The length of your virtual conference or webinar plays an important role in deciding its success. A live conference that is too long can make your attendees lose interest and drop out while a very short seminar will not add much value to your audience.
When hosting in-person conferences, event organizers had to factor in time for things like people walking in to the auditorium and finding their seats, the attendees networking with their immediate neighbours and having small conversations, the host warming up the crowd for the event, etc. This extra buffer time is almost completely eliminated when you host a webinar, giving you the opportunity to maximize your output in lesser time.
Over the last couple of years, attendee attention spans have noticeably reduced. So plan your virtual conference in chunks with enough time for breaks and networking opportunities in between to ensure that your audience is engaged and attentive throughout the entire session. The exact ideal length of an event depends on various factors but try to keep each session for 25 – 30 minutes at most with a couple of minutes towards the end of each session for questions from the attendees. If you have multiple speakers on your panel and the event exceeds more than 5 hours, consider spreading the webinar over 2 days to avoid disinterest and fatigue for the panelists and the audience.
