Best Practices for Registration Websites

May 16, 2012 // Attend-eSource

Setting Up for Success: Best Practices for Registration Websites
In today’s web-based world, meeting attendees not only appreciate, but expect to have easy solutions for attending events. After all, many of us run our offices, finances and social lives from our phone – so the notion of filling out a registration form and submitting via email, snail mail or fax seems archaic. But, not all web-based solutions are created equal. Not only is it critical to effectively manage the data and logistics of your event, but, it’s also imperative to incorporate your brand and event theme into every attendee touch point – including your conference website and registration process.
At metroConnections, we’ve worked hard during the last 20 years to hone our conference website design expertise for our customers and welcome the opportunity to share some best practices with the industry. Let’s begin with design of the website. The design should be an interactive process between you and the designer and include benchmark approvals along the way. Your brand, strategy, content and messaging should drive design, not the other way around. Consistent navigation and design does not equate to boring, rather, results in a user-friendly website for your guests. By keeping the homepage clean and streamlined, it will clearly drive people deeper into the site to access additional information. Like all websites, having a good balance of images, content and white space is key — along with distinct contrast between the background and text/header colors. In addition, while conference logos and themes are important, it is important to stay true to your corporate brand as to not confuse attendees. Odd-shaped and creative buttons are a great way to draw attention to your key messages and call to action items, such as registering for the conference, downloading speaker presentations, watching post-conference videos and signing up to receive information on next year’s event.
With regard to the registration form, it is crucial to first determine your required data fields and reporting needs as this will allow the designers to format the flow and eliminate the need for future report manipulation. Beyond reporting, every good registration form should include conference details so it is easy for attendees to access needed information during the registration process. This can be done by including pop-up links to agendas, hotel and travel information, and more. To further reduce confusion during the registration process, the registration form should open in a new window without navigation. If navigation is desired, the new window will still allow users to go back and forth between the conference website and form without losing the information they have already entered.
Also be sure the form makes sense to the attendee based on the event. For example, if breakouts are the most important part of the event for your attendees, allow them to choose their sessions early in the process.
A few last notes to consider while building your conference registration form:

Call-out boxes are a great way to inform attendees of deadlines and information to be published in the future. This could include breakout session schedules and topics that might not be available upon the launch of the event website.
Short, concise instructions should always be used on a form – too much content is distracting.
Use a form that utilizes unique identifiers to profile attendees and, whenever possible, pre-populate fields for their convenience.
Conference websites and registration forms hold your attendees’ personal data, credit card information and registration information. Airfare, hotel rooms and program sessions will all be booked from office computers, home computers, iPads and other mobile devices. Do you feel confident your attendees can use your registration website without compromising the security of personal or financial information? For more information on how to ensure your attendee’s data is secure, read Whitepaper: Is Your Attendee Data Secure

For more information about our full suite of Attend-eSource® Services, submit our demo form here. If you are interested in a free evaluation of your current conference website or to talk about an upcoming event, please contact us.
Brad Neuman is the Director of Attend-eSource® Technologies, a web-based solution that includes elements such as online registration and custom-built event websites. Neuman and his team build more than 600 custom conference and meeting websites annually. He has been in the registration and housing technology business for more than 16 years.