In today’s world, a webinar is not only a remote lecture on video communication but a useful tool for generating leads and promoting on the Internet. By giving people the opportunity to find out the information they are interested in, you will receive contact information of potential customers already interested in your services in return. On gaining wide application in the advertising field, webinars received a powerful push to automate many functions. After all, to use all the capabilities of this tool you need to perform many operations manually. Therefore, we have prepared materials on how to make an assistant tool in conducting webinars, which meets all modern and personal needs.

Understanding Multiple Webinar Scenarios

Remote presenters. Of course, it makes no sense to consider the functions of tools without regard to specific use cases. Modern programs for webinars successfully merge on and off campus using remote interaction features. For example, as a webinar has two parties – learners and presenters – participants can access an event from all over the globe using PC or phone. That’s why if there are several presenters who are not in one place, they can either access all the features by joining the event or even run several programs on the presenter’s PC remotely.

Discussion management. An important role in the webinars is played by discussions. You can, at your own discretion, determine who can participate in the discussions during the webinar. However, it should be noted that not always the possibility of managing textual communication is the determining factor for the choice of the instrument. Sometimes basic settings are enough especially if there is only a need to deliver the same information right away to a large number of listeners.

Training integration. In training webinars within companies, there is usually a need to organize group work. Therefore, some of the tools allow learners to interact with each other in a mixed webinar which is combined with face-to-face activities. There are webinar tools integrated with the distance learning environment called Moodle. The creators of Moodle training courses have the opportunity to build in the learning process such training formats as online training, and master classes, into their webinars.

Promotion enhancement. Also, more and more often webinars are used not in training but promotional purposes. Some of them make it possible to create a landing page for an online event with a webinar description and registration form. After registration, a mass mailing of invitations to the webinar can be carried out directly from the platform.

Webinar Application Design

Research & training. First of all, to start the development you need to determine the target audience of the future application. Answer the following questions first:

• In what kind of webinars will it be used? (advertising, training)
• How many experts can be present simultaneously (for instance, round tables allow to collect several experts at one event to discuss the topic)
• The number of participants (if you are going to develop a tool for your own organization) and the limit of participants by subscription (for application monetization)

To define a format of webinars which will be organized by means of application you can also use market research results.

Development. In the development of the application associated with the video signal, you will have to face the prevention of connection loss, the quality of signal transmission, video capture from the host computer screen, etc. Also, you may need to develop algorithms for remote connection and control of a computer.

Basic features to be implemented:

• Waiting room
• Timeline
• Live Chat
• Transmitting the screen & voice
• Email automation
• Participating confirmation
• Capturing video of the webinar

Advanced features:

• Whiteboard
• Participants analytics
• Mobile support
• Ability to draw on the screen
• Ability to mute some attendees
• Monetization tools
• Multiple host support, etc.

Quality assurance. Another important point is ensuring the quality of the application. Webinars require the simultaneous connection of a large number of people (from 2 to several thousand people), which implies high loads on the server side. Therefore, it is important to test the application operation in both ideal and unfavorable conditions – unstable connection, numerous simultaneous requests, etc.

Support. Technologies do not stand still, so it’s important to implement improvements to the application as often as possible. The support team will cope with this task.

Available Solutions: GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar

GoToMeeting is a well-known webinar and video-conference tool with a long history. This is the basic solution allowing to create conferences with up to 15 people first launched in 2004. In addition to the basic features, it gave an ability to record discussion for further playback, sharing access to individual applications, tools for drawing on the screen and for generating reports. It gradually evolved into one of the greatest webinar tools as it uses patented technology that allows access to an arbitrary application running on the presenter computer in real time. GoToWebinar is another project of the same company, Citrix Online, used to create webinars for 1000 people simultaneously.

Summary: How to Make a Successful Application for Webinars

Creating a reliable application for webinars is not much different from creating any other quality application. All you need to remember about the peculiarities of this sphere is that it needs to support working with a large number of participants in real time, which means high software and server loads. However, carefully designed application architecture and quality testing of all the elements of the system will allow you to create a worthwhile product for both mass and personal use.

Sincerely yours,

Itera Research team