Zup.events sought to create an online place where residents of the greater NH Seacoast area could find out “what’s ZUP” in the Seacoast area. They came to us looking to build an enhanced customer experience for an audience of entertainment enthusiasts and fun-seekers, by presenting the area’s best options for movie theaters and live theater, workshops, holiday happenings, festivals, and much more.

Smile MEDIA was tasked with presenting a variety of events and activities happening in the area on a digital platform that intuitive and easy to navigate. Additionally, the platform needed to be designed with mobile, tablet, and desktop users in mind, making it simple and accessible from any device. Zup.events also wanted users to be able to get directions, add events to their personal calendars, purchase tickets and/or subscriptions, and more.

We ultimately built a website to manage and promote local events in and around the seacoast of NH, with a long-term interest to expand this footprint. The site’s monetization model is designed to ensure event hosts can promote their listings within the site, which required search engine indexability of all event traffic. SEO considerations included schema.org for restaurants and places, adaptive meta page descriptions, smart URLs, adaptive alt tags for images, and breadcrumbs, with an emphasis on event name, location, and event type directory listings.

As a result, Smile built a calendar functionality with multiple views (map and list view), location search, featured events, recurring events, and filtering capabilities. The site also allows for selling tickets and collecting RSVPs, with event tickets functionality, enabling users to purchase tickets from anywhere, with a built-in mobile ticketing app. This application allows for robust ticket management including ticket stock countdown and custom ticket tiers, on-site event management, ticket insights and reporting, attendee-only content and online events.

In addition, the site allows for automated event importing, where events are automatically imported into to the calendar, making it easy to add events from third-party sources. Community submissions functionality was also built in, which enables third-party event submissions and ticketing. Finally, to increase event attendance and keep events hosts connected to their audience, the site also features notification management functionality.