How I helped Arrow Acquisitions engage trade show attendees by building an interactive web app

Background & Challenge

Trade shows are highly competitive environments, with attendees constantly bombarded by visual and verbal messaging. To stand out, our team needed a way to:

📌 Capture attendee attention without relying solely on booth staff.

📌 Effectively communicate our value proposition in a way that was both engaging and easy to digest.

📌 Extend booth engagement time, allowing our sales team more opportunities to interact with potential customers.

Rather than relying on printed materials or static signage, I proposed developing an interactive app that would run on kiosk-enabled iPads. The app would provide attendees with an interactive and engaging experience, showcasing our products, benefits, and brand identity.

Role & Objective

I was responsible for:

✅ Designing and building the app to function seamlessly in a trade show setting.

✅ Creating an engaging and intuitive user experience that balanced interactivity and information.

✅ Ensuring technical compatibility and smooth deployment across multiple iPads.

✅ Incorporating bold branding, action imagery, and strategic formatting to stand out from competitors.

The goal was simple: Increase booth engagement, create a self-guided attendee experience, and extend visitor time at our booth to enable deeper conversations.

Strategy & Approach

To create an experience that was both visually appealing and user-friendly, I took a multi-step approach:

📌 Visual Impact & Branding

• I used bold, high-contrast designs that emphasized our branding, making sure the app stood out at a glance.

• The app featured action imagery I had personally photographed, reinforcing the real-world impact of our product.

• I was strategic with copywriting and formatting, ensuring key messaging was skimmable and clear.

📌 Balancing Interactivity & Information

• The app allowed attendees to swipe through multiple screens, offering product details, use cases, and key benefits.

• Multiple iPads were available at the booth, enabling several attendees to engage simultaneously.

• The experience was self-guided, keeping visitors engaged while sales reps handled conversations.

📌 Testing for Intuitiveness

• Throughout the build process, I had multiple team members test the app to ensure it was intuitive and provided clear value.

• The design optimized the flow of information, preventing cognitive overload while still providing depth for interested attendees.

📌 Development & Deployment

• I built the app using a no-code web app tool designed for iPads with kiosk mode enabled.

• Adobe Illustrator was used to design and layout the visuals before importing them into the app.

• I encountered challenges with asset dimensions and proportions, as well as minor issues when launching the app into production, but I resolved these through support threads and problem-solving.

• Since we owned the iPads used at trade shows, I mimicked the trade show environment at the office before shipping them to ensure a smooth experience.

Results & Impact

🚀 Extended attendee engagement time at the booth, giving our sales team more opportunities to connect.

📈 Allowed multiple attendees to engage simultaneously, increasing interaction without relying solely on booth staff.

🎯 The team continued using the app even after I left the company, demonstrating its lasting value.

The app successfully achieved the goal of standing out and improving booth interactions—a major win in an environment where engagement is the difference between being remembered or ignored.

Lessons Learned & Future Application

✅ Building and deploying an app, no matter how simple, comes with unique challenges. The learnings from this project helped me in later initiatives where I built other digital tools.

✅ Interactive content beats static materials at events. While printed handouts and signage have their place, an interactive experience extends engagement and makes a lasting impression.

✅ If I were to do this today, I’d push interactivity even further.

• Adding calculators, multimedia, or interactive elements could increase engagement and provide more personalized value to attendees.

This project proved that interactive content can be powerful assets in creating immersive brand experiences without relying on engineering resources. It reinforced my scrappy, figure-it-out approach to marketing, ensuring that even with limited budgets, we could deliver high-impact experiences.