Product Spotlight: See What's New in Wistia [May 2024]

Ah, the classic webinar. Gotta have them as part of your marketing strategy, but let’s be real. They’re not always a walk in the park, are they?

At Wistia, we’re all about making your live events more comfortable (and more valuable!) for your business. That’s why we’ve been updating Wistia Live with features that will make it easier to keep your attendees excited and engaged — and a few more to help you dial in your strategy even further.

Let’s see what’s new with Wistia Live, shall we?

Screen and stage sharing made easier

Webinar hosting should be about engaging your audience, not wrestling with the technicalities of screen or stage sharing. We’ve rolled out a bunch of features that make spotlighting your presenters or content easier than ever — and we made sure they look and work great!

Presenting pre-recorded videos

Kick the laggy screen shares and the hassle of juggling multiple tabs to the curb, because your process just got a serious upgrade. Now you can play videos seamlessly from your Wistia account during live events. Yep, you can go live without actually being live.

This feature offers plenty of ways to elevate playback quality and the viewing experience for your audience. For starters, you can queue up your next product demo, testimonial, or behind-the-scenes clip right into your presentation. Another thing you can do is curate a playlist of your favorite Wistia videos for each live event.

This new feature isn’t just great for your audience; it’s a win for you too. With the ability to play evergreen pre-recorded webinars, you can stay present in the chat and focus on connecting with your audience.

Real-time link sharing

You can also add calls to action (CTAs) and other important links right on the screen during your webinar. Just enter your link and the text, and it’ll show up as a button. Digging this update? Stay tuned — this is just the first version!

More presenters (up to 9 plus one screen share!)

When you’re hosting a dynamic event with many speakers, you want to make sure they can all contribute to the conversation. We’ve expanded the presenter limit to nine — with the 10th space available for screen sharing. This makes it even easier to host engaging events where every voice is heard.

Simplified, dynamic layouts

We’ve updated our layout options to make your events more dynamic and less complicated. Now you can switch between two layout options, ’Tile' and ’Full,' to make your event more dynamic. And both options adjust and animate as you add or remove presenters, screen shares, or videos.

On-stage Q&As and polls

Polls and Q&As are great ways to interact with your audience, but this latest update kicks things up a notch. Now you can bring polls and Q&As on stage. You’ll see interactions in real time and help everyone feel more involved with the event. The sleek animations help, too.

Wistia on Wistia example

“I’m an avid fan of music, history, and trivia. Wistia Live has made it possible for me to fuse my passions into various shows I’ve hosted to engage my team internally. I host lively, music-themed events featuring trivia segments that spotlight the platform’s incredibly easy-to-use interactive tools, such as chat, polls, and Q&A. For these events, I go all out with the setup: eye-catching registration pages, themed event rooms to match the vibe, and pre-loaded videos to share throughout. This allows for a seamless experience for me to keep the audience entertained from start to finish — no awkward pauses or tech hiccups.”

Jean Merlain
Product Marketing Manager, Wistia

Features that give you more control

We believe that you should have total control over your webinars, which is why we’re excited to share these latest wins for you (and your audience).

Streaming from broadcasting tools like OBS

With RTMP ingest, Wistia Live offers more flexible streaming options that help you enhance the quality and reliability of your live broadcasts.

A time zone picker

Was that webinar in Eastern Time or Pacific Time? This feature simplifies the scheduling process by allowing attendees to select their local time zone when registering for events. This way, they won’t miss your webinars due to time differences.

Silencing trouble-making attendees

While we’re on the topic of providing a great experience for your attendees, you can protect the quality of your live events by muting disruptive attendees. They won’t know they’ve been muted, so they can chat away without disrupting anyone else in the room.

Allow list

Want to host an event just for your internal team, clients, or another group of folks? Well, we’ve got some good news. Now you can limit access to your event with a list of approved domains. This is a great way to add an extra layer of security and exclusivity to your webinars.

More webinar analytics

What good is a webinar without some meaningful stats to go with it? We’ve added new webinar analytics to help you better understand how engaged your audience is and prove ROI.

Attendee engagement tracking

It’s important to see how engaged your audience is during a webinar. Our new feature tracks browser activity to show you how focused they are. These insights can help you adjust your content and interactions during the event — and ace your next presentation.

Webinar registration analytics

We’ve launched a new analytics page specifically for live events, and it hones in on registration performance. You can now track impressions, registrations, and registration rates, along with detailed referral insights and UTM analytics. With this data, you can optimize your marketing strategies and improve future events.

That’s a wrap!

All these new updates make hosting dynamic, high-quality live events with Wistia easier than ever. You’re all set to engage your audience even more and make every event a hit.

We’ll see you next month with more exciting updates!