November 3, 2021 | 9 min read
Registration Forms Success Rate
Registration forms are more than just a formality. In fact, they are critical in establishing trust in the event organizers.
To complete their registration, users must trust the organizers with their personal and payment information.
As event organizers, after investing resources in getting potential attendees to register, we want abandonment rates to be as low as possible. Once they click 'Register,' we want them to complete the registration.
As an event organizer, how you design and build your event registration form will significantly affect your form's success rate. So, let's see what we can do to improve it!
Why Do Potential Attendees Abandon Registration Forms?
To improve your registration forms, you first need to understand where they can go wrong! Potential attendees can give up on a registration form if they:
- Believe that completing the form will take too much time
- Object to providing a required information
- Don't know all a necessary information
- Experience technical or payment issues
- Have a payment issue
- Don't have enough trust in the event organizers
To complete their registration, users must trust the organizers with their personal and payment information.
Given these issues, how can you improve your event registration form and increase your success rates?
1. Have a Foot in the Door
Long and complex registration forms tend to intimidate the user.
If the first page of your registration form is loaded with fields (questions), your users will be deterred from even starting the registration.
On the other hand, if your users are under the impression that they can quickly complete the form in a few minutes, they will be much more likely to start it. Therefore, the first page of your registration form should be as simple as possible.
2. Reduce the Number of Questions
Avoid asking for information you don't need.
Reducing the number of questions in your form has repeatedly been shown to improve the ratio between the number of people who completed the registration and those who abandoned it.
Also, refraining from requesting unnecessary information helps alleviate potential attendees' privacy concerns. Avoiding collecting unnecessary information also improves your organization's compliance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other privacy regulations.
For example, avoid asking for a full physical address if you are not mailing anything to the user. In many cases, country and state are enough.
3. Personalize Your Form
Creating one registration form that handles all the different types of participants at your event (such as attendees, speakers, and exhibitors) results in a more complex registration process for everyone.
Creating a separate registration form for special participants - such as staff, employees, exhibitors, or overseas participants - makes the registration process easier for all participants.
Advantages of Multiple Registration Forms
By creating multiple registration forms, you will:
- Reduce the number of questions each participant will have to answer
- Allow your organization to provide pertinent information and guidelines during the registration
- Allow your organization to send relevant registration confirmation emails to each type of participant
4. Make Registration Forms User-Friendly
A registration form is made up of three basic elements: input fields, prompts or labels (questions), and instructions.
- Split the Registration into Pages
- Long and complex registration forms intimidate people. When users enter a form and see it has too many questions, they may feel that it will take too much effort and time to complete and may decide to do it some other time. Splitting the registration form makes things clearer, simpler, and more likely to be completed.
- Group Related Fields
- Grouping related fields make the form easier to understand and fill.
- Concise Field Prompts
- Prompts tell your users what to type. It is worthwhile to keep prompts under four words since users tend to skip over reading lengthy pieces of text.
- Put Field Prompts Above the Input Area
- Top-aligned prompts also allow forms to have somewhat lengthier prompts without degrading the form layout. Another major advantage of aligning your prompts in this way is the short distance from the prompt to the input area. This short distance enables users to focus their eyes on both elements together and quickly associate the input field and the prompt. As a result, it reduces the time and effort required from users to complete the form.
- Provide Advice
- If you ask users to enter special information, adding guidelines and explaining what is required can increase the number of people who complete the registration. Add your guidelines underneath the input field, in smaller letters, and at a lower contrast ratio.
- Validation errors
- Make sure validation errors appear next to any fields that the user is required to fix.
- Language
- Most users find it easier to complete a form presented in their native language.
- Use radio buttons and checkboxes over menus
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Menus are harder to interact with for many users. On a desktop, selecting a value from a menu requires users to move their hands away from the keyboard and use a mouse. On a mobile device, when the user clicks a menu, the browser opens a dialog that hides the form. In addition, this also makes it harder for users to find their desired answer.
Menus take less space on the screen even when the number of options is significant.
If you must use a menu, it is better to avoid putting it on the first page.
- Date fields
- When selecting a date, users are required to move their hands away from the keyboard and use the mouse or other pointing device.
- Country field
- Selecting a country is done with a menu field. Since there are about 200 countries, finding a country takes time. To reduce this time, it is important to ensure that your user's country is automatically selected by your event registration system. The system can do so by detecting user location or by using data from their previous registration.
- Phone numbers fields
- Automatically pre-selecting the phone country code based on the registrant's location or country saves your potential attendees the effort of scrolling through a lengthy list of calling codes.
- First and Last Name, Participant Names
- By enabling automatic text capitalization in participant name fields, we eliminate the inconvenience of users having to switch to CAPS mode manually. This feature intelligently capitalizes the appropriate letters as users enter their names, ensuring a consistent and visually appealing format.
5. Mobile-Friendly Registration Forms
Hardly anyone will dispute the claim that registration forms must be mobile-friendly. It is a known fact that mobile devices already account for over 50% of website traffic.
Mobile-friendly registration involves more than font-size and responsive design.
So, let's check some tips to ensure that your registration form can be easily completed on any small-screened device.
Mobile-Friendly Registration Form Tips
- Split a field-loaded form
- Split a field-loaded form into pages. Each form page should have a limited number of fields. This will make it easier to complete on mobile devices that have a smaller screen.
- pre-fill data
- Mobile users will especially appreciate less typing. Use data from previous event registration to pre-fill the form fields as much as possible. In addition, detect user location to pre-fill location, phone numbers, and country code.
- One-click RSVP
- When inviting a list of people to an event where you already have their contact details, let them confirm their arrival by simply clicking a 'Confirm' button
6. Easing of Security and Privacy Concerns
Security concerns when providing personal information are another reason why people might abandon their registration.
To make people feel safe:
- Publish the organizer's details, including their contact details
- Make sure the form is branded like the event
- Explain why you are collecting the user's details
- Have a privacy policy
- Have a generous change and cancellation policy
- Make sure the form is secured (https://)
7. Remove Distractions
Once a user has started the registration process, help them to stay focused on completing it. In the form, avoid having links to external pages. Further, while you should display all the information needed to make decisions in the form, avoid adding too much unnecessary and distracting information.
You can't do big things if you're distracted by small things.
8. Monitor
Actively monitor incomplete registrations. Anayasize reasons for this incompletion, and correct and improve problems if possible.
For example, if the abandoned rate in one of the registration pages is high, check the questions on the page.
Review the field validation rules, and look for overly strict validation that may unintentionally block users who have entered valid values. Look for ways to make the page more user-friendly by simplifying it, shortening it, or adding instructions for filling out the fields
It is also important to check the abandonment rate for any spikes.
9. Rescue Incomplete Registrations
Incomplete registrations are unavoidable. Some users may abandon their registration form before submitting it. For example, the abandonment rate in the online retail industry is over 50%. In event registration, this number is much lower, especially if the event is free.
The reasons behind registration abandonment are numerous. It could be a technical issue, price issue, payment issue, and other concerns or difficulties. You cannot expect everyone to complete their registration.
Reducing Incomplete Registrations Rate
To reduce the number of incomplete registrations for your event, you can:
- Work on making your registration form more user-friendly
- Identify the registration step most responsible for incomplete registrations and fix it.
- Be clear about pricing and payment methods on your event website.
- Have a clear and generous cancellation policy, such as allowing the user to cancel anytime.
Rescuing Incomplete Registrations
Address the potential attendee personally and offer them your support in completing the registration. However, offering immediate discounts to attendees who did not complete the registration may hurt the organizer in the long term if users learn this strategy and take advantage of it. A discount can be offered as a last result, depending on the venue's capacity and the number of confirmed attendees.
Email Schedule to Rescue Incomplete Registrations.
- Wait one or two days
- Send an email offering assistance in completing the registration
- Wait for 2 to 5 more days and send a reminder email
- For potential local attendees, send another email a few days before the event
- For potential overseas attendees, send another email a few weeks or two weeks before the event
10. Use an Online Event Registration System
A registration form builder is an important part of every Event Management Software and Event Registration Management solution.
These tools were designed for events; they have features that streamline the creation of the best online event registration forms.
Online Event Registration Form Builder Features To Look For:
When choosing an online event registration system, it is important to look for:
- Wizards that help create event registration forms quickly
- The flexibility of adding custom fields and changing the registration process.
- Branding options including custom graphics, colors, fonts, and text
- Flexibility in offering tickets, add-ons, promotions, and discounts
- Ability to create multi-page registration forms
- Support the creation of multiple registration forms for the same event.
- Multilingual options that support creating registration forms in several languages for the same event.
- Auto-filling fields based on previous event registrations
- Two-way synchronization with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system
- The ability for guests to easily confirm their arrival or registration with a single click
- Selection of online and offline payment options.
- Automatic currency selection based on registrant country and organizer policy.
- Ability to send custom branded registration confirmation emails from your domain.
- Automatic invoices and receipts.
- Features that help rescue incomplete registrations
- Input fields that allow attendees to upload files and images
- Automatic capitalization of participant name and organization name
- Automatic selection of registrant country
- Phone validation rules based on the registrant country