Event Registration: Best Practices To Attract More Attenance

A key aspect of measuring an event’s success is whether the event can attract enough of the right attendees. 

An event might be planned and organized perfectly with a top-name speaker or talent, the perfect venue, and the best possible decor. Yet, if it can’t attract enough attendees, then the event is a failure. 

Similarly, if we can attract enough attendees but they aren’t the right fit for the event and/or your business, then it’s also not a success. 

Planning, organizing, and hosting an engaging and successful event is difficult, and to ensure you can attract your ideal attendees, thorough planning and preparation for your event registration strategy is a must. 

A key concern in ensuring a good event registration strategy is to provide versatility for your target attendees, ensuring it’s as easy as possible for attendees to register for your event, and the obvious answer is to enable an online event registration on your event website (or landing page).

You may have some online event registration capability with a platform for event management in hand, but enabling online event registration alone isn’t enough. You’ll need to thoroughly optimize and streamline the process to maximize event attendance. 

Here we will discuss some of the most important event registration best practices to optimize the registration process and maximize conversions. 

Online Event Registration Best Practices

There are two main objectives in optimizing your event registration:

1. Making sure it’s as easy as possible for attendees to register
2. Ensuring the security of online payment and integrity customer’s data 

Finding the right balance between these two objectives, however, can be challenging, and the best practices we’ll discuss below will be focused on finding this balance. 

Without further ado, let’s begin with number one: 

1. Only ask the information you absolutely need

Most event registration platforms will provide us with a set of form templates and probably invoice templates that you can use right away. 

However, while they can obviously help you get started, most likely they won’t be a perfect fit for your event. The templates might not capture all the information you need, or the other way around, it may capture too much information you don’t need. 

When your forms ask for too much information, it can prolong your attendees’ registration time, which in turn, can hurt the user experience and may cause them to cancel the registration.

Thus, make sure to choose an online event registration solution that also offers the capability of customizing the registration forms. Your event is unique, and you’d also want to provide your attendees with a unique experience, so make sure your registration page is also customized to achieve this objective. 

Make sure only to ask for the information you absolutely need in your forms to streamline the registration experience. Use as few fields as possible in your forms. 

2. Maintain branding consistency

Optimizing your event registration isn’t solely about streamlining the user experience, but also about maintaining branding consistency. 

Remember that your event registration is also a part of your event marketing strategy. On the other hand, your event should also be an integrated entity with your organization, whether your organization is an event organizer, a corporation, or even a nonprofit. 

With that being said, make sure your event registration page is consistent when it comes to branding. 

The registration page should be a part of your main website’s domain (so potential attendees won’t have to visit an external URL). This will also help in establishing trust, and make sure it uses consistent branding elements like logos and brand colors. 

Also, make sure your event registration page is mobile-friendly, and make sure the branding elements are consistent across all devices. Also, make sure it’s easy to fill your registration forms on mobile devices so you don’t turn viable attendees away. 

3. Automated and dynamic reporting

Make sure to choose an event registration platform that offers dynamic reporting features so you can analyze your event’s performance. 

You should look for the following features when choosing between different event registration platforms: 

• Automated reporting: a reliable event registration solution should offer the ability to automatically compile a report after an attendee has registered for your event. So, you can easily access useful information easily and in real-time.
• Data filtering: use filters to easily find the data you need at the moment so you can choose only the data you want when generating reports for various purposes.
• Data export: the ability to easily export your report to PDF, Excel, or other convenient formats so you and your staff can access the report easily and quickly. 

4. Personalization Is key

Ideally, we should personalize the registration process for each potential attendee. A personalized registration process (that is also streamlined and optimized) can significantly boost conversion rate, but as we know, the actual implementation can be easier said than done.

You should consider offering:

• Multiple payment options: cover common online payment options like credit card, bank transfer, PayPal, Stripe, and so on. Different attendees have different preferences and financial situations, and if you can personalize your registration to their needs, the more likely you’ll win their conversions. 
• Discount management: make sure to choose a platform that allows you to manage discounts conveniently, for example, allowing registrants to easily enter discount codes and/or the ability to offer different time-based discounts (early bird, presale, etc.) with an automated schedule. 
• Multiple registration options: allowing registrants to register in groups, selling different types of tickets (VIPs, etc.)

5. Seamless and secure payment

Ensuring secure but easy-to-use online payment features is crucial in maximizing registrations. 

First, make sure attendees can make their payment without leaving their registration page. To do this, make sure your event registration platform is integrated with at least one payment processor. 

If you require registrants to visit a third-party site to handle their payment, they might feel suspicious which can lead to them canceling the registration.

Also, make sure your event registration platform and/or the integrated payment processor are PCI compliant to ensure the security of your registrant’s confidential information. 

Wrapping Up

Having a reliable online event registration function is crucial in today’s digital era so your target attendees can easily book your event from anywhere, anytime, and with any device.

By following the best practices we’ve shared above, you can start optimizing the event registration process to maximize conversion rate and start getting more attendees to your event.