How To Build An Event Registration Page That Attendees Enjoy

The event registration page is an often overlooked part of the attendee experience. In many instances, event registration pages are ugly, unreliable, and create a negative experience for event attendees.

Think about it: this is the first impression an attendee will have of your event, why would you want them to have a negative or at best, mediocre experience?

Fortunately, event organizers can create a registration page that delights attendees – here’s how to do it.

Use Design To Your Advantage

One of the first impressions event attendees will have comes from their experience with your event registration page.

Ensure that the page is well-designed, and just as importantly, make sure that the page fits your branding.

If the registration page features the colors and logo of an event registration platform, rather than your event’s logos and colors, attendees may become confused. Moreover, your own brand will be considered weaker or less important (at least subliminally).

Creating a registration experience like the one pictured above provides users with a sense of continuity. It also helps to make your event seem more polished thanks to consistent brand imagery (in this case consistent fonts and colors).

When designing your event registration page, be sure to also make use of contrasting colors as a way of guiding attendees through the registration process. In the image below, the “Order Now” button, is bright red. This color is in contrast to the rest of the branding on the event website and helps to pull the visitors eye down the page.

Unbounce suggests that color choices should be based on two factors.

• Readability:color combinations must be easily readable to improve user experience.

• “Psychological Association:” Different colors conjure up different associations in the minds of visitors – it’s important for organizers to understand this when creating an event registration page.

Integrate With Social Media

One of the biggest reasons for abandoned registrations is because potential attendees simply don’t like filling out long forms.

As a result conversion rates (the percentage of people who visit your registration page and actually end up submitting it) increase as the number of form fields decrease.

One great way to decrease the number of form fields, while still collecting the information you need, is by enabling social sign in. The form below allows potential attendees to register by simply clicking the “Register Using LinkedIn” button.

This cuts registration time dramatically, while also increasing conversion rates. According to some marketing companies, social signin can increase conversion rates by 40-60%.

Enabling social logins has an added benefit for event organizers. It makes adding event attendees to an integrated event networking community much easier. That’s because some event planning software platforms add registrants to a networking community once they’ve signed up. By connecting their profiles to LinkedIn, everyone gets a much richer networking experience, while requiring only requiring event goers to click a button.

Bundle Registration Form Fields

User experience should be at the top of every event organizer’s mind when thinking about the registration page. In order to create a seamless experience for attendees, it’s best to bundle necessary information into categories.

Budling makes the page more intuitive for event attendees, as they understand how the information they’re asked to provide is related to the event.

In the example below, note the form titles “Billing Information” and “Ticking 1 – Conference Day” while it might seem small, these titles go a long way in helping to provide a context for event attendees when using your event registration page.

Make Your Event Registration Page Intuitive

Most registration pages ask attendees to fill out boring credit card fields when registering. The best event registration pages incorporate intuitive registration elements like the interactive credit card in the images below.

Above: this is what attendees see before entering a card number.

Above: this is what attendees see when the begin entering their credit card information

This interactive feature reduces the need for unnecessary explainer text, and it provides attendees with a rewarding checkout experience.

Make Sure Registration Is Mobile Friendly

More than ⅓ of all online purchases were made on mobile devices in 2013, according to Kissmetrics. If your event registration page is not mobile responsive, you need to get that fixed right away.

A mobile responsive page, is different from a mobile friendly page. Responsive design is considered to be the gold standard for mobile design, and it’s something that you should have in place if there’s any change that a sizeable portion of users (anything over 10%) will attempt to register to your event using a mobile device.

Below is an example of a mobile responsive design as viewed on an iPhone 6+. A merly mobile friendly website might not have fit the phone’s uniquely sized screen, but a mobile responsive design looks great.

Note that mobile designs should also include shorter forms, if possible (remember the social login button), and must take the phone’s keyboard into account as well.

Conclusion: The Perfect Registration Page

The ideal conference registration experience is one that was built from the ground up to suit the desires of event attendees. Based on the data presented in this article, the most effective pages limit the number of field options, harness the power of design and color psychology, use social login, and are mobile responsive.

By building an intuitively designed conference registration page could cause a meaningful increase in conversion rates. The means more attendees registered and more revenue as well.

Learn to design stunning registration pages, and a stunning event overall! Download the Event Design eBook by clicking the button below.