event ROIIt's been a busy year for Lyyti’s product development team, with a packed roadmap and regular feature releases. We sat down with Lyyti’s CTO, Lauri Lehtonen, and Product Manager Jenni Savolainen to discuss the past year’s focus on product development and what’s in store for the months ahead.
Q: How are you doing, and how has your year been?
Jenni Savolainen: It's been an interesting year with a lot happening in product development and big releases on the horizon. I'm excited to see what the future brings!
Lauri Lehtonen: We've been very active! Let's take a look back at the past year.
Q: Looking back - how have we measured against our ambition and goals?
Lauri: The event website development has been a clear focus. By late spring 2024, we were satisfied with its progress and could then move on to other significant items. We also decided to significantly improve Lyyti's visual capabilities. The first step was updating the default designs of the registration page, which went live around March or April. We've continued with backend development, and the next major visual improvements will be released in the coming months.
Jenni: It's been great to tackle those issues, bring the registration process up-to-date, and update the visuals to serve more customers.
"The event website was a vast improvement, and it ties into our visual enhancements and customer needs to create even better-looking event websites to improve marketing efforts."
- Jenni Savolainen, Product Manager
Q: Looking ahead - what can our users and future users expect from Lyyti in 2025 and beyond?
Jenni: There are smaller projects, but two big things to mention. First is the continuation of the brand and visual improvements. We're bringing better tools to manage event visuals for those less familiar with CSS coding, making it easier to manage colors and banners and ensuring those selections are available across the registration page, emails, and surveys. The other big thing is a new product for the "during event" phase: our Lyyti event app. This is exciting as it will provide participants with a single place to see all their events and allow event organisers to engage with attendees during the event.
Lauri: Another long-standing discussion topic has been multi-factor authentication (MFA). Many products now enforce more secure logins, and while Lyyti has traditionally used a classic username and password login, some customers are pushing for MFA. Information security and data privacy are increasingly important. While we support single sign-on (SSO) solutions, where authentication often happens with the identity provider, many customers don't use it. For them, MFA would be a significant security improvement.
Additionally, we are researching AI capabilities. AI companions appear in many products, and we're evaluating use cases for an AI companion within Lyyti. We want to ensure any AI implementation is truly valuable and helpful for our users, rather than just having an "AI stamp."
Q: How do you consider and align the future outlook with our customers’ needs?
Jenni: We received around 850 items of feedback in the last 12 months. The product team reviews all of them, discusses them, and considers their feasibility and timing alongside other projects. Customer feedback is integral to our product development; we keep those needs in mind and try to incorporate even smaller wishes.
Q: Any examples of those smaller pieces that are highly requested from recent months?
Jenni: For example, the calendar note in events. For a long time, the text was requested to be editable. We made that possible in June, allowing customers to customize the calendar note text on the thank you page.
Lauri: It's not just customer feedback that influences us; it's also understanding the broader event landscape. For instance, "no-shows" are a recurring discussion. We've found that SMS reminders for upcoming events significantly improve the show-up rate. We implemented a feature where you can preset an SMS reminder to trigger automatically before an event. SMS has become a reliable notification channel with excellent reach, making it sensible to utilise it for dentist appointments or survey reminders.
Q: What is your favorite part of the development process?
Lauri: I always emphasise that the most important part is deciding on the right things to build. You always have more good ideas than you can effectively deliver. That's where value creation happens, and for me, it's about determining if we're truly focusing on the right initiatives.
Jenni: Lauri stole my line! As a product manager, solving problems and understanding needs to figure out the core thing to build is central to my job. I love discovering those needs' motivations and collaborating with customers and internal teams. I act as the customer's and the business's voice, processing diverse knowledge to define what's essential for a well-functioning product before its release.
Q: What has been the topic that piques the most interest in our users?
Lauri: I’m biased as I've been working extensively with integrations, primarily Dynamics CRM. Integrations have definitely been in the air, so to speak. Customers must find their ideal tech stack, and integrations between systems are crucial. They also affect how you measure, for example, event ROI.
Jenni: It's hard to say definitively because different markets have varied needs. However, the overall feedback history shows that multi-day events are a big topic. While not the most talked about at this moment, we consistently receive feedback on it, with users wanting to better utilise Lyyti for multi-day sessions or sub-events. We’ve already made improvements in this area, such as event website features and calendar notes for different agenda sessions.
Thank you for your time! Any last remarks?
Jenni: As a product manager, I'm very interested in your needs for Lyyti. Many of you have sent us feedback through sales, customer service, or even within Lyyti, where you can check our roadmap and provide feedback. Hearing from you is crucial for our product development, and I read every feedback we receive. Please keep it coming; it's a huge pillar for us.
Lauri: I agree. More minor things like replying to our NPS survey and leaving a short comment are also very valuable, and we read each one. I've been spending a lot of time looking into how quickly AI is changing things and how products like Lyyti will work. It's truly interesting. I'm unsure where AI is heading as a larger trend, but some predictions that seem like science fiction might be closer than we think. Trying to figure out what truly makes sense in the event space with these capabilities is fascinating. I'm always open to futuristic AI discussions.
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Lyyti helps you deliver great event experiences by fusing your creativity with easy event management and data, whether your event is online, in person, or hybrid.
Hero photo: Sam Jamsen
