How to find the best webinar software platform

Webinars have been a part of the event industry since the outbreak of Covid-19. They are similar to the physical seminars in every sense but the medium. Many organizations prefer to conduct online webinar software, and with the numerous advantages that they come with, it becomes easier.

What are the features of a webinar?

1. Webinars are informative. They generally feature a speaker or more who delivers knowledge and information on a specific topic. In a webinar, the audience and speakers come together through a virtual medium and have a healthy discourse.
2. The most prominent feature of a webinar is that it allows interaction. The audience can interact with the experts and put across their queries. Various platforms provide gripping features such as live polls, comments, Q&A sessions, and others that make a webinar even more gripping.
3. The organizers make the webinar interesting by including visually appealing features such as videos, presentations, and graphics that increase the information retention rate.

How to choose the right webinar platform?

When it comes to selecting a webinar platform, there are plenty of options to opt from. There are certain features you should look into a webinar solution, some of them are mentioned below:

Customizable Webinar Platform-

Start with choosing a webinar software that can customize the event as per your company’s needs and demands. A customized platform will make your brand more presentable, and your audience will connect with you in a better way. Since organizations conduct a webinar for branding, a platform with customizable features helps them achieve their objective efficiently. Some customizable features that webinar software provides are changing logos, theme, colours, formatting the landing page, sending personalized invitations, and dropping reminder mails. Choosing a customizable platform will make your job a lot easier; hence, experts suggest looking out for one.

Live Polls–

Including live polls in your webinar is another excellent way to increase audience engagement. It will make the audience feel involved, and their role is more than that of merely a listener. Live polls also help the organizers get quick feedback about the webinar. Along with it, live polls make sure the audience remains attentive throughout the webinar. Including polls in the webinar will help the speaker know if he is delivering the content effectively or the organizers are meeting their webinar objectives or not. Pick a virtual event software that provides gripping features including live polls.

Audience Feedback-

An expert webinar provider offers you a tool to collect feedback from the attendees. An event is not over after your audience walks out of the room, and an expert platform agrees with it. Since an organizer can’t send feedback emails to all the attendees personally, this feature will make it convenient to collect feedback all at once. Webinar platforms with this feature send out feedback forms immediately after the event gets over. You can ask them some questions related to what you have delivered to the audience during the event.

Allows Recording the Session-

Some platforms offer you the feature to record your webinar. This feature would help you keep a record of your webinar for your future reference. It would also help them send the session to those who registered for the event but couldn’t attend it due to some reasons. Another advantage of recording a webinar is that it allows you to use the snippets of the session and promote them on your social media channels. Though a live session is more engaging, a recorded one is beneficial in its ways. When it comes to a live session, there are chances of technical glitches and errors, leaving the host embarrassed and affecting the audience engagement. A pre-recorded session is refined and filtered. You can enhance the content quality by editing it and removing the irrelevant parts.

Screen Sharing Feature-

The biggest advantage that a webinar, or virtual event in general, offers is the ability to connect with people from around the world beyond geographical barriers and oceans. Webinars come with many such advantages, but one limitation they have is that the audience feels less involved in the event. It is because they are not able to see a few elements of the content the host is delivering. But thanks to the upgraded technology, hosts can now share their screens with the audience and convey information that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. The speaker can also use their screens to demonstrate the details of a specific topic. It would increase audience engagement and information retention rate.

Email and Social Media Integration-

Our lives are fully controlled by social media these days. Be it a piece of international news or a friend’s wedding, we use social media to stay updated on almost everything. Utilize this fact and include it in your promotional strategy. Various webinar platforms offer email and social media integration that improves subscription rates of the webinars and other events. This feature adds the new registrations directly to the email list. It then sends emails stating instructions to those people as the webinar date approaches. Along with this, social media integration allows the organizers to increase their brand visibility. It links ads to your webinar on a social media platform like Facebook and sends detailed statistics that enable the organizers to analyze their strategy.

Easily Accessible-

If the audience feels it difficult to navigate through the webinar platform that you chose, they won’t even bother to stay and find their way through it. Make sure your platform lets them access the webinar with a maximum of two clicks. Along with it, keep in mind that people find it convenient to attend webinars or virtual events, for that matter, via mobile phones. It allows them to be a part of the event from wherever they want to be. Make sure the webinar software you choose is fully accessible through mobile phones. This feature will boost the audience number for your webinar.

Feature to Collect Analytics-

Collecting and analyzing post-webinar data will help you evaluate your entire event and conclude what went wrong and which strategy went well. Having analytics of your event would take you through the audience’s perspective and would tell you how effective your webinar was. However, organizers need to know that obtaining analytics is far more beneficial than knowing the number of attendees. Use them to know which feature engaged the most audience. It will help you work on your future strategies and execute future editions effectively.

Security of the Webinar Platform-

The most crucial factor you need to consider while looking for a platform is its security. Everything comes later when it comes to the safety levels of your virtual event platform. You would never want to collaborate with a platform that can put your audience’s data at risk. If your audience trusts you with their valuable information, maintain it. Invest in a highly secured platform that assures safety from hackers and other security threats. One example of a webinar platform that ensures utmost safety is Dreamcast.

Feedback and Reviews-

One feature that prominent online webinar platforms provide you is the feedback and reviews of their previous customers. Go through these reviews to find if the webinar has everything you’re looking for. Try to go through independent reviews as they are uninfluenced by the webinar providers. It will help you have a detailed knowledge of the pros and cons of the online webinar providers.

Final Word-

If you come across any platform that has all these features, go with that option. There are various examples of webinar software platforms that come with these features, Dreamcast is one of them.

Remember, the success rate of your webinar entirely depends upon the choice you make. Select Wisely!