Without the right tools and planning, managing an event can quickly become a burden. The best membership and event software should allow you to collect information from your registrants smoothly. We’ve outlined our recommended tips for strategizing your online event registration form below.
Brainstorm before you create the event
If you’re familiar with your current event management system, it may feel easy to jump into online event creation right away. However, every event is unique and what worked well for a small social meetup may not be suitable for a large networking conference.
To save yourself from having to duplicate your efforts, it’s best to make a list of the information your team will need from attendees, consider possible ticket types you’ll offer, and any potential early bird or quantity discounts.
Common event information needed can include:
- Basic contact information – Name and email are typically always needed for an event with online registration. If you plan to reach out to attendees in other ways, you may also need their phone numbers and addresses.
- Emergency contact – If the event attendees expected are children, or if the event itself may involve some level of physical exertion or possible danger, it may be best to collect emergency contact details before you actually need them.
- Meal selection or dietary restrictions – If you’re offering food and have a limited budget, it can be useful to have registrants select their meal or share their dietary restrictions ahead of time. If the majority of your attendees prefer chicken, or if a large portion are vegetarians, you’ll want to adjust your menu accordingly.
- Session or time slot selection – More complex events, such as conferences or golf tournaments, will usually offer different sessions or time slots for their attendees. If there is a limit to the number of sessions or time slots available, it can be helpful to have attendees select their choice during the registration process.
An equally vital part of this brainstorming phase is deciding what information you don’t actually need. An unnecessarily long registration form can deter potential attendees. People that are registering for a book club meet up may find it intrusive if you ask for their address or birthday. A business registering for a vendor expo may feel it’s a waste of their time to be asked their dietary restrictions. Finding the right balance largely relies on properly identifying your audience for each event.
Factor in your different ticket types
While many of your events may just have a general ticket for anyone registering, it’s also common to offer multiple ticket/registration options for a single event. A flexible event management system will allow you to customize the questions for each ticket type as well.
Some popular ticket types include:
- Current member restricted tickets – Many even systems let you easily restrict tickets to members only, and also prevents past due members from registering until they renew. As you likely collect information from your members often, it’s best to reduce member only ticket registration questions to only the absolute essentials.
- Sponsorships – If you’re also selling event sponsorships, it can be a great idea to sell them alongside your regular tickets for the event. Depending on the type of sponsorship opportunities you’re selling, you may need to collect unique information from your potential sponsors. For example, you may want to allow your sponsors to choose between a banner, speaker, or table sponsorship.
- Raffle entries/drink tickets – If you’re selling items as a ticket, such as a raffle entry or a drink ticket for a banquet, you likely won’t have to create any ticket questions for these tickets. These tickets are almost always purchased in addition to general admission tickets rather than as a standalone.
- Tiered tickets – Events like concerts and galas tend to offer tiered ticket access such as General, Gold, and Platinum tickets. The different ticket tiers may get you into different parts of the venue, or they may include items like reserved seating or even merchandise. As such, it’s common to need more information from those that register for the highest tiered ticket option (e.g. t-shirt size, time slot/table reservation).
Consider early bird or quantity discounts
If your organization is attempting to transition from in-person to online event registration, enabling ticket discounts is a seamless way to encourage potential attendees to make the switch.
Many flexible event management systems allow you to easily create custom early bird and quantity discounts for each of your tickets. An early bird discount tends to bring in registrations much earlier, which can be useful if you need to place a deposit on catering or a venue. A quantity discount, like a BOGO special, is a smart way to combat a recent dip in event registrations.
Create registration questions
Once you’ve narrowed down what information is needed for the event, it’s essential to set the questions up correctly in your event management system. Many event management systems allow you to ask both per ticket and per registration questions.
If you’re allowing people to purchase more than one ticket at a time, it’s important to specify the questions that are needed per ticket vs per registration. If you need to be able to communicate with each attendee, you’ll want to collect the name and email per ticket. If the event involves a lunch or dinner, you will most likely need to collect either a meal selection or dietary restriction per ticket as well.
Some questions that are typically only needed per registration could be marketing related questions like “How did you hear about us?”. It’s also common to have users confirm their acknowledgement of a cancellation/refund policy only once during registration as well. Setting up these kinds of questions/waivers to be asked per ticket, will likely be redundant and make your registration form unnecessarily long for those that are purchasing more than one ticket.
If your event system allows for it, you can copy your setup for your different types of events to new events. This way you’ll have consistent event registration that works for your organization.
Make sure your registration form is visible
Users are less likely to register for an event if they are directed to a 3rd party platform to do so. Having a built in online registration feature as a part of your website’s calendar is both simpler to navigate to, and less likely to lose you potential registrants along the way.
Hopeful attendees should be able to either click on the event directly on the calendar or easily locate an event page from your website’s menu. On the actual event page, the registration form should be highly noticeable so that users know online registration for the event is available.
If you’ve also planned the information you’re collecting in advance and appropriately balanced the per ticket and per registration question setup, then it should be a breeze for anyone registering for your event.
To see how easy it is to create event registration questions in MembershipWorks, watch the video below.
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