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Ten Tips For
User Friendly Online Registration Forms.
Make the link to the online registration
form very obvious. Event participants may not be familiar
with your website and will become frustrated if they have to
hunt for the registration form. If you are sending a URL
(web address) in printed material make the address as simple
as possible so participants aren�t entering a long string of
characters. Also, only put a registration form in a password
protected part of your website when absolutely necessary.
People often forget their passwords, which will cause more
frustration and possibly generate calls and emails to the
event planner.
2. Make your form familiar and secure
Event participants need to be reassured
that their data is secure. A good way to do this is to brand
the online form to match your website. This way, the
transition to the online from is seamless and event
participants will remain comfortable with the process. Also,
make sure that appropriate security icons such as the lock
symbol in your browser appear when collecting credit card
numbers.
3. Make the registration form clear and easy to use
A well laid out and visually appealing
registration form encourages event participants to register.
On the form, keep text to a minimum and make it clear what
you want participants to do. Use logic to guide participants
through the form and give warnings if something is wrong.
4. Have appropriate payment options
If you have a fee associated with your
event, make sure the
payment methods you offer are
appropriate for the people registering. For example, large
companies may require an invoice before a check can be
issued and some groups of people may not have credit cards.
5. Make sure it works
There is nothing worse than entering all
of your registration data and then getting an error when you
click submit and losing the data. Before going live, be sure
to test your form several times selecting all of the
different options to be sure everything will work for the
event participants.
6. Display your privacy policy
Many people are concerned about who will
have access to their information and how it will be used.
Make sure you have a privacy statement available on the
online form to reassure participants that you are protecting
their information.
7. Anticipate questions participants may have
Don�t overload the form with information
(tip 3), but have information on the form that you think may
be useful when registering such as prices, dates or special
instructions. It�s inconvenient for participants to have to
click back to search for the information on your website and
in some cases clicking �back� will delete the data in a
partially complete form.
8. Only request necessary data
The less information people have to
provide the more comfortable they will be with the process
and the quicker they will be able to complete the form. If
you are asking for personal information such as birthdate it
helps to add a note saying why you are requesting the
information.
9. Don�t over use mandatory fields
Mandatory fields help to get fully
complete registration forms, but too many mandatory fields
can frustrate an event participant. This is especially true
if there is information that is not readily known such as
the fax number for someone else in their group.
10. Avoid making participants sign up with another company
before they can register for your event
Some online registration companies require
that people registering for your events first sign up as a
member with them. A system like this has its place, but many
event participants will be turned off providing information
to a third party.
A related article �Online
Registration: Getting people to use it� is available on
our website and offers some suggestions about how to get
people to the online from in the first place.
Please feel free to
contact us if
you have any questions or
comments about this article or would like help with your online
registration form.
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Have you ever registered or attempted
to register for an event and spent half an hour trying to
figure out what you needed to do? Or have you used an online
registration form that lost your data or was so complicated
that it seemed like more work than faxing the form?When used properly, online registration is an extremely
powerful tool that makes registration easy for event
participants. If used improperly, event participants can be
left extremely frustrated and in some cases reluctant to
attend the event.We have put together a list of ten design tips to help you
create user friendly registration forms and give your event
participants a positive registration experience.1. Make the registration form easy to access
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