How do you get attendees to visit more stands?
By Donghui Qian (Milo)Updated 21 September 20267 min read
Short answer
Work the floor plan first: put catering, seating, charging and the route to session rooms where the natural walk passes the quieter aisles, and time breaks so people actually enter the hall. Stamp trails and stand draws come last — they spread the traffic you already have, and only produce conversations when a stand's own staff do the scanning.
Exhibitors rarely complain that the hall was empty. They complain that the people who walked past were not theirs, that the far aisle never filled, and that the visitors who did stop wanted a prize rather than a demo.
This guide is about moving the right attendees past the right stands. It is written for any exhibition, with or without an app.
Traffic and relevance are different problems
Everything below moves people around a hall. None of it makes someone interested in a product they do not need. Keep the two separate when an exhibitor reports a bad show, because the fixes have nothing in common: a quiet stand in a dead aisle is a layout problem, and a busy stand with no leads is a fit problem.
Three levers, in the order they actually matter
| Lever | What it controls | How much it moves |
|---|---|---|
| The floor plan | Where people physically have to walk, and which aisles they never enter | Most of it. A stand in a corner nobody passes cannot be rescued by anything further down this table |
| The programme | When the hall is full, and where people go when a session ends | A lot. Session timings create every peak and every dead half-hour on the floor |
| Incentive mechanics | Which stands people visit once they are already in the hall | Real, and smallest. A stamp trail spreads existing traffic; it does not create it |
Organisers reach for the third because it is the one you can add six weeks out. It is also the one that, used badly, makes exhibitors angrier than doing nothing.
Put what everyone needs where nobody walks
People walk towards coffee, seats, chargers, toilets and the place their session is about to start. Those destinations are the strongest tool you have, and most floor plans waste them by clustering everything near the entrance.
- Catering and seating at the far end, so the walk to lunch is the walk past the aisles that would otherwise be empty.
- Charging and quiet seating in the weakest corner. People stay where their phone is charging, and a stand next to them gets minutes rather than seconds.
- No dead ends. An aisle that leads nowhere is entered by people who already decided to enter it. Loop the route so every aisle is on a way to something.
- Session rooms reached through the hall, not around it — if the corridor bypasses the floor, the programme stops working for you entirely.
- Walk it yourself before the plan is signed, in the direction an attendee arrives from. The stands you did not pass are the ones that will complain.
This is also the honest answer to an exhibitor asking which booth to buy: position against the flow you designed, not the square metres.
Stamp trails: design the route, not the reward
A stamp trail asks attendees to collect proof of visits and claim something at the end. The mechanic is simple and the design decisions are where it works or turns into a nuisance.
- Require some of many, not all of few
- Asking for a set number of stops from a longer list lets attendees choose, spreads them across the hall, and does not force a queue at one stand.
- Weight the stops you actually need filled
- Include the far aisle, the corner, the first-time exhibitors. A trail made of the stands that were already busy has done nothing.
- Claim the reward away from the exit
- A prize desk by the doors collects people who are leaving. Put it where claiming it means walking back through the floor.
- Stamp given by the stand, not taken by the attendee
- A poster people scan themselves rewards the scan. A stamp granted when stand staff scan the visitor's badge requires a person to be involved, which is the thing the exhibitor paid for.
Say the quiet part to exhibitors in advance: a trail brings them people whose first goal is a stamp. Pairing the stamp with one question the stand asks — a single choice, not a form — turns the interruption into the beginning of a conversation, and gives the stand something to sort its leads by afterwards.
Draws and polls at the stand
A prize draw run by an individual exhibitor does a specific job: it converts someone who was walking past into a record the stand can follow up. It also attracts people who collect entries professionally.
- Entry should require a staff scan, for the same reason a stamp should. An entry form on a poster produces entrants who never spoke to anyone.
- A poll is the softer version. Answering one question at a screen is a lower bar than a conversation and leaves the stand a reason to start one.
- Draw at a time, not continuously, if the stand wants a crowd — announced draws create a small peak the stand can staff for.
- Tell exhibitors what the prize is buying. A high-value generic prize maximises entries and minimises relevance; something only their buyer would want does the opposite.
The photographed code problem
Any fixed code printed on a stand will end up photographed and shared — in a group chat, on the event hashtag, between colleagues splitting up the hall. Once that happens, visits arrive from people who were never there, and every number below is wrong.
The fix is a code that changes on a short cycle, displayed on a screen or a phone at the stand rather than printed on the wall. A photograph of it is worthless within a minute or two, so a recorded visit means someone stood there. Ask any platform whether its booth codes rotate, and what the stand does when the network drops — a rotating code that stops working offline is worse than a printed one on the day it matters.
Half of it is the exhibitor's own doing
Send this with the exhibitor manual rather than saying it afterwards, when it sounds like blame:
- The peaks are on the agenda. Tell exhibitors when the hall will be full — after the keynote, during long breaks — so the stand is staffed then rather than at 09:15.
- Nobody stops for a stand where everyone is sitting down, eating, or facing a laptop. This costs nothing to fix and is the most common reason a good position underperforms.
- One question beats a pitch. A rep who opens with a question that qualifies the visitor in a sentence talks to more people than one who explains the product to everybody.
- A table across the front is a wall. Where the stand allows it, leave a way in.
Measure per stand, and per aisle
Hall-level footfall tells an exhibitor nothing they can act on. Three numbers per stand do, and the third is the one that separates conversations from stamp-chasing.
reach = unique visitors to this stand ÷ attendees checked in
repeat rate = total scans ÷ unique visitors
conversation = scans with a rating, note or answer ÷ total scans
Roll reach up by aisle and the dead zones name themselves — that map is the single most useful thing you can hand to whoever draws next year's floor plan. A low conversation figure across the whole hall usually means an incentive was doing the walking: people scanned, collected, and moved on.
What none of this can do
You can route every attendee past a stand and still produce nothing, because relevance is decided when the exhibitor is sold the space, not when the floor plan is drawn. An exhibitor whose buyers are not in the room will read high traffic and no leads as a failure of your event — and will be right, in the way that matters for whether they rebook.
So use these levers on the stands that fit the audience, and be honest with the ones that do not. Moving more people past a mismatch just makes the mismatch measurable.
Frequently asked questions
In order of effect: put the things everyone needs — catering, seating, charging, the route to session rooms — at the far end so the natural walk passes the weakest aisles; schedule breaks long enough that people enter the hall rather than queue for coffee; and only then add incentives such as a stamp trail or stand draws. Incentives redistribute the traffic you already have, so they cannot rescue a stand in an aisle nobody enters.
They move people around a hall, which is what they are for. Whether they produce conversations depends on the design: require a set number of stops from a longer list rather than all of a short one, include the stands that need traffic rather than the ones already busy, put the prize desk away from the exit, and award the stamp when stand staff scan the visitor rather than when the visitor scans a poster. A trail that rewards a scan will reliably produce scans and nothing else.
Stop using a fixed printed code. Any code on a poster gets photographed and shared, after which visits arrive from people who were never at the stand. Use a code that rotates every minute or two on a screen at the booth, or have stand staff scan the attendee's badge instead — then a recorded visit means someone was standing there. Check what happens when the network drops, because a rotating code that fails offline is worse than a printed one.
Per stand rather than per hall. Reach is unique visitors divided by attendees checked in; repeat rate is total scans divided by unique visitors; and the conversation figure is the share of scans that carry a rating, note or answer to the stand's own question. The last one distinguishes real conversations from incentive-chasing. Rolled up by aisle, reach shows exactly where next year's floor plan is wrong.