How Not to Do a Convention Center Website

Don’t mind me here. It’s part of my mortgage-paying job to notice and fix the things I’m gassing on about below, so none of this post is necessary. It’s all sidebar observations. Is anything on here that necessary to begin with?

It’s not that Pittsburgh’s David L. Lawrence Convention Center website is bad, per se, but that it has an information gap problem. I went there to find a way to get updates about their upcoming events, for no real reason other than curiosity, since the center is down the street from work and happenings there can affect my commute, etc.

The front page doesn’t have much in the way of their event calendar; that’s a separate page. But, more importantly, there’s no RSS feed or a mailing list that would provide updates. Nothing. Schlepping to that events page every so often to see what’s coming up is the only way, and there’s nothing there that denotes anything as a newly-organized event*. You’d have to go to their Facebook or Twitter page for that, but even then you’d need to subscribe or follow them, assuming you are signed up for either (I am not).

I’m probably not the typical user that accesses their site. It’s most likely designed for potential convention organizers, or attendees who are already planning to go to an event and need information on parking or lodging.

* Not to mention, the events page is in a table format, not a calendar, which would convey date information much more quickly.