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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