and desktop
  • The build, deployed to your hosting or ours
  • Migration of exhibitor records, this edition's stand sales and contracts, and visitor records from current tools, where relevant
  • Training for the sales team, operations, the registration desk and exhibitors, with a short written guide and an exhibitor portal walkthrough
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your data

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access, contacts and a look at the floor plan file, the stand sales tracker, the exhibitor manual, the visitor registration form and last year's badge and lead files.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Discovery with the show director, sales, operations and marketing; stand statuses and reservation rules, packages, manual deadlines, visitor entry types and qualification, seminar room figures and lead fields are agreed in the scope document with a milestone plan.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Clickable designs of the floor plan, the exhibitor portal, the visitor registration flow, the badge layouts and the scanning pages, checked on a sales laptop and a phone held in a crowded aisle.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Built in stages: editions, floor plan and stand sales first, then the exhibitor portal, directory and manual, then visitor registration, badges and seminars, then scanning, matchmaking, sponsors and the lead export.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    The team runs a rehearsal: a stand reserved by two sales people, an exhibitor completing the manual, trade and student registrations, a seminar that fills, a badge print and a lead scan in the hall, and tells us where it does not match the show.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Reservation rules, portal deadlines, qualification questions, badge layouts and lead fields are adjusted from the review and re-checked against the scope document.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Exhibitors and stand sales migrated, payment and invoicing tested end to end, badge printers and scanners paired at the venue, the directory published, checklist signed off before registration opens.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    The organiser runs the show on the new system; optional maintenance and hosting continue under their own agreement.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Invoicing and accounting software for stand contracts, instalments and sponsor invoices
  • Card payment providers for stand deposits, visitor tickets and seminar fees where charged
  • Badge printers at the registration desk and handheld or phone scanning for entry, seminars and leads
  • Email and SMS providers for manual deadlines, visitor confirmations, badge delivery and post-show follow-up
  • Mapping and travel information for the venue page
  • Marketing and CRM tools for exhibitor pipelines and visitor campaigns
  • Show guide and signage production tools fed from the exhibitor directory

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

A six-show organiser with returning exhibitors, multi-hall plans and hosted buyers

The situation

An organiser ran six shows a year on six separate websites and spreadsheets, so a company exhibiting at three of them had three profiles, three logins and three sets of invoices, and the sales team could not see which exhibitors from last year had not yet rebooked.

Why it is a custom build

This needs a custom build because the portfolio-wide exhibitor database, rebooking logic and hosted-buyer scheduling sit on top of the single-show workflow in a way exhibition website templates do not provide.

The scope we would propose

  • One exhibitor database across the portfolio with a rebooking offer of last year's stand before general sales open
  • Multi-hall floor plans per edition with reservations that expire
  • Packages per show with the organiser's prices
  • One exhibitor login showing every show, manual and invoice
  • Visitor registration configured per show as paid tickets or free qualified trade entry
  • A hosted-buyer programme where selected visitors book scheduled meetings with exhibitors
  • Seminar booking against the figures recorded for each theatre
  • Lead scanning with the exhibitor's phone
  • Sponsor reporting across shows

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Number of shows per year and whether exhibitors are shared across them
  • Floor plan complexity: halls, stand count, reservation rules and how often the plan changes
  • Stand packages, contracts, instalments and the invoicing tools connected
  • Exhibitor portal depth: profile and invoices only, or the full manual with forms and deadlines
  • Visitor registration: entry types, qualification and approval, paid or free, badge printing on site
  • Seminar programme with capacity and scanning at the door
  • Lead capture, matchmaking and hosted-buyer scheduling
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

Trade fair package

Interactive floor plan with stand statuses, exhibitor booking and portal, exhibitor directory, visitor registration with entry types and badges, seminar capacity and lead export for trade shows.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

When is the package enough and when do we need a custom build?

The trade fair package covers a single show with a floor plan and stand statuses, exhibitor booking and portal, the directory, visitor registration with entry types and badges, seminar capacity and lead export with configuration. A custom build is the honest answer for several shows sharing an exhibitor database, multi-hall plans with rebooking logic, hosted-buyer programmes or paid and free registration across a portfolio. Discovery tells you which before anything is quoted.

How does the floor plan stop two sales people selling the same stand?

Every stand has one status. Reserving it marks it reserved for a period you set and shows who holds it; a second sales person sees that immediately and can only join a waiting list. Reservations expire and release automatically unless converted to a booking with a contract.

Can exhibitors fill in their own manual forms?

Yes. The exhibitor portal lists each form with its deadline, such as electrics, furniture, build-up slot and stand staff badges, shows what is outstanding and reminds the exhibitor. Operations sees completion across all stands and chases the gaps rather than the whole list.

How do exhibitors get their leads?

Exhibitor staff scan visitor badges with their phones through the scanning page, add a note and a rating, and the leads appear in their portal live. After the show each exhibitor exports its own leads with the fields the visitor consented to share; the organiser never hands out the whole visitor list.

Who owns the system afterwards?

You do. Source code and data are handed over at delivery; hosting and maintenance are optional and separately agreed, and the system can move to another provider.

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