How Do I Create a Custom Event Website Using Splash?

by Oct 2, 2020Marketing

If you’re hosting an event or thinking about hosting an event, it goes without saying that you need a promotional event website where all the information about your event will live. You also need a place where guests can easily register for your event or buy tickets.

That’s exactly what the event marketing platform, Splash, allows you to do. In this guide, we’ll take a look at how to create a custom Splash event website as well as go over the platform’s features and pricing. 

What is Splash?

Splash is an event marketing platform that makes it easy to set up an event marketing website or landing page to promote your virtual conference or live event. For short, they’re referred to as Splash websites. The platform can be used for any type of event: from conferences to recruiting events, happy hours, and more.

You can easily customize the look and feel of your event website without a single line of code. Splash makes it easy to collect RSVPs for your event as well as sell tickets. 

In addition to that, Splash ties in with third-party apps such as HubSpot, Zapier, Salesforce, and more for integrated marketing.

Splash Features Overview

Let’s take a look at some of the most important features that Splash event marketing platform has to offer. 

Design

The website design services offered by Splash are very user-friendly. For starters, you can create a website that matches your brand to a T. Editing colors takes a click of a button and the same goes for editing the fonts. 

You can easily upload your images from the computer or use the built-in integration with Unsplash to find gorgeous images for your event website. 

On top of that, you can easily see how your Splash event page design looks on mobile, desktop, and tablet devices as you’re customizing it. So before you go off and hire responsive web designers, remember that Splash is all about web design made easy.

Marketing

Marketing is an important part of your event and Splash makes it easy to promote your event and increase signups and registrations. You can completely configure the registration forms, as well as send targeted confirmation and other messages to your event attendees.

You can also promote multiple events. Your Splash event website comes with white-label calendars for programs, series, and campaigns and you can integrate them with your email newsletters to generate hype about each of your events through email marketing

Analytics

Once you create your Splash event website, you will have in-depth analytics at your fingertips. You can easily see all the events you’re promoting as well as how many people have registered for each event. 

Thanks to Splash’s CRM, you can segment engaged audiences and community members. This allows you to fine-tune your marketing messages and you can also sync that information with other tools and apps.

Pricing

Splash offers 4 different pricing plans to choose from. 

  • Free — you can get started with Splash for free and create a good-looking event website using the basic features. The free plan is a great choice for occasional small business events with few attendees. 
  • Basic — the Basic plan comes with premium templates and more advanced features such as the ability to send unlimited emails, create custom event categories, email and phone support, and more. The price for this plan is $9500/year. This plan is a great choice for creating websites for event planners or virtual event planners. 
  • Pro — the Pro plan has everything from the Basic plan as well as extra features including more granular design and access control, the ability to create your own email templates and social share cards, and more. The price for this plan is $19500/year and it’s suitable for any event marketing agency that wants an easy to use platform for their event marketing website.  
  • Enterprise — the last plan, Enterprise, is suitable for large-scale operations and custom workflows. You’ll have to get in touch with a sales team to get the pricing for this plan.

How To Create An Event Marketing Website With Splash

To get started with Splash, visit their website. They offer a free plan which is a great way to get familiar with the platform. For the purposes of this tutorial, we’ll be using the free plan to introduce you to its powerful event marketing software.

Step 1. Sign Up For The Free Plan

Click on the button that says “Try It Free”. You’ll be taken to the next page where you can create your Splash account by entering a name, email, and password. 

On the next page, you’ll have the chance to select between two types of events: RSVP event where you can collect and manage your RSVPs or a Ticketed event which allows you to sell tickets for your event. Choose whichever is appropriate for your type of event and fill out the event details. 

You’ll need to enter the name, location of your event, time and date it’s taking place and select a domain where your event marketing website will live.

Step 2: Choose Your Theme

The next step in the process is choosing a theme for your event website. By default, you’ll only see themes that were designed for a specific type of event. However, you can easily see other themes and choose a different one by selecting “All” from the dropdown menu. 

If you have design experience, you can also choose a more advanced theme that gives you complete control over the design of your website. However, if you’re just looking for something simple to get started with, using a recommended theme is a great option. 

For this tutorial, I’ll be using their Minimal Launch template. Once you’ve picked your template, it’s time to customize and set up your event website. 

Step 3: Customize The Theme

After you have chosen a theme for your event marketing website, you’ll be taken to your dashboard. The first thing you’ll see is a quick tour of the dashboard that shows where the most important settings are. 

You can then see your event page, ticket editor, confirmation page, and other elements that you can use to manage and promote your event. 

To customize your event page, click on it and wait for the editor to load. Working with the event editor is easy. To edit any element on the page, click on it and you’ll see all the options associated with it. 

For example, to change the font used in the title of your event, click on it and then click the “Font” menu. 

Each theme comes with a few fontsets already pre-configured and you can easily switch between them. A fontset is nothing more than a collection of fonts that go well together. This is a great way to customize the fonts on your site if you don’t want to spend a lot of time figuring out which fonts go together.  

Each fontset can also be customized even further. You can easily remove fonts you don’t like and add your favorites. Splash uses Google Fonts library so you have more than 900 fonts to choose from. 

You can also customize the website colors used throughout your theme by clicking on the background option for any element. You can add your own colors by clicking on the “Edit Color Set” option. 

Similarly to fonts, you can choose between several pre-made color sets or you can customize each color by entering a HEX or RGB color code. 

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Step 3: Add Your Images

To add your own event images, all you have to do is hover over an image and then click “Change”.

You can upload an image from your computer or you can search for stock photo resources using the built-in Unsplash and Giphy integration. 

For each image you add, you can change how the image is positioned on the page, set the size, and crop the image. 

Step 5: Add Your Content

Once you’ve customized the styles and added your own photos, you can start adding your own content. Simply click on any text block and delete the dummy content. 

Then, paste or type in your own copy. As you can see from the screenshot, you can format the text with bold, italics or underline style and add links. Other options include changing the font size and the text alignment, setting a different color, and customizing the line height and letter spacing. 

Step 6: Add Additional Blocks

The theme we started off with already has plenty of blocks in place to provide your guests with enough information about your event. But what if you want to add more like a video or a sponsor list? 

You can easily do so by clicking the + sign and adding extra blocks to the page. For example, to add a sponsor list, select the “Sponsor” block. You’ll see a few premade layouts to choose from so pick a layout you like and it will be added to the page. You can then upload your sponsors’ logos. 

You can even add additional logos by pressing the + sign on the Sponsor block itself. Pressing the + will add one extra logo but if you click it again, it will add another one so click it as many times as you need to add all of your sponsor logos to the block.

Other blocks include maps, about sections, covers, lists, audio, countdown timers, social blocks, navigation, and more. Each block has several layouts that you can use as a starting point and then customize to your liking.

Step 7: Configure Ticket Options

When you’re done customizing your page, you’ll need to configure your ticket sales options if you chose to sell tickets through your event page. To set up your tickets, go back to the dashboard and then click on “Ticket Editor”. 

Click Create new ticket and give it a name. You can then add a description for the ticket, configure the price, set the number of available tickets, and configure other options. When you’re done, click “Save”. 

Under the “Payout” tab, you can set up your payout method which is how Splash will transfer the money earned from tickets to you. Currently, the only option is to connect your Stripe account so go ahead and do that. 

Once your Stripe account has been connected, you’re ready to start selling tickets for your event and receiving payments.

Keep in mind that you can also create discount codes for your tickets as well as create tickets with different pricing by adding a new type of ticket. This is a great option if you want to have an early bride pricing and a regular price ticket.

On top of configuring your ticket, you can also customize confirmation email, ticket purchase forms, and share cards. These tools use the same editing and design options as the main event website editor which means customizing them is pretty straightforward. 

Step 8: Configure Other Settings

Lastly, you can configure other settings for your event such as the registration status, who can view your event registration website, customize the SEO information, sharing options, and connect other platforms such as HubSpot, Salesforce, Zapier, and others. 

Final Thoughts: Is Splash The Right Event Marketing Platform For You?

As you can see, the Splash event marketing platform has a lot to offer if you’re an event planner who wants a website that’s easy to use and maintain. Splash offers plenty of features to create, promote, and track the success of your event. 

If you’re an event planner and looking for a reliable platform for your website, the Splash platform is definitely worth looking into. And the best part is that you can get started for free by following the steps outlined in this article. 

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