Small details can have a big impact on the number of people who will attend your events. That especially holds true when it comes to your online event registration form! In fact, certain things can even cause your potential attendees to leave, and never return to the form at all.

There are a number of ways you can make your potential attendees feel comfortable with (and excited about!) registering once they reach that stage. Consider using some of these tips to get more people to fill out your event registration form:

1. Your form should match the look and feel of your event’s website. Consistent branding helps registrants feel comfortable with the process. Plus, it gives your event professionalism and credibility.

2. Make the form look clean, easy to use, and inviting. You’ll want to align fields perfectly, use consistent spacing, add white space and limit the use of different font sizes and styles.

3. Have a clearly visible and friendly cancellation and refund policy. This will make your audience comfortable with pre-registering for the event. If you don’t want to issue refunds, consider at least allowing people to transfer their registration to someone else.

4. List a name and phone number of a real person registrants can contact with questions. Most people won’t call, but having that option could mean securing another registration! Besides, being accessible to your customers is just good business.

5. Keep text short. If you feel the need to provide a lot of instructions, your form is probably too complicated. Plus, by the time people hit your form they are ready to sign up so keep it easy and get to the point.

6. Prevent errors by using the right field types and adding logic. This will make the form easy for registrants to use without instructions, and give you better reporting.

7. Host the form on a secure server. Savvy users know what to look for and won’t proceed if it doesn’t look safe! Your system also needs to be PCI compliant if you’re accepting credit cards online. (Again, it’s all just good business.)

8. Have a privacy policy clearly visible. People are hyper-attentive to what happens with their data these days. (With good reason!) Some won’t even register if they don’t see a policy. Remove that barrier with a simple statement on your form!

9. Offer payment options appropriate for your registrants. For example, don’t make paying by credit card the only option if you are targeting students who may not have credit cards. If people can’t pay, they won’t register!

10. Don’t offer too many registration options. If your registrants have to spend time thinking about what to select they may decide to come back later…or never. Plus, choosing the wrong option will leads to more headaches for you down the road.

11. Only ask for details that you REALLY need. Registrants may abandon the form if you are asking for personal information they don’t want to give out – and, every field you remove makes the form easier to complete, increasing the chance of making a sale.

12. Keep your forms an ad-free place. The goal of the form is to sell your event, not something else! Plus, ads are distracting and will muddle up the clean look you’re going for.

13. Keep links that lead people away from your form to a minimum. Once you get someone to your form, keep them focused on completing it! If you do feel you absolutely HAVE to add a link to your form, be sure that you set it to open a new window or tab.

14. Avoid forcing specific number formats. If people have to enter their phone number, zip code, etc. in a certain way, they may get frustrated and abandon ship.

15. Before going live, test your form. Get the least computer savvy person you know (or at least someone who hasn’t seen the form before) to try to register while you watch. You might be surprised by what stops or confuses them!

16. Ask your online registration provider to review your form and offer suggestions. They should do this for free and if they are good, they will have a few suggestions for you – unless you did a really, really good job setting it up!

Remember, small changes can have a big impact on your registration count! If you’re on the hunt for a robust online event registration software, there are some questions you should ask to make sure it can do all of the above (and more), and ensure you have the perfect system in place. Check them out!

{{cta(‘a6e91aad-f25e-409d-be31-40190dd43b4c’)}}