What Is Event Registration? Things to consider to begin
What is Event Registration definition?
We’ll kick it off with a good definition. The definition of what is event registration is basically;
The process by which an event planner organises attendance to an experience for one or more attendees. The event organisers should be able to choose an event registration process that fits the needs of each event and can help them achieve their goals.
What Event Registration process should you use?
Now we’ll move on to what event registration process should you actually use? Now with that question in mind, we’re going to just talk through some of the things that you should actually consider on what process you should use for your event registration.
Online Registration
The first big one, the first major one seems fairly obvious, but the days of offline event registration are over. Online efficiency is best, for a multitude of reasons, and you’ll see these reasons as we go through. The first one, obviously customer registration can be updated. This is obviously when the customer can actually enter their details, change them, edit them.
If this was all done on a manual basis you may have had a registration form sent in, completed, and then a request to actually then have another form sent back out to re-register or get some sort of administrator to make those manual administration changes. So, having it online first of all gives the customer the best chance to change their details firsthand.
Customer Registration Choice
Also, the user can obviously make their own ticket choice, and this obviously gives you the option then to supply a different range of tickets, whether that be beginner, medium, expert sort of packages, or starter to more accomplished packages, or whatever it may be, it gives the user the option to obviously make that specific choice that fits them and their needs.
Customer Data
With the use of an online event registration you can actually then also request the specific data that you want from the user. So that gives you the option to provide a whole range of questions and boxes and tick boxes that you can get the user to complete prior to registration.
This also then gives the user the understanding of the data that they’re going to supply to you, and that they’re comfortable in doing so, and also a better understanding of what the event may entail, whether this is a course or some sort of membership of some sort. At least they know the data they are supplying and what it’s for.
E-Ticket
For whatever event that you may want attendees to register for you may want to actually send out e-tickets after the registration. This is fantastic, because to do this in an offline format you would be having to get names and addresses and send tickets through the post and that increases the administration costs. But the process of an online registration means you can have an e-ticket sent out to the actual user that is registered with the data all on that e-ticket for them to attend on the day of the event.
Barcode E-Ticket
Also on the e-ticket you can actually add, and I’d certainly recommend this, to get a bar code added on to the e-ticket so if you’ve got an event at a certain large venue and you needed to know a certain attendee number on those that actually turn up and attended on a specific day. You could actually scan every single ticket on entry and that will give you a correct total on the people in the room at the time. A venue or whatever sort of event it may be that requires a limit of people that are only allowed to attend.
Event Registration Payment
Accepting the payment at the point of registration, this is fantastic, and where you can, I certainly recommend to take payment at the point of registration. You obviously can have the option and choice to take payment offline after a user is registered but having the payment up front and accepted gives you a better understanding of the value of the event before it even takes place.
Secure Credit Card Transactions
Also to take the payment you need a professional secure debit/credit card transactions. This can be done through many payment gateways but I certainly recommend to have a secure format whichever sort of way you want to take payment.
List of Registered Attendees
You can also get a full list of the registered attendees prior to the event, this will give you a full understanding of everyone that is going to take part. Depending on the sorts of questions and data that you asked of the user or attendee at the point of registration you can have all that information within your list of registered attendees.
So, whether it might be that you was asking if somebody got a certain meal requirement, all that information can be done and present on the list prior to the event. Obviously when you have that information you can verify it with various sources whether its caterers for example or the actual attendee themselves with the contact information that they may have supplied.
Event Communications
You can have the option to notify all the attendees prior to the event in a sort of mass e-mail. You could either do a run of e-mails prior to the event or just provide one or none at all but having the option to contact them all with a short quick message even if it was for an emergency to say the event is canceled, is a great option. Whereas if the event was offline you would have a very large phone bill trying to contact everybody to inform them.
Event Marketing
Communicate with attendees after the event is a fantastic marketing tool to use the data you have been given by each user to actually target them for any other future events that you may have that you want to offer them. Alongside with that communication, you can also offer any discounts for any past attendees for those future events that you may want to offer to them, that they might want to attend.
Now moving on, we can ask how to design for an event registration process. Well, the questions that you need to ask yourself are;
Whether that may be a course, a cinema evening, a fair, a class, a workshop, whatever it may be you need to sort of understand what sort of event it is that you are trying to sell. Whether it’s even just a free event, we’ll use the world ‘sell’ as you’re trying to gain a registration by each of your attendees and users. So that is the first big question you need to ask yourself.
The next one is actually how many attendees does your event hold. So if you’ve got like a workshop of say 30, 50 people, that is a limit of users or attendees that can attend and that needs to be built into the event registration process. If it’s a fair size of several hundred people and there is no limit on the numbers then obviously the event registration process needs to have no limit of attendees.
You then need to also think about all the different options for registration. So is there a beginners ticket or an experts ticket or whatever sort of ticket you may have that you want to sell. You need to sort of understand that those are the sort of options that you want to offer at registration, and as long as those are clear at the beginning that provides a better process for the attendees.
You need to gather all the questions and all the possible answers that you may require from your attendees. So such questions as you know, age, contact number, e-mail address, name would be a good start. It would obviously depend on the event, if it’s an event with a meal do they have any food or allergy requirements?
If it’s an event with multiple times of attendance you need to also then actually gauge which time they expect to attend? The list is endless really but whatever sort of information you need, you need to get all those questions up front and ready at the beginning of the registration process
Do you want to send out an e-ticket of some sort where other users can print out and make it in physical format or do you want them to have a digital e-ticket that they can bring on their smartphones to scan on entrance?
Carrying on with an e-ticket, do you need to scan any tickets on entry? This is mainly for events that have a limit. So it’s really important to understand if there is a limit to the attendees. If there is a limit number of 400 attendees, then you need to actually get each ticket scanned on entry to avoid overcrowding at the event.
If your event requires payment at register, you need to actually gauge all the costs of each ticket or the single price of that ticket you want to sell.
Obviously if you do need to take a payment then is your website ready and set up to take secure card transactions? If not, then that is something that needs to be taken into consideration before the event registration process is set up.
If you have a caterer that needs to know certain requirements for meals, they may need to know who is attending. If you’ve got a wedding you’re taking reservations for, for a R.S.V.P format, certainly there will be a number of different parties in the wedding planning process that will want to know who has registered and who hasn’t. Again, those who are concerned on the attendee limits of an event, they will also want to know who is registered as well prior to the event.
That is something else to consider, because obviously once the event’s taken place, time can pass pretty quickly and you may lose that moment of actually catching the attendees attention to maybe re-attend or go to a different sort of event afterwards. So having the thought process to communicate with them after the event and target them specifically will actually then give you a better chance of them opting into future other events. This is best to have it all arranged and organised prior to the registration process starting.
Have you got any offers to provide for the future events? Again, if you do have other events in the pipeline then you may want to set a special 10 percent off, or a coupon of some sort. Best again to have this all set up prior to the event taking place.
Outline – What is Event Registration?
Event Details
Now, in terms of the actual event process in it’s most simplest format the event details is the first page that is shown. And the details, well some of the details that certainly need to be on there are the dates, the location, and the cost of the event, even if this is free. There are certainly many other sort of details you can include obviously an image, quotes, any feedback from previous events. Just any sort of information that you may want to provide to possible attendees that may entice them and get them to actually sign up and attend.
Event Registration
The next page that’s part of the event registration process is to actually allow the user to select which ticket they want to register for, as you may have an option. Once they’ve actually selected that option, the user then needs to be able to complete the details that you want them to complete.
Event Checkout
Once they’ve submitted those details the next page is to go to the checkout and the user needs to confirm the details they have entered are correct and they are happy and ready to proceed with payment.
Event Payment
The payment is then taken by the user entering their card details or if there is some other payment gateway in place like a cryptocurrency in place.
Event Confirmation
And then the fifth and final page, roughly in the process, is the actual confirmation and thank you that the registration has been completed and accepted the payment has been taken.
That is a very short summary of what the event process is but if you have any further questions, or if you would like your event registration process setting up or any further web development that you may require, you can then certainly contact us here with all your details.