4+ years evolving Canadian International AutoShow

Agency: Vicimus
My Project Role: Creative Direction / Client Lead

Complete 2017 rebuild, 2018 updates, 2019 refresh and a 2020 tech and mobile enhancement of The Canadian International AutoShow Online Portal into a robust and informative site for content, show schedule, features, exhibitor information, media releases and more. Built to both deliver entertainment and funnel consumers to purchase tickets online.

This build coincided with the largest AutoShow opening day attendance on record and hundreds of thousands of visitors to the online site leading up to and during the show – with over 35% on average going directly to buy tickets from the many home page CTA’s designed to pull them in. The site was created to be highly customizable and fluid allowing both our internal team as well as the AutoShow Staff and third party partners to make changes in seconds to live content.

Our approach also maintained multiple redundant systems to the server and site backup protocols to adjust the site based on traffic to scale down content and increase page load during those heavier ticket purchasing days.

The results?

All told, the 2017 Canadian International Auto Show set a new attendance record for the second year in a row. After the show’s 10-day run, 339,590 people came to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre for the Auto Show, eclipsing the old record of 320,000 set in 2016. This was broken again in 2018 with 358,842 attendees and nearly reaching the 2018 record in 2019 with 357,745 – a little more than 1,000 people shy of the all-time record. However, though traffic was close to equal they still set attendance records on four days including a one-day all-time high of 54,632 visitors on the Sunday of Family Day weekend.

Since the 2017 Vicimus site launched we have continued to see site traffic grow. Between January and March, the site has seen 549,434 visitors in 2017 then a huge jump in 2018 to 831,866 visitors and most recently 972,857. Comparing 2017 to 2019 we have seen over a 75% increase in new users, 91% increase in sessions (1.19M vs 623,328), and a 9.5% increase in number of sessions per user (1.61 vs 1.47). Almost all of this traffic happening over the week leading up to the show and the 10 days the venue is open.

Mobile user traffic has continued to grow during the month of the show (February) and was up 14% and sessions up 20% in 2019 vs 2018. This trend drove to a new 2020 focus on mobile content optimization during the days of the show, creating a daily live calendar for returning users.

As traffic, sessions and the number of active users on the site simultaneously has continued to increase during the heavy days of the auto show our development and design has kept pace. Since the launch of our partnership in 2017 the site has continued to perform beautifully, reliably… and profitably. And it’s key to note that the team that works on the site is very small at Vicimus, relying on strong tech, smart strategies and focused efforts not on bloated experiences and sizzle with no end goal. On average it take 1-2 creatives, 1-2 tech and myself to manage the project. Proof that a massive team and overhead of a big shop isn’t always necessary for a robust portal to thrive and grow.

Download and read the three-year AutoShow Case Study PDF!

2020 Edition (stronger analytics, video support, smart calendar/map tools, mobile optimizations, small design adjustments)