Multi-Site Platform

The Opportunity
The World Market Center Las Vegas (WMCLV) needed to quickly and effectively position itself as the business unit behind Las Vegas Market, Gift + Home, Las Vegas Kids and InspireDesign—all world-class trade events, called Markets, within the B2B home furnishing industry. WMCLV turned to Defero to transform a singular, ill-fitting website into an entire suite of websites (one for each show) with WMCLV’s corporate site as the anchor for each show’s site.  

The Approach
Defero aimed to help WMCLV develop a web presence that reflected its physical prominence, while leveraging all the value propositions that differentiate WMCLV’s events from its competitors.

Defero built the suite of websites on a multi-site Content Management System (CMS) to allow WMCLV the ability to manage content easily among each of the sister websites.  To enhance the user experience, each Market site mirrored the corporate site and offered parallel navigation with information unique to each Market’s audience. Defero created a fully-integrated registration process along with a custom community section for WMCLV’s Exhibitors and attendees. Once logged in to WMCommunity, the site allows for a rich experience with the suite of sites – Users  interact with a dynamic interface that allowed them to build custom profiles, manage directory listings, add events to personal calendars, requesting meetings, view an interactive floor plan, create a custom itinerary, and connect with other Attendees and Exhibitors.

The Results
With such a user-friendly interface, registration process, and customization available for Attendees and Exhibitors, the websites provide a perfect portal for users to prepare for each Market and seek information in between these key events.  The most recent Market in January 2011, was a definite success for World Market Center and Defero. Online registrations surpassed 75,000, overall visits exceeded 338,000 and page views topped 1.3 million views. Over the course of the Winter market period, LasVegasMarket.com received 85% of total visits to all World Market Center sites, with the majority being new visitors versus returning visitors.

Engagement with the website spiked twice as much as the past Market.  Engagement within community was also at its highest point during January, yielding nearly 20,000 page views or almost half of all community page views recorded during the entire Market cycle from September to February  (41,025 total LVM community page views during the Winter Market timeframe).