A Conference Platform Designed for Scale

What is Impact Nation?

Impact Nation is also known as the Relias User Conference. This year’s conference was for more than just Relias customers; it’s grown into a conference for all who are involved in staff education. On top of Relias LMS training, the conference offers training on blended learning, on-boarding, employee development, leadership, communication and industry trends.

Project Context

ikonic was tasked with designing and developing a digital platform for marketing future conferences. The platform needed to be tightly integrated with the existing relias.com content management system but required its own, unique design aesthetic. Relias also needed the same flexible page-building tools they were accustomed to using on their primary marketing website.

Strategy

Collaborating with Relias' marketing team we built a strategy around a clearly defined goal: to increase year-over-year attendance for the Relias user conference: Impact Nation. We created simple wireframes and interactive prototypes to demonstrate the site architecture and define the customer journey. These creative exercises also ensured both Relias and ikonic understood how we would measure and validate the motivations and intentions of each site visitor.

ikonic then designed a user interface that would differentiate the conference platform while remaining true to Relias' established brand standards and other digital properties. After a full assessment of Relias' platform requirements we decided to build the conference website as an extension of the existing relias.com website. 

Platform Development

Leveraging Relias' existing Hubspot COS build meant we could take full advantage of the complete Relias technology stack. We could replicate the same administrative workflow that Relias staff were were already familiar with for updates to the conference website.

The new site required ikonic to build a completely new template architecture including more than a dozen templates to define conference page layouts, resources, and flexible modules. 

Key Features

Scalable architecture

Built on the powerful Hubspot COS this site will continue to scale up with new and evolving business needs. Hubspot COS also provides the same powerful analytics, marketing, and sales tools Relias depends on for their primary website. 

Reusability

For past conferences, Relias had been forced to start from scratch with a new website. On our new platform Relias has the ability to re-purpose this conference site year after year, saving significant time and expense leading up to future conferences.

Custom administration workflow

The existing relias.com admin workflow ensured Relias staff could manage page content leading up to the conference. The customized workflow enables easy, dynamic content management across multiple types of content. 

Drag-and-Drop Page Building

Hubspot page-building techniques allowed ikonic to build dozens of custom modules which Relias' team can add to pages using an intuitive drag-and-drop interface.  

Results

The conference site launched several months in advance of the event. Our custom administration tools were used throughout the year to publish up-to-date news and registration information leading up to the event. During the conference, the site was used as a reference hub for attendees needing a quick glance at the session schedule or a chance to read up on the session speakers they were about to hear.