ePly Blog

Many non-event planners probably wouldn’t believe us if we told them that building an effective online event registration form can actually get quite complicated. Finding a balance between asking for information you need without being overwhelming (and risking losing a potential registrant) is not an easy task. Not to mention, ensuring your registrants have a clear understanding of how to fill the form out and make their selections...

Well from our experience, there are 7 things that you should ALWAYS include on an online event registration form. Use this as a guide to any time you start to build one:

The size of your event venue can really make or break the entire attendee experience. Those dimensions define exactly what you can use the space for - not to mention, how many people can actually fit in it!

Now with a space that’s too large, you can usually add extra furniture to fill it up or use some kind of divider to “get rid of” square footage. But small spaces? Those get tricky. You want to make sure that your attendees will be comfortable and able to engage.

Luckily, there are ways to make do with a small space, depending on the type of event. Here are some suggestions:

Challenges in event planning will always exist: Some will come and go with time, some will be more persistent. But either way, getting ahead of them will allow you to come up with strategic solutions before the challenge turns into an outright problem.

That’s where survey results like this come in. A group of meeting planners and hoteliers identified what challenges are on the horizon for 2019: Do they align with yours? Probably so!

These challenges would resonate with any event planner, regardless of your industry. We put together some tips and resources for you to get a jump start on overcoming them:

Part of creating an amazing event experience are all the little touches you add that go beyond what’s expected. Something that may seem small, but could actually be huge to an attendee, is giving them a secure place to store their personal items.

Think about it: Your attendees would much rather be focused on the content of the event than worried about having to carry things around. And on the flip side, YOU want more engaged attendees!

There are a couple of types of item checks that are pretty standard:

Lots of different types of people attend conferences - and I don’t just mean different roles, career levels, educational backgrounds, etc. I’m talking personality type: introverts and extroverts; people who are there to learn, and people who are there to kick back; people who take effective notes and people who...don’t, so much.

Depending on your personality (or even your mood), a different vibe will affect your comfort. These are four go-to environment types we recommend incorporating into any conference that’ll leave ALL attendees feeling refreshed and engaged:

One of the biggest mistakes you can make with online event registration is not absolutely scrutinizing your form before releasing it to your audience. The only way you’ll truly know if it’ll be a seamless experience for registrants is by getting in there yourself! And if the experience isn’t seamless, there’s a good chance they’ll abandon registering altogether.

By following these seven steps, you’ll be able to identify and quickly eliminate any online event registration hiccups:

Whether they invest on a high level, commit to covering specific costs (food, badges, supplies, etc.), or are part of a trade, engaging sponsors is a smart way to add some extra padding to your event budget.

That said, it’s important that your partnerships make sense - after all, money is involved! And that doesn't just mean for you and the sponsor. Anyone you invite to have a presence on-site should make sense for your attendees, too. But why, exactly, do sponsorships need to make sense on so many levels?

Planning an event of any kind takes organization, teamwork, and a lot of manpower. However, one of the most important elements you should include in your event planning process is something that might be easy to take for granted at times: Event planning software.

Event planning software can help your team streamline all sorts of event planning tasks, from registration to event engagement.

So, what kind of events could benefit from event planning software? They can range from seminars and conferences, to university alumni events, to recruiting events for businesses. By taking advantage of event planning software, you can keep your data organized and up-to-date with real-time reporting, seamlessly process last-minute changes, and simplify your overall procedure.

Handing out swag - or, “stuff we all get” - at events is an easy way to engage attendees and leave a lasting impression. The key, though, is to find an item that’s both useful enough that attendees won’t immediately throw it away, and interesting enough that they’ll talk about it with others.

Now, we know budget is always a constraint - but let’s put money aside for the moment and have some fun! To help you start brainstorming, we put together a list of unique items you could brand and use as swag:

Answering attendee questions is an inevitable part of event planning. That said, with all the other balls your juggling, it can be hard to take the time to answer the same questions over, and over, and over...and over again.

That’s where an FAQ, or “frequently asked questions,” page comes in handy. Here are some thoughts on writing your FAQ page in a way that’ll effectively keep attendees in-the-know: