Ten Tips For User Friendly Online Registration Forms.

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
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.

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