Nowadays, with an increasingly competitive events industry, race directors and event organisers recognise that, with all the logistics and attention to detail inherent in planning events, it is important to have event management software they can depend on to ensure success. With a wide variety of products available, try to keep 5 essentials in mind when picking the software that will work best for your event.
Essential #1 of Online Registration: Customizable Registration Forms
There are many products available that allow you to create an online registration form, but most lack the flexibility needed to accommodate the needs of each unique event. Many online registration products offer a standard form template which includes a generic design and a limit to the number of custom data fields you can add to the form. This design inflexibility can hurt user experience and limited data collection does not exactly put your job on cruise control either.
Take the issue of design for example. You may have a beautiful and professionally designed event website with clean lines and pretty images, but when a registrant clicks that "Enter Online" button and links over to the form, they may be presented with something that looks completely disjointed from the excitement that was just generated by your website. The standard form template offered by many software companies will not have your website's look and feel or even the event logo in some cases! A proper online registration system should give you the option to match the registration form's look and feel to that of your event website. This will give the registrant the feeling that he has never left your website and provide a sense of security that their data and payment are not being collected somewhere else.
As far as flexibility of data collection, it is important that the software you choose offer the option to create as many custom fields as needed for collecting any type of data you may need from the registrant. Examples of different types of data fields would be: short answer, long answer, single choice radio button, multiple choice, drop-down menu, time format, file upload, and quantity questions to name a few. Flexibility in types of questions you can create means flexibility in the reporting you can harvest from your event administration area of the tool.
Also keep in mind that your event may include different types of attendees of which you need to collect different types of data. More advanced online registration systems will offer you the ability to create multiple versions of a registration form including questions that apply to only those that need to answer them. An example would be the data needed from an event participant as compared to that needed from an event volunteer. This type of information is easy to gather when you have full control over your online registration forms.
Essential #2 of Online Registration: Online Payments
Gone are the days of waiting for your attendee's cheques to clear or waiting for payment to arrive by mail so that you can make a bank deposit. The vast majority of event organizers these days are opting to accept payment online by credit card. Accepting entry fees online is a great time saver because money collected online is in most cases automatically deposited into your bank account.
A feature like this can really get an event organizer excited, but before you sign on the dotted line make sure the online registration system you use is secure and has your registrant's best interests in mind.
Something else to consider is whether you would like to use your own online merchant gateway or use a merchant gateway provided by the online registration company. A fully integrated registration system should offer you use of a merchant gateway so that you do not need to go to the trouble of setting up your own.
Essential #3 of Online Registration: Automated Emails
Put yourself in your registrant's place: You fill out an online form, enter your credit card number, click the submit button...and then nothing. Was my registration received? Was my card charged??? An automated follow-up email is essential for the success of your event and there are two different ways that you can use it:
1. To send an automatic confirmation email to the registrant. Give your attendees peace of mind knowing that their payment has been accepted and space reserved.
2. To send out emails to registrants with a reminder as the event date approaches.
Regular communication from the event organizer will build confidence in his participants and keep them engaged in preparing for the event.
Essential #4 of Online Registration: Robust Reporting
Easy participant tracking and reporting is key to a stress-free event. An issue that many event organizers complain of is not knowing exactly how many people will be coming to the event until the very last moment. Events that accept entries by way of paper registration may be busy hand counting forms and manually updating attendee spreadsheets until the night before the event.
Using a fully automated online registration system will allow you to view real-time event data snapshots as the registrations are flowing in. Up-to-the-minute reports are so important for those staff meetings in the last days leading up to the event. A system with flexible and robust reporting should be able to offer you the data you have collected in a number of different custom reports, in real-time, and from any internet connection so that you can check the numbers on the fly.
Essential #5 of Online Registration: Complete Automation
When doing your research, you will probably find that the every online registration system claims to offer some degree of automation but I would suggest that finding a product that will truly reduce your workload requires COMPLETE automation. By this I mean that you want your registration form to be connected to your merchant account, which is connected to your database.
For example, one online registration provider may collect participant data for you and email you the data, but not put it in a database. They may leave it up to you to manually enter it into a spreadsheet or offline database. Another online registration provider may collect the data and funnel it into a database but the reporting available may be very limited and the registrant may not get a customized automatic confirmation email confirming his registration. In other cases, the online registration software may collect the participant's data and credit card number but you may have to manually process payments offline or through your own merchant gateway. Opening your own merchant gateway can be expensive not to mention confusing.
When choosing your system, make sure it is fully automated and fully integrated. A complete tool will handle everything from capturing data, to charging the card, sending a confirmation email to the registrant, housing the data in a secure database, and offering reporting and communication tools to keep informed about your transactions and your participant's needs.
Conclusion:
The key to any successful event is providing the attendee with a quality experience, growing registrations year-over-year, and reducing workload so that you can focus on all of the above. With some careful research, selecting the right online registration system will enable you to take your event to the next level.
Essential #1 of Online Registration: Customizable Registration Forms
There are many products available that allow you to create an online registration form, but most lack the flexibility needed to accommodate the needs of each unique event. Many online registration products offer a standard form template which includes a generic design and a limit to the number of custom data fields you can add to the form. This design inflexibility can hurt user experience and limited data collection does not exactly put your job on cruise control either.
Take the issue of design for example. You may have a beautiful and professionally designed event website with clean lines and pretty images, but when a registrant clicks that "Enter Online" button and links over to the form, they may be presented with something that looks completely disjointed from the excitement that was just generated by your website. The standard form template offered by many software companies will not have your website's look and feel or even the event logo in some cases! A proper online registration system should give you the option to match the registration form's look and feel to that of your event website. This will give the registrant the feeling that he has never left your website and provide a sense of security that their data and payment are not being collected somewhere else.
As far as flexibility of data collection, it is important that the software you choose offer the option to create as many custom fields as needed for collecting any type of data you may need from the registrant. Examples of different types of data fields would be: short answer, long answer, single choice radio button, multiple choice, drop-down menu, time format, file upload, and quantity questions to name a few. Flexibility in types of questions you can create means flexibility in the reporting you can harvest from your event administration area of the tool.
Also keep in mind that your event may include different types of attendees of which you need to collect different types of data. More advanced online registration systems will offer you the ability to create multiple versions of a registration form including questions that apply to only those that need to answer them. An example would be the data needed from an event participant as compared to that needed from an event volunteer. This type of information is easy to gather when you have full control over your online registration forms.
Essential #2 of Online Registration: Online Payments
Gone are the days of waiting for your attendee's cheques to clear or waiting for payment to arrive by mail so that you can make a bank deposit. The vast majority of event organizers these days are opting to accept payment online by credit card. Accepting entry fees online is a great time saver because money collected online is in most cases automatically deposited into your bank account.
A feature like this can really get an event organizer excited, but before you sign on the dotted line make sure the online registration system you use is secure and has your registrant's best interests in mind.
Something else to consider is whether you would like to use your own online merchant gateway or use a merchant gateway provided by the online registration company. A fully integrated registration system should offer you use of a merchant gateway so that you do not need to go to the trouble of setting up your own.
Essential #3 of Online Registration: Automated Emails
Put yourself in your registrant's place: You fill out an online form, enter your credit card number, click the submit button...and then nothing. Was my registration received? Was my card charged??? An automated follow-up email is essential for the success of your event and there are two different ways that you can use it:
1. To send an automatic confirmation email to the registrant. Give your attendees peace of mind knowing that their payment has been accepted and space reserved.
2. To send out emails to registrants with a reminder as the event date approaches.
Regular communication from the event organizer will build confidence in his participants and keep them engaged in preparing for the event.
Essential #4 of Online Registration: Robust Reporting
Easy participant tracking and reporting is key to a stress-free event. An issue that many event organizers complain of is not knowing exactly how many people will be coming to the event until the very last moment. Events that accept entries by way of paper registration may be busy hand counting forms and manually updating attendee spreadsheets until the night before the event.
Using a fully automated online registration system will allow you to view real-time event data snapshots as the registrations are flowing in. Up-to-the-minute reports are so important for those staff meetings in the last days leading up to the event. A system with flexible and robust reporting should be able to offer you the data you have collected in a number of different custom reports, in real-time, and from any internet connection so that you can check the numbers on the fly.
Essential #5 of Online Registration: Complete Automation
When doing your research, you will probably find that the every online registration system claims to offer some degree of automation but I would suggest that finding a product that will truly reduce your workload requires COMPLETE automation. By this I mean that you want your registration form to be connected to your merchant account, which is connected to your database.
For example, one online registration provider may collect participant data for you and email you the data, but not put it in a database. They may leave it up to you to manually enter it into a spreadsheet or offline database. Another online registration provider may collect the data and funnel it into a database but the reporting available may be very limited and the registrant may not get a customized automatic confirmation email confirming his registration. In other cases, the online registration software may collect the participant's data and credit card number but you may have to manually process payments offline or through your own merchant gateway. Opening your own merchant gateway can be expensive not to mention confusing.
When choosing your system, make sure it is fully automated and fully integrated. A complete tool will handle everything from capturing data, to charging the card, sending a confirmation email to the registrant, housing the data in a secure database, and offering reporting and communication tools to keep informed about your transactions and your participant's needs.
Conclusion:
The key to any successful event is providing the attendee with a quality experience, growing registrations year-over-year, and reducing workload so that you can focus on all of the above. With some careful research, selecting the right online registration system will enable you to take your event to the next level.
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