Lunada Bay trade show exhibit designer and builder

Custom trade show displays serve many purposes. In the hands of a skilled exhibit designer, your exhibit will express your brand image, communicate your messages, and educate your target audience. In other words, it will do a lot of the heavy lifting, in terms of messaging, for you.

On the other hand, a poorly designed exhibit has the potential of—at best, doing nothing for you—and at worst negatively impacting your target audience's opinion of your company and costing you valuable sales leads.

So is your exhibit working? Here are some exhibit design evaluation tips, courtesy of 3D Exhibits:

7 questions to determine if your trade show exhibit design is working for you:

 

  1. Is it easy to tell who the company is? This one is simple. If people can't tell who you are by looking at your trade show exhibit, you are going to have a hard time accomplishing your objectives.
  1. Do the colors, architecture, and ambiance of the trade show exhibit reflect the desired brand image? Themes and styles are all well-and-good—as long as they reinforce the same image as your website, advertising and other customer outreach. If you aren't exuding consistency across all marketing channels, you are undermining your own efforts. This relates to the exhibit interior as well as the exterior.
  1. Is it easy to tell what the company does? Ideally, your trade show display makes people self-qualify—as in stop and think—"Hey, I need to check this out." If attendees can't tell what your company does without entering the exhibit, they are going to walk right by. Note: this one is unnecessary for companies that everyone in the industry already knows.
  1. Is the exhibit attractive to the target audience? Yes, you want your trade show exhibit to drive general industry awareness. But even more important, you want it to entice that smaller slice of the attendee pie—your prospects and customers. The most important aspect of this is that the exhibit messaging or visible displays let them see how they will benefit from visiting you.
  1. Does the space draw people to enter? Ultimately your exhibit is only as good as the number and quality of attendees you interact with. Regardless of whether your exhibit is wide open from the aisles or has limited entry, it can only succeed if some aspect of the space makes people want to come in. This could be through ambiance, by eliciting curiosity, or through a draw such as a game, key message, promotional offer, or graphic.
  1. Do the space and design support storytelling? What do people need to see, hear, do or feel to understand your message? The best exhibits provide tools and media that accomplish this. Or even better—the storytelling is integrated right into the design. It could be an interactive experience, a gallery, a theater, a hands-on demo, a comfortable place to converse with visitors—or something completely unique and unexpected. Whatever it is for your brand and product, the exhibit has to facilitate it.
  1. Can people navigate the space easily, find what they want with minimal effort? If people can't locate what they want within a few seconds, they will leave. This navigation can be intuitive, visual (they can see the displays), graphic—or even with human guidance. But it has to be there.
Lunada Bay Tile Trade Show Exhibit Designer and Builder 2