Your online event registration form is an important piece of your overall event marketing. Getting your potential attendees to the form is one thing, but they have to complete it in order to secure their ticket. That’s why it’s important to ensure they have a seamless experience.

The best way to do that? Review it from top to bottom.

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

Step 1: Look over the form. Start by visually checking every detail on the form for accuracy and clarity — pricing, wording, grammar, spelling, etc. You want to make sure that instructions are clear and easy to follow. If your form allows, consider also branding it to match your company or event website so your audience is confident they’re in the right place.

Step 2: Submit test registrations. Go through the form and submit several registrations as if you were really signing up for the event. Verifying the whole process as an active user will help you catch any errors along the way. To be really thorough, choose different registration options, and try making conflicting selections or entering bad data.

Step 3: Check confirmation emails. First, make sure you receive the email to begin with when you test! Then, read through it carefully for, again, accuracy and clarity.

One other thing to pay attention to here is how digestible the email is. You want to include important details, but don’t want to overwhelm your registrants. If it feels like too much information, remove anything not immediately important and plan to send it in a pre-event email, or direct attendees to an FAQ where everything is addressed.

Step 4: Find another tester. Get someone who’s never seen your registration form before to submit some test registrations, too. If you’ve been working on it for a while, fresh eyes may bring up issues that you might not have noticed. Try to recruit a couple of different people, and instruct them to pay attention to the details.

Step 5: Check the reporting. Now that you have a few test registrations, view the reports in your online event management software and make sure that the way the registration data is saved will give you the reporting that you need. It’s a good idea to think of the reports you’ll want the system to generate before you launch your registration form, because it can be difficult to change collected data to suit your needs once registrations start to come in.

Step 6: Check the links to the registration form. Always double check that any calls to action to register for your event (on your website, in emails, on social media, etc.) will take your potential registrants to the right place. You don’t want to start promoting your event, only to find out that no one is registering because your links are broken! That simple mistake can cause a huge roadblock in your event’s success.

Step 7: Ask your online event management software provider for feedback. After all, they’re the experts! These folks have made a countless number of registration forms and should spot any potential issues right away. In fact, if you have any doubts about the best way to structure your registration form, ask them for advice before you invest too much time setting things up. A few extra minutes of planning can save hours of reworking.

Of course, all of your hard work needs to be represented by the right online event registration system. Using the wrong one can be costly, in terms of money and time. That’s why we put together a guide to help you find the right system for your event. Click below to download 5 Tough Questions to Ask to Help Pick the Perfect Online Registration System:

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