One of Northern Sweden’s largest summer markets got a complete operations system

In previous years, most of the work was handled manually. Registration forms went through Google Forms, sponsor contacts lived in Excel, and newsletters were sent using copy-pasted address lists. There was no proper website for the event.

That created duplicate work. The same information was entered into multiple systems, and data needed in one place often sat in another. Searchability was low — overview was even lower.

Leads got lost. An exhibitor signing up via a Google Forms document risked ending up in a tab no one opened. A potential sponsor reaching out by email could land in the wrong folder. For an event with limited time between planning and execution, that’s a real risk.

The experience was fragmented. Visitors saw one site, exhibitors got a form, sponsors got an email, and subscribers received a newsletter that looked like something else entirely. There was no cohesive feeling that matched the scale of the event.

Meanwhile, the organisers had no central view. No one could log in to a single place and see all registrations, sponsors and subscribers. Following up with sponsors, planning exhibitor space and coordinating communication ahead of the weekend was unnecessarily heavy work.

In short: a large event was being held together by small tools. It worked, but it didn’t scale.

We mapped out three parallel user journeys and designed a unified digital service for each: visitor, exhibitor and sponsor, and the organiser themselves. Everything was built into a single platform where the public website and internal system share the same database.

The visitor experience is a modern, fast, mobile-optimized site focused on atmosphere, clarity and conversion. The homepage leads with a hero, programme overview, bento sections and clear CTAs. There are dedicated pages for the programme, FAQ and newsletter signup.

Exhibitors and sponsors get dedicated landing pages with forms that flow directly into the organiser’s system. No external services, no logins, and no risk of information getting stuck somewhere along the way. Sign-up happens on the same site where visitors read about the event.

The organiser got a complete admin panel at /admin that effectively works as their own CRM. It includes a dashboard overview, a company register, an exhibitor list, sponsor management with logos and packages, subscribers, and a built-in mail tool. Authentication is protected with NextAuth and bcrypt-hashed passwords.

The email tool is built from scratch instead of bolted on. The organiser composes campaigns in a visual editor via Maily with a drag-and-drop interface, sends through Resend for high deliverability, and selects the recipient list among exhibitors, sponsors or subscribers.

All history is stored with date and recipients, and open tracking runs through a custom endpoint at /api/track/open using the classic 1×1-pixel approach. There’s also a template library for recurring communication — for example contacting potential sponsors ahead of next year.

The unsubscribe flow is GDPR-compliant and one-click, no login required, via a unique token per subscriber. The privacy policy and unsubscribe page are public views in their own right.

Technically, the platform is built on Next.js 16 with App Router and Turbopack, React 19, TypeScript and Tailwind CSS 4 on top of a custom design system of CSS tokens. shadcn/ui forms the component base, Framer Motion handles animation, and Radix UI provides accessible primitives.

The database is Neon — a serverless Postgres that scales automatically and handles everything from registrations to subscriber records. NextAuth v5 manages auth, bcryptjs hashes passwords, and Vercel Blob handles image uploads for sponsor logos.

The infrastructure is Vercel with edge networking and full HTTPS. The SEO setup is complete with structured metadata, dynamic sitemap.xml and robots.txt, JSON-LD event schema, and AI search optimization for visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.

The design system is playful but professional. A bold all-caps heading font meets a clean sans-serif for body copy, and a custom color system with greens, blues, purples, yellows and beiges delivers a market feel without becoming overloaded. All tokens live in Tailwind to keep public pages and admin consistent.

Nordmalings Marknad now has a single platform instead of five or six fragmented services. Google Forms, Mailchimp and Excel are gone. What remains is a custom solution that does the whole job — including the website that was missing.

Operating costs have dropped. No monthly fee for an email service, no CRM subscription, no charges for form tools. The cost lives in the platform, not in a growing list of SaaS invoices.

The organiser’s workflow is faster. Everything is in one place, and the same database powers both what visitors see and what the organiser works in. A registration shows up immediately. A sponsor is found immediately. A campaign is sent immediately.

The external experience now matches the scale of the event. Visitors, exhibitors and sponsors meet a thoughtful site that feels coherent from the first click to a finished registration or a completed newsletter.

GDPR handling is built in. Unsubscribe is a single click via a unique token, the privacy policy is in place, and all personal data sits in a dedicated database with no third-party dependencies introducing their own risks.

The architecture handles traffic spikes ahead of market weekend. Edge hosting, static rendering where possible, and a serverless database mean the platform scales automatically when interest rises — without anyone having to stay up monitoring it.

Nordmalings Marknad now operates with a business system, not a website. And that difference is what lets the platform deliver value year after year, not just during market weekend itself.