The transformation of our event calendar


David Ho   |   June 5, 2020

Since the beginning of ShenzhenParty.com our core has revolved around events, first by organizing events in bars and restaurants around the city and then moving to five star hotels to host the Shenzhen Wine and Cheese Club.

While we have paused organizing our own events, we have been exceeding our competitors by posting more quality events in The Greater Bay Area and promoting them farther than anyone else.

Take a look at the new event calendar

Our event calendar / Image courtesy of Beck Xu

Our event calendar has become “ShenzhenEvents.com”. As its own site we can provide a better event experience than before. When we took a look at how we had become the central resource for events in Shenzhen and The Greater Bay Area, we knew that we had to bring our event calendar into a focused site.

Events are coming back

Prior to COVID we had over 4,000 events on our new event calendar. In the past couple months we did some cleanup of our old event calendar and found that we had 20,000 events posted over the last 10 years averaging out around 2,000 events a year. So we could already see an unprecedented momentum on our new ShenzhenEvents.com event calendar.

As the Pearl River Delta starts to return to normal and the hope of a travel bubble is on the horizon, we have once again upgraded the event calendar with a more modern mobile look and better navigation of our event categories.

We have even given our event editors more backend tools to be notified of new events that are posted and be able to process and moderate them faster. There are a lot of other under the hood tweaks that will provide value over time as well.

We have also published a guide for posting events to our website.

Lean Startup Approach

We decided to take the approach of function over form for this event calendar reboot and we have followed the Lean Startup approach, creating a minimum viable product that we could get out in front of you all. With this we have kept things simple while getting the essential functions out to you all so we can test and learn.

The Ultimate KOL

With hundreds of partners that submit events and promote ShenzhenParty.com when they promote their events, we have built a brand that partners appreciate. They know by posting event listings, they attract the over half a million people that visit our sites each year to their businesses.

Our Shenzhen websites are the ultimate Key Online Influencers (KOL) promoting our partner’s events on our website and all social platforms. We go where the Shenzhen people are which includes WeChat, Meetup, Facebook and more.

New Categories for everyone

In our June update to the event calendar we have made the event categories clearer and have highlighted them in the main navigation so now you can easy find the following categories:

  • Food & Drink – here you can find happy hours, brunches, and Afternoon Tea Events
  • Family – find activities for you and your children to to do around town
  • Hotels – from staycations to room deals or ways to lay by a hotel pool find the deals here
  • Culture & Art – If you are an art buff keep your eyes on this category
  • Sports & Fitness – Whether you like to play sports or watch them you will find ways to be active here
  • Exhibitions & Conferences – Watch here for exhibitions at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center and the new Shenzhen World to startup again
  • Community & Charity – If you are looking to meet friends and network this category is for you

Removing friction

There was a lot of friction in using ShenzhenParty.com’s old events page, starting with no mobile support and not being able to post events from your mobile phone. Now that mobile has taken over we are launching this calendar to remove friction. As we have learned that in any digital endeavor when we remove friction, usage will grow.

Post your own event

As in the original ShenzhenParty.com event calendar you can post events yourself so you don’t have to go back and forth with us. Even better there is no account needed to post events.

If you are a Shenzhen restaurant owner you can take a photo of your event poster or chalkboard and post right from your phone. This five minutes will bring you multiple customers and keep your business at the top of Shenzhen residents mind. As usual basic event listings are free so we can continue to be the complete directory for events in Shenzhen.

If you need help we have a handy event posting guide.

Repeating events

Another thing that our new event calendar handles much better is repeating events. If you have regular happy hours or other weekly events our event calendar has the options for you that makes it very easy to post. And if you are looking for those kind of discounted happy hours or special deals you can more easily find those too. No need to switch between different pages to find events that only happen once verses those that repeat, it’s all in one place.

Event organizers welcome

If you organize events from big to small we really want to welcome you to post your event with us and we are here to assist you. Please try to post and if you have any thing you want to tell us about the experience just email us.

Reference

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