Online Registration

It’s not the goal of this article to explain the technical details of what cookies are and how they work; all you really need to understand is that cookies are small files than can be created by web pages. The files are stored on a user’s computer and can be accessed later by the website. Cookies are generally harmless, but like anything (software, cars, guns) when people use them inappropriately, they often get a bad name made for them.

So what does all this mean to meeting planners?

Online registration software packages have recently started to include the ability to track visitors throughout the entire registration process. This is accomplished through the use of harmless tracking cookies that are placed on a registrant’s computer. These cookies allow you to answer questions like:

How many potential registrants viewed the form?
Where did the registrants come from?
How long did they take to fill out each part of the form?
How many visitors actually became registrants?
Where in the process do most of the visitors leave the form?

As you can see, this is valuable information to know about your form. Online registration saves you time by automatically sending out confirmation emails to your registrants, processing payments online, running and emailing reports and much more, so that you can concentrate on improving and adding value to your event.

This added information allows you to use the time saved using the software to improve your registration form. Reevaluate the spots where registrants get stuck, find new partners via referral stats, or provide incentives for your promoters to send you more registrants by running your own affiliate program.

Clearly, the addition of cookie technology to online event registration software for the purpose of tracking visitor behavior is very valuable. Even if you’ve never used web tracking software before, it is very easy to get started and the potential rewards are very high for those willing to take advantage.

So how do you find out what your time to complete is? A few of the leading edge online registration software packages now provide integrated analytics reports with their standard registration package. However, if you don’t currently use a system like this, or are locked into a restrictive contract with another company, then you may be able to implement a free tracking program like Google Analyitcs to help you determine your time to complete. But the easiest way to get this information is to use an event registration company that has already done the work for you to give you the right stats.

What you really want to know is how long the entire process takes (introduction to confirmation) as well as how much each page of the form contributes to the total time. This is one of the great advantages that web forms have over paper forms: you can virtually be sitting over your registrants’ shoulders watching their progress through the form.

Once you know the total average time to completion you can use it immediately to help increase completed registrations. By adding a line to your introductory page stating that “Registration Takes Only X Minutes” you can help your registrants better plan their time. This in turn will make them more likely to commit a specific block of time to your registration process.

The next step you should take is to break the registration process down into the specific components. This will help you to identify where there are specific sticking points within your registration process that can be improved. Are registrants spending 15 minutes on your lodging page? Maybe you can pare down the options a bit. Are they looking at the pricing options for an inordinate amount of time? Maybe you should look into providing more or less options so that they don’t need to work around your system.

Finding out how long it takes your registrants to complete your form gives you great insight into where you can make improvements, and can also make your registrants more comfortable with the registration process. Putting it all together makes great improvements in your form.

As a busy event planner – in seemingly endless contact with venues, catering companies, and the oh-so-demanding event sponsor – can you afford to spend time developing registration spreadsheets, keeping track of each registrant’s information, recording travel and hotel details, and taking and processing credit card info? For most event planners, the answer is a resounding no. The process of registration is often the straw that breaks the camel’s back, causing an event planner’s stress level to rise to supreme heights. Keeping track of all the technicalities of registration is a full time job that many planners are still attempting to juggle along with planning the event itself.

So, with the vast reach and simplicity of the internet, why are so many event planners hesitant to switch to an online registration company that will take care of all these technicalities for them? The answer is simple: they either don’t know about it, or they are worried that such companies could in fact complicate their lives. How can I know that information being put out on the internet will be safe? What if my registrants’ information is compromised? Will the online registration company use or sell my registrants’ information after they have it in their System?

With the right company, all of these questions can be avoided because registrants’ information will be secure and held safe for the sole use of the event planner. Even more importantly, with the right registration company, credit card information will be encrypted to the highest degree allowed by law, guaranteed by a SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption testing company, such as Thawte. Once you have chosen a company that you know to be secure, you will enjoy features such as an event website with its own URL for registration, custom reports, and the ability to export reports to a wide variety of formats. Using a safe and secure online registration system can simplify the event planning process while increasing registration! And you can be sure that registrants’ personal and financial information will be protected at the highest possible levels.

Registrant and event planner information that is protected to the highest degree possible offers you a guarantee that the information will be stored exclusively for the event planner’s use and will only be stored as long as is necessary. Holding to such standards, ensures that the event registration system is highly resistant to any breach, but if a breach does, in fact, occur, the system will have been monitored so effectively that it can be traced a remedied with accuracy and speed. A vulnerability recovery plan like this one is an essential part of upholding a strong security system to ensure that the system will not be breached. Your registrants will know that their information is safe.

Manually collecting registrations has long been one of the most tedious jobs involved in the event planning process, but it is no longer necessary for event coordinators if they choose a company that will offer the highest possible level of security so that they can enjoy the ease of use of such a comprehensive online registration system. With no need to worry whether or not their information will be hacker-safe, registrants will flock to your event because registering online is truly a far easier process than completing registration be old-fashioned snail-mail. Although giving up control over such a vital piece of the event planning process can be a frightening concept, doing your research to find a company that offers the strongest security for your registrants’ data, will save you time to deal with all of the other details of planning your next fantastic event.

In working with more than 1000 clients, we’ve seen some really great ways to enhance event registration. And the best thing is that with the advent of online registration systems, much of these techniques can be automated and streamlined.

The result: a better experience for your registrants. In addition, these online registration systems eliminate many of the headaches you and your team face on a day-to-day basis.

These 10 little success secrets will:

• Attract more registrants
• Make events more valuable
• Result in more satisfied attendees
• Make your life as a meeting planner easier

1. Take the time up-front

You might be surprised how simple changes in your registration design can make everything much easier and more efficient for you and for your attendees - which makes everybody happy! Plus, preparation up-front will save you a lot of time and hassle in the end. Online registration systems are event registration tools to help you build your event quickly. But, all too often, building the event takes longer than anticipated because not enough time was spent designing the registration process.

Give yourself a week or more to create a great design for your online registration. That way you can percolate some really good ideas, bounce them off of others, and even get some assistance from your online registration system’s support team. Some support teams will help you scope everything out, brainstorm on ideas, and even help you build your registration pages.

2. Maximize registration time

Give yourself plenty of time to register and round up registrants. The more time you have to register people before an event, the more registrants you’ll have. We see so many events where registration starts a couple weeks before the event. By increasing the registration period, people perceive the event as being bigger, more important, and have a sense that it’s even more worthwhile for them.

This also enables you to have tiered pricing, such as early bird specials that motivate people to sign up even earlier. Some online registration systems will automatically turn different pricing tiers on and off based on dates that you set.

3. Make Signing Up Easy

Give your prospective attendees as many opportunities as possible to say “yes” to your event. How many times have you come across an event you’ve wanted to attend… only to have to sort through web pages to try to find the small “register here” text link hidden at the bottom of a page. This means lost registrants and revenue. It also means more staff time in directing people to where to go. Display the link prominently on your home page, in the navigation bar, certainly on every page that discusses the event, at the bottom of emails (in the signature), and include the URL on your printed materials.

4. Help them feel at home

With most online registration services, your attendees click from your site to your registration provider’s site. This has the potential to be confusing to your attendees and may make them uncomfortable sharing their contact and credit card information. You can avoid this by changing the border, headings, and font colors on the registration pages to match your site. Also, upload your logo into the custom header and/or footer pages. Now when people click to register, they feel all warm and fuzzy about your brand and colors being right there with them.

5. Welcome them in

A “welcome” message is such a nice touch that tells people exactly what event they are registering for and make them feel good. It’s a wonderful opportunity to remind your prospects of the value they’ll get out of attending your event. Be specific. Whether it’s a conference, incentive trip, training, or golf tournament, we all need reassurance on why we are investing our time and money. It is also a good place to explain a little bit about the online registration process (especially if there’s a lot to decide on or fill out)

For example:

Welcome to the Conference on Happy Golden Retrievers. We are so excited that you will be joining us in Lake Tahoe this August 20th-23rd.Among the 300 happy goldens, all the cool dog tricks they’ll do, and all the fun we’ll have hanging out with each other, it ought to be dog-gone-fun! In the next four registration pages we will ask you some questions about you and your dog, your preferences for meals, your hotel preferences, and your preferred method of payment.

Please feel free to call or email if you have any questions or problems along the way. We want to make sure you are as happy as your golden.

6. Give access to detail

One reason people abandon their registration is because they want to learn more before buying. Having links from the registration pages to more detailed pages (either on the registration form or to your website) is very important. It enables the registrant to open secondary windows, get more information, and then come back to finish their registration. You may want to encourage people to call you while they are registering, so they can get answers right away and finish their registration right then and there.

7. Ask Deeper Questions

Ask your registrants more questions than their contact information, meal preferences, and credit card numbers. Learn more about them; their expectations for the event, their views and experience on topics related to the event, and their demographic data. Your registrants will feel the event will be more tailored to meet their needs. You can actually use the information to make the event more relevant.

Some example questions are:

• What would you like to get out of this event?
• How did you learn about the event?
• Why did you decide to attend?
• How many times have you been to this event?
• Have you recommended it to others? Why?
• What would you do to improve the event?
• Which part(s) of the event are you most looking forward to?

You could use this information to improve the event, promote it, track marketing efforts, gather aggregate data to share with all attendees, and pump up aspects that people are really looking forward to. Some online registration systems will enable you to add custom questions like these to your registration pages. They may also output the responses into a nice, neat format for you as well.

8. Fulfill their desire to buy

Give your registrants the opportunity to buy more than just an event registration. Your registrants are already in the buying mood. They may be itching to get something to help them before, during, or after your event. Do you have books, t-shirts, tapes, white papers, or autographed copies of books from the speakers at your event? Or if you are a charity, this might be a great opportunity to ask for a donation. With an online registration system, you can offer your registrants additional value (with very little additional effort) as they are going through the registration process.

9. Thank your registrants

With online registration, the system automatically sends out confirmation emails to the registrant. Use this opportunity to help your registrant feel really good about their decision to attend. Write a confirmation email that sincerely thanks them, gets them even more excited about their decision to attend, and gives them a subtle reminder to tell their friends and colleagues. You may even want to put a special offer in the confirmation that would help their friends get a deal on your event.

10. Add value before the event

Most online registration systems have options for automated reminder emails at time frames that you determine. Use this capability to increase your attendance, develop more rapport, and increase referrals.

The super charging trick is to give additional value in these emails… a tasting of a topic that will be covered at the event, an article from one of the speakers, an industry whitepaper, or hard-hitting controversial questions facing the industry.

Maybe just before the golf tournament, it’s a blurb from Tiger Woods on how to putt. Give something that would add value and color to your registrants’ lives… anything that would cause them to feel like the event organizers have obviously done their homework and, therefore, the event is going to be super valuable, too.

Bonus Tips:

After reading these 10 tips, you may be asking, “Is there anything else I should know?” We decided to throw in a few bonus tips to help further enhance the event and registration experience.

1. Recruit testers to break your registration

Fully test your registration pages before going live with them. It is much easier to spend the time up front than to have the hassles and embarrassment of a misaligned registration form.

Sometime you can just be too close to it and need another set of eyes to do an adequate job of testing. The more testing you do, the smoother everything will go. Rehearse the registration while it is still in testing mode with several people in your organization. Ask the tech support advisors of your online registration provider to test it for you. Their expertise in event setup will ensure you’re getting the most out of the application.

2. Bring back the people who abandon

Some systems are able to automatically email people who came to register and never finished. The email would ask if they had any questions or problems. This gives you an opportunity to be proactive in helping people complete their registrations, thereby increasing your registration numbers. On some systems, this may be a report that you can run yourself and then email to manually.

3. Talk to attendees after the event

Post-event follow up is so often overlooked. You can stand above the crowd by doing a post-event follow-up email and/or survey. Thank your attendees, ask them what they liked about the event, and what they thought could be done better. Some online registration systems can automate that process too. For example, set the system to automatically send out personalized emails with a survey link one week after the event is over.

With dozens of online registration companies to choose from, selecting one is not an easy task. We recently went through several sites and found ourselves somewhat frustrated and confused.

We want it to be easier for you to select an online registration provider because you have a lot to gain from making the switch. In this paper we will help you understand what to look for and which questions to ask when selecting an online registration provider…

What do I look at first?

First impressions say a lot about a company. If it is easy to obtain and understand information about their service, then it is more likely that their product and company are easy to work with. If it takes too much up-front effort on your part, then it may be a sign of what’s to come.

How responsive were their sales people to your calls or emails? Did it take hours or days to hear back? Did you like interacting with them? How clear were their features and pricing? Did you get straight answers, or need to really dig to get to the bottom line? As much as you are buying technology, you are buying the people who make the technology and their ability to make your life easier.

How do I determine which system will be easiest to use?

Most providers will talk about their ease of setup and use. Depending on your technical aptitude and the complexity of your event, you may or may not agree with their claims. Something to consider: the simpler a system seems at first, the less likely it is to have advanced functionality that you may quickly hunger for. When you look at a system, it’s important to consider both simplicity and functionality. If you go with a very simple system for eases sake, you may miss out on some important functionality or vice versa.

The best way to truly understand ease-of-use is to play around with the system yourself. Most companies have a demo account where you can log into their system and setup or play with a registration form. When you do this, ask yourself… Is the interface intuitive? Can I figure out how to do most of what I want to do with it? Would my coworkers be able to understand and use this system? Sometimes you can also get a sense of the system through their live online demos. It’s best to see the live application in use, versus a PowerPoint, to show you how the system works.

If you have relatively complex registration needs, you will need a system that is more robust and therefore may appear less simple. In this case you will want to pay greater attention to their training and support (which we will cover later).

What is the easiest way to figure out if they really have the functionality I need?

An easy way to check if their functionality fits your needs is to fax your current registration form to the salespeople. Make an additional list of your management and reporting needs and identify them as either “have to haves” or “would like to haves”. Ask the salesperson to walk through it with you and tell you what their system can and cannot do.

A great way to confirm their claims is to ask for and call references that have events that are similar to yours. This way, you can talk through how they used it and compare it to your own needs. Ask the references what functionality is missing and how easy it is to use.

Most systems cover the basic functions like collecting information, sending confirmation, reminder, and notification emails, processing credit cards, and producing basic reports. However, it’s the advanced features that are important to identify and compare. Some of these include wait listing, hotel blocks, custom reporting, mass emailing, surveying, and series meeting management. Within each one of these categories, there are a host of increasingly specific functions to consider.

If a provider is close, but doesn’t have the exact functionality you need, some companies also offer customization services (for a fee). You tell the company what you need, and they’ll tell you how much it would cost to customize their system to better meet your needs.

How do I know if the company will be there for me when I have questions or problems?

Support falls into three categories: online help, training, and one-on-one phone and email support.

If the online help is good, it will be the most efficient way for you to get quick answers 24/7. How easy is it to access? Is there context sensitive help that will give you help specific to the section you were in? How thorough and practical is the help? Do they offer how-to’s, tips, and warnings? How often do they update the help? Updates are especially important with companies that are improving their technology on a weekly basis. Do they provide regular email updates on enhancements or changes? Some companies also offer flash mini-trainings that you can click on to watch at any time.

The next is training. What trainings do they offer? How often? Is there a charge for training? Do they have flash trainings that you can take whenever you like? What do customers say about their trainings?

As well as some of the systems are built, you most likely will have questions or needs that require a live person on the other end (especially if you don’t have time for online help or training). The important questions then become: What is the average response time to an email or phone call? How helpful and friendly are they? How many clients per dedicated support employee (non-programmer) do they have? Do they have restrictions on how you can use support (email only, $ per incident, etc.)? Try asking the support team directly for the answers to these questions. The way they respond will tell you something too.

With some providers, they will build the registration pages for you (for a fee). If you are in a pinch for time or find it a hassle, this can be a life-saver, so be sure they have it.

How do I figure out the real bottom-line cost?

Unfortunately, pricing is one of the most confusing aspects of this industry. This has come as a result of providers trying to tailor their pricing to too many different client needs. Small events, large events, frequent events, processing credit cards, etc.. Here are the categories of pricing: per event, per registrant, % of transaction, annual fees, up-front fees, flat rate licensing fees, and additional service fees.

Mix all this together with volume discounts and long-term contracts, and there are a lot of numbers to look at. To sort them all out, start with a most likely scenario of what your events will look like for the next year and get the prices for that.

Create a spreadsheet and input all the numbers from the different providers to come up with a bottom-line price for each. Then weigh the total cost against all the other criteria discussed here. Don’t make the mistake of going with the cheapest at the expense of missing out on features, stability, or good service.

Also, be careful with entering long-term contracts, just to get a better price. It is important to do a test-run with a couple events before locking into the long term (if at all). Some agreements have auto-renewal clauses that, without you really knowing, lock you in year-to-year.

What do I need to know about processing credit cards online?

If you are using their merchant account, how does billing work? How quickly do they pay you? Do they hold back on any portion? If so, for how long? Can you view real-time transactions? How easy is it to do refunds?

If you are using your own merchant account, do they support your gateway? How long does it take to connect up? How do you do refunds?

Pricing for merchant services can be confusing as well. If you are trying to decide if it makes more sense to create you own merchant account or use the providers merchant account, consider the following: If you use your own merchant account you will pay monthly, per transaction, % of transaction (plus their hidden non-qualified rates), as well as monthly, and per transaction gateway fees, plus whatever fees the registration provider requires for integrated processing. All totaled, you may be able to save a percent over if you used the provider’s merchant account. You need to weigh the potential savings with the hassles that go with setting up and managing your own merchant account, gateway, and all their fees.

How do I know which company I can count on to be around for years to come?

How long has the company been around? How many developers, support, and sales people? How long has it been profitable (if at all)? How is it funded? What is their employee turnover? What percentage of new business is from referrals?

A company that has a healthy percentage of referrals usually means they are investing well in their technology and people. As a result, they have a greater likelihood of being around for the long haul. Online registration has changed many people’s lives for the better, and created some great testimonials. The question is what percentage of the customers are raving fans? How consistent is the company and its technology with making people happy? One good way to find that out is to ask… What percentage of new business is from referrals?

What aspects of security and stability are important?

Is your information safe? How secure are their servers? Who has access to your information? If you will have multiple users or administrators accessing the system on your end, do you have the ability to set different security access levels?

All systems have down time (including the Yahoo’s and Amazon’s of the world). The question is how much? There are several factors that cause this: the internet, the host, the hardware, and the software. Be sure to ask how many times in the past year has the system gone down, and for how long? NO ONE has zero downtime. So, ask for specifics if they say rarely or not at all. What advanced notification do they give for downtime. What guarantees do they offer for uptime?

Will the technology grow with my needs?

A huge benefit of using an online registration provider, instead of hosting your own application, is the ability for the provider to make constant upgrades to improve the system. Which brings us to our next question, How committed is the company to improving their technology? How frequently are they making upgrades? Ask for the upgrades that were made in the past couple months and compare the amount of enhancements between systems.

How do I get my information out of these systems?

Reporting enables you to monitor ongoing progress of your registrations, plan for the event, and then manage the actual event. How easy or difficult is it to access the information you need? Do the standard reports give you what you need? Can you produce your own custom reports? Can you sort the reports the way you want? Can you save and export reports? When you demo the system, check to see that the reports will give you what you want, the way you want it.

We hope you found this paper to be valuable in helping you select an online registration provider. No matter who you choose, it will make you and your staff’s life easier and events more successful by taking and managing registrations online.

Let’s face it, setting up and operating the registration process for events and conferences is one of the least favorite things on most event planner’s list of things to do. There is a lot of repetitive and mechanical stuff to do to make sure that everyone gets notified and signed up on time.

The Biggest Problems with Manual Systems: Mail, Fax, Phone, Email

1. Illegible handwriting on registration forms

2. Mistakes in transferring information from registration forms to your database.

3. Having enough time to register people by phone, process credit card charges and still organize a successful event.

The Biggest Problems with Intranet Systems (In-house)& Internet Systems (web-based)

4. Getting Your IT Department to get you what you need on time and make the changes you need when you need them.

5. Figuring out which of the 45 online systems on the market will actually do what we need done at the best price

The Biggest Problems with All of the Above Systems

6. How to make the process easier for the registrant and how to get maximum attendance.

How Can I Remedy These Problems?

The best way to overcome all 6 of these problems is to use an online registration system that is designed and built to address each problem independently. For Example, a good online registration system will enable you to quickly customize the registration forms, adding your logo and other identity info, so that your new registration website looks like a custom system and is the easiest possible for attendees to use in signing up.

What’s the Real Benefit to Me?

A good online system can reduce the time you spend on the entire registration process by more than 80% and give your attendees the ease and flexibility they love by enabling them to register anytime of the day or night. No more mailed or faxed in forms to deal with. No more telephone calls from attendees to get registered, book their hotels or, order merchandise. It’s all done online, faster for the attendees and zero time for you and your staff.

How Long Does It Take and How Much Does It Cost?

Setting up an online registration system for your next event can take as little as an hour and, you’ll have a registration site with your own logo and identity so your guests will recognize your site immediately. You’ll be able to make changes to any of the forms, schedules or dates anytime you wish because you are in complete control of the system at all times and, you’ll know exactly what your costs are because most web-based registration systems charge a fee per attendee (from $3.00 - $10.00), depending on your number of attendees each year.

Irresistible Event Titles
You can attract more people to your event by interrupting and engaging your prospects with an event title that has SIZZLE!… that gets their blood moving… that causes them to stop whatever it is they are doing and say “I WANT TO GO TO THIS!”

Are Your Event Titles Flat?
Ninety-nine percent of event titles today are boooooring and don’t interrupt, engage, or attract any additional registrants. For example: “ABC 10th Annual Conference”, “XYZ Training Workshop” and “Introduction to Presentation Skills”

These titles have no substance. No personality. The good news is you can attract significantly more people to your event when you add “stopping value” to your title.

How do You Create “Stopping Power”?
Hit your audience’s HOT BUTTONS. Hot Buttons are words and phrases that describe an issue your prospect may be experiencing –so they have to stop to read more. Identify hot buttons by asking these three questions:

1. What things are important to your typical prospect when deciding to go to your event?
2. What are the important issues your event will address?
3. What will your event do to give the prospect what they want?

Next, take these answers and begin writing your titles. Write out 20-50 titles for your event before word-smithing or judging any of them. Some of the titles will give you ideas for other titles. Merge some together. Don’t worry about length. Contrary to popular opinion, longer titles that have richer content are better than shorter nondescript titles

Reworked Titles

• ABC Annual Conference – “The 3 Biggest Problems Facing ABC’ers Today and How to Overcome Them All”
• XYZ Training Workshop — “Seven Tricks That Will Save You At Least Five Hours of Work each Week”
• Introduction to Presentation Skills – “How to Get Standing Ovations Every Time You Present”