Why People Might Not Register For Your Event – Part 1

The design and flow of your online registration form has a real influence on the number of people completing the registration process once they start.

People selling merchandise online (etailers) refer to an incomplete purchase as shopping cart abandonment. Etailers lose sales everyday because of poorly designed online purchase systems and how they operate.

Since purchasing merchandise and registering for an event have many similarities, event planners also need to be concerned about the factors that cause people to abandon partially complete registration forms or risk losing event participants.

There are many closely related factors, but two main areas that contribute to registration abandonment are:

1. Confusing registration forms where people don’t know what to do next and don’t want to spend the time to figure it out.

2. Lack of trust in the registration system and with what happens to entered information and credit card numbers or that the system will even work properly.

This newsletter focuses on the first area; how to make your registration forms easy to use. Next month we will give you some ideas on forms that will earn the trust of event participants.

Everyone appreciates registration forms that are quick and easy to complete and require minimal amounts of reading and thought. With this in mind, here are ten ideas on how to keep things easy.

1. Use easy to read fonts and colours.

Certain background and font colour combinations are difficult to read, so it is important to do some research before you start designing. Remember, just because something appears readable on your screen doesn’t mean that everyone will be able to read it since individual settings and monitors will cause colours to display differently.

Choose a standard font such as Verdana, Arial or Times and stick to it. Using fancy or varying fonts my look more decorative, but can be difficult to read.

2. Consider all screen sizes and resolutions.

Many people still have smaller 14 and 15 inch screens and some people with larger screens still use a low resolution setting. A good standard to go by is 800 x 600 pixels as most people are now running at this resolution. If you make your forms wider than 800 pixels, some people may have to scroll horizontally to see the whole form.

3. Use enough space.

All too often pages are crammed together. Proper and consistent spacing will make forms easier to read and understand. When you want to make a separation even more obvious, try using different background colours to separate different sections or registration options.

4. Eliminate options that take people away from the registration form.

Once you have someone at your registration form, you want to minimize distractions and links that will take them to other web pages. A good place to display these related links is on the page that appears after the registration form is submitted.

5. Have programming to automatically total the amount owing.

Don’t make people calculate their own totals. Not only will you get accidental adding errors, you may get some intentional ones too. Automatically calculating totals will save you time and make the registration form much easier to use.

6. Use logic to automatically give early bird and member pricing.

If you offer early bird or member pricing, the online registration system should automatically determine the prices based on the time and date or other fields. This will make registering easier for the participant and help to ensure they are paying the correct price.

7. Give meaningful error messages.

Using meaningful error messages when required fields are missed or invalid selections are made will help prevent frustration. In the error message, give enough information so the person understands what to do, such as “a phone number is required to register” or “you have selected conflicting options, please only select A or B”.

8. Have quick loading pages.

Not everyone has a high speed internet connection, so keep images to a minimum to reduce the time it takes the page to load.

9. Minimize text.

Try to keep text on the registration form to a minimum. Of course, say what you need to say to make people know what to do, but avoid having text on the form that would be better suited on other parts of your website.

10. Clearly state the currency if you expecting international participants.

If people don’t know how much they are paying they won’t register. Make it obvious what currency the transaction will be in to avoid lost registrations.

Following these suggestions will help to make the registration process as simple as possible and keep people registering for your events.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or comments about this article.


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