The Event Registration Roast: Real Forms, Real Opinions, Real Solutions

Ashlie DavisHi, and welcome to the event registration roast. So you're spending real money, marketing, hours, driving people to your event, and they hit your registration page and leave.

Most organizers have no idea what's happening. So today, that's what we're tackling. I'm joined by experts, Adam and Hannah. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourselves?

Adam ParryI'm Adam, I'm the founder of the Event Technology Awards and Event Tech Live, and I've been looking at registration forms far too long over my career. Thanks for having me on, actually.

Ashlie DavisThank you. And Hannah? I'm Hannah Deters.

Hannah DetersI am the Director of Events at the IAEE, the International Association of Exhibitions and Events. And I've been over registration at a few different organizations for the last ten plus years. So very excited to be here today.

Ashlie DavisThank you very much for being here. Before we get into the roast, let's start with the basics. So why does registration matter? I've been working in events for many years.

I'm only twenty nine now. I've been called the registration unicorn, and really, I do love it. We all know people tend to start at registration and move on. In doing that, people forget the why.

Why is it that registration matters so much to the success of events?

For me, registration sets everything in motion. It kicks off the event experience, the revenue, the data, and the ROI.

At Swapcard, we know how crucial registration is, which is why we've developed Launchpad, which is customizable to meet organizers' unique needs for complex forms. Membership verification, this is often very important for associations, attendee type verification, and approval process.

We all know someone will try and sign up for the student package, they are not a student. And if that's not where your event is yet, we offer swap card in app registration and integrate with a variety of platforms.

So when registration flows smoothly from the first from the first click to the event app to on-site badge pickup, everyone wins. Attendees feel welcome, exhibitors have direction, and organizers see it in the data and engagement. Adam and Hannah, anything to add here? Any trends in registration?

Adam ParryI think it's the same, isn't it? It's, it's now the lifeblood of matchmaking technology, so getting the right structured data, efficiently after attendees is is really paramount now.

Hannah DetersAgreed. Yep, getting the right data and actually using it, using it in ways that affect the attendee in the best possible way.

Ashlie DavisAll right, so since the Reg form is the kickoff to EventFlow, we're gonna look at a few forms today and share some honest opinions. Let's jump into our forms.

All right. So this is our first form.

Hannah DetersJust from this first page, I love that it's very simple. You have a few options, easy to read. I love it.

Ashlie DavisFor me, the media credentials is good. I think it should be just a little bit bigger, and then the admission for twelve and up should definitely be bigger. I've had many events where people come and kids are there and they are not able to attend.

Adam ParryI think for me as well, if I was to make kind of one observation and I understand why it's there, but I think we have to miss the chance to kind of let move those important information like need assistance, contact information up to where kind of like eye level is. Oh, okay.

Ashlie DavisWhat do we have here?

Adam ParryNot a lot.

No, I mean, listen, I think it's it's quite a clean straight into it but I I think the first thing that springs to my mind is I'm not sure how long this is gonna take. There's no kind of no indication to how much progression. Is this the full form or is this gonna be one of ninety nine pages we get into it?

We'll see.

Hannah DetersI do like that this is, the clean first page and you get what you get what you need to start, like, cart abandonment. You get name, email, and phone. And so if they do drop off after this one page, you still have all of that without having a bunch of questions on that first page where you might lose them before they submit that.

I

Adam Parryagree with that Hannah as well, because like so many forms suffer from like attendee abandonment.

It's not necessarily because they don't wanna register, They just get distracted by a Slack or an inbound phone call or somebody's trying to teams them or something like that.

Ashlie DavisOr somebody walks into their office. All right.

Adam ParryI'm not sure about the loading screen. Interesting. So now you're hit with the fact that it's a paid ticket.

Ashlie DavisYes. I wonder if I can change my I can't change my attendee type.

Hannah DetersK.

Ashlie DavisI'll scroll down some more for you guys. Anything for this first section?

Adam ParryI think for me, it's it's odd that they're just displaying the information that they've just collected. I appreciate that sort of like a, maybe a data capture step kind of thing, but to get you in.

Okay.

But it does

Hannah DetersMaybe hide that top this top few fields since you've already

Ashlie Daviswebsite address.

I'm just gonna try that.

Adam ParryIt looks to me like there's no data format validation on this form as well.

Ashlie DavisThat's actually why I did that. Doesn't look like there's any data format. Also, even though you can't see it, when I try to use my autofill, autofill actually puts in a completely different field. It puts in my address.

Adam ParryYeah. I think that's really important when you're looking at, like, really high quality structured data. If you if the attendee can put just anything in, that's gonna make it more challenging, trying to get that information into other systems or post show analysis and things like that. Right?

Hannah DetersCorrect. Okay.

Adam ParrySo this is where I go. What are you gonna send me in the mail?

Hannah DetersYeah.

Ashlie DavisOh, that's interesting.

Adam ParryOh, yeah. It's like a double column there, won't it, or something?

Ashlie DavisYeah.

Adam ParryI think for me, collecting an address, I'd wanna know, I'd wanna try and understand like why or what that information's being used for. I'm not against it as an attendee, I don't think. But like, why are you collecting my address details? When if it's just a case of understanding where attendees are located, then you can do that by like state or city. Right?

Ashlie DavisYou can.

The one thing that stood out to me was the country and region because it's a US based event. I'm just wondering, is that something that can be automatically assigned? So with Swapcard, we can automatically assign the country based on where it is.

And so that's something that stuck out to me if that's something that's actually needed.

Adam ParryAnd I know something Go ahead, Hannah. You go. You go. Fire away.

Hannah DetersI just wanna say something that I know that we've run into before and we've had to make some changes for is if they are in a country that might not have a ZIP code, well, the ZIP code field is required. So just making sure that you have those protections in place that if they pick a country that might not have certain information that you don't require it.

Ashlie DavisOr like where I live, we have letters in our zip code, which kicks me out all the time.

Adam ParryYep. Yep.

Ashlie DavisAlright. So then we have our terms and conditions.

It's good. This does open a new form, a new page.

Perfect.

One of the things that I know, they are allowing people from other countries to come, I don't see any GDPR, which is very important.

Adam ParryDo you also have specific regulations based on people coming from California or the residents of California as

Ashlie Daviswe do have the California where it's almost similar to GDPR.

But again, it's one of those things that you do have to have as long as somebody is coming or someone can potentially come from that country, you have to have that in there.

Adam ParryYeah.

Ashlie DavisYeah. I'm gonna go with you and say that this does not tell me what I'm doing.

It does not tell me how long it's gonna be. It's just question after question after question. Do you guys have any feedback for here?

Adam ParryI think some of the I think probably some of the drop downs could have been you know, you've got two columns and single column, single column, single column, two columns. So maybe the formatting could have been made a little bit better. So it it's just more aesthetically pleasing on the page.

Ashlie DavisI'm definitely a fan of the two columns.

Alright. I'll answer some of these questions, and then we can move on to another form even though I know that if it if you guys are like me, I could sit here and go through all of it and then go through it again.

Adam ParryI would say this is probably a fairly, what I would call, standard form that I see across the industry, but I do think maybe a little bit more attention in terms of, like, how it's laid out and how it's presented probably reflects more positively on the event more than anything. I would agree with that.

One of

Ashlie Davisthe things that I will say that I do like, I do like that they have the agenda here and trying to make sure that they have the right receptions and sessions built out for the attendees.

The other thing that I really like is the important information. Even though I think that it should be bigger, I do like that it is on every single page.

Adam ParryYeah. Great.

Hannah DetersI do go back and forth on having a full agenda on a registration. I mean, how many people when they actually register know what they're going to attend and what drops off two weeks before the event, how they change their minds.

So I don't know how

Adam ParryI feel about that one.

But

Ashlie DavisI tend to like the ones that have the paid ones within the registration.

But those free ones, we know everyone's gonna go to the keynote. We know how to build for everyone going to the keynote.

But the the free ones, I don't think that's something that we need in

Adam Parryhere.

Okay.

Ashlie DavisAlright. So looks like it's another page of the same. So let's go ahead and move on to our next one.

Is that okay with you guys?

Adam ParryYep. Absolutely.

Ashlie DavisRight. So then we have this one, which is a agriculture one.

Adam ParryI think the first thing that jumps out to me is great to see an early bird, but like how long do I have in order to claim that early bird? And I think I would have liked to see if I was an organizer, would wanna maybe just include some data capture. So if somebody's not ready to register there and then maybe they can enter an email and I get that and they can, like, essentially hold that early bird going forward, then you've got something to nurture.

Ashlie DavisK. For me, I like it when the early bird is built into the system where we don't have to have an attendee add in a promo code.

Hannah DetersI would agree. I mean, I think we all know how many people we get. Oh, I didn't get that. I didn't get this discount. Why not? Well, this case, you didn't enter your code, but I I think that would alleviate a lot of back and forth between organizer and attendee.

Ashlie DavisOkay. Let's scroll down some more.

Adam ParryOh, wow. Lots of options then.

Ashlie DavisThere are quite a few options.

Hannah DetersAnd it looks like here, the early bird rate is built into that first option. So why, yeah, why have it be a code if you're gonna build it in as an option?

Ashlie DavisRight. And then why do you also have your standard rate being shown? So if I wanna come in and register for my standard rate, then that ends up meaning people are gonna contact, and they're gonna say, well, I registered August thirtieth. Why am I being charged the standard rate and not the early bird rate? Yep.

Adam ParryI think maybe some of these things are grouped, but like I would expect to see things like recommended and popular at the top of a list

Ashlie DavisOkay.

Of options.

The only one that has information is the keynote speaker or the virtual keynote speaker.

Nothing else has an explanation of what it is.

Adam ParryI think if I was a new attendee, I'd struggle at this point to decide what registration to go for.

Ashlie DavisI definitely think the important dates should be moved up to the top as well and just making sure it's all standardized in terms of how it looks.

Hannah DetersBecause I mean, a lot of the questions we were asking, like when is that early bird deadline? That's right there, but we didn't see it till we were halfway done the form. If could call that out, that would be helpful.

Adam ParryYeah, that's true.

Ashlie DavisLet's go ahead and Okay. That's interesting. I have not seen that in a while.

Adam ParryThis looks like a throwback to, like, the early ninety.

Hannah DetersI would say too, my first thought is on the first page, which I thought was kind of odd, they had payment options.

Credit card was not one of them, but it looks like you have to pay by credit card when you get to this page.

So just making sure what what you're stating is what actually is gonna pull through on your form is important.

Ashlie DavisDefinitely agree with that. You can't change your attendee type or mode of participation.

Adam ParryWhy?

Where was the where was the event located? Because everything was in Dallas, it's sitting because that's like Durham's where I'm based in the in the UAE.

Ashlie DavisBut it's interesting because you can't click.

Adam ParryAlright. Okay. I'm also not familiar with what's a what's a bank convenience charge? Is that a US thing?

Ashlie DavisThat is.

Hannah DetersSome it could be. Yes. Like we have credit card fees. I would say though, I think that you're gonna lose people here adding it.

I mean, six percent on a fifteen hundred dollars registration fee is kind of a lot.

Either include that in your registration fee or make that known upfront before people start this form would be important.

Adam ParryOh, no. Here we go again.

The validation, is it? We're gonna do it.

Interesting that they got no not they've not gotten first name, last name.

Ashlie DavisYeah. I was thinking that.

One of the things that I noticed is by clicking this amount, it completely disappears.

So I wonder how far I can go within there.

Hannah DetersIt doesn't show that any of these fields are required, so I'm interested to see if you don't fill in some of them, what actually are required and it just doesn't show that.

Ashlie DavisThere's no country in the dropdown.

You

Adam Parrycan only come if you're from the US.

Ashlie DavisAnd let's actually copy this code, and let's drop that in here. Okay. Still doesn't show that.

Adam ParryLovely formatting, isn't it, in that little tiny box?

Ashlie DavisThis, I definitely do not think this is the best way to display your information simply because it's really, really small.

Hannah DetersYeah. That might have been a better click here to review and pop it out into a full box with that much information.

Adam ParryYeah.

Ashlie DavisAnd here, you can actually click. But let's open it up.

Adam ParryOh, it's in Grindaway. Just go to the website.

Ashlie DavisYeah. It doesn't direct you to exactly where you're supposed to be.

Hannah DetersYeah. Interesting.

Adam ParryThere's a lot of color use on this page as well. Right?

Ashlie DavisThere's a lot of color, and you can't actually move forward because once it removes the field, it k. Well, this is certainly a choice.

We can't select the country, and we can't change the amount.

So

Adam ParryI guess we will go ahead and drop off.

Hannah DetersAnd at that point, they haven't gotten any of your information. Exactly.

Ashlie DavisWe haven't been able to

Hannah Deterssubmit anything, so we don't know. So That

Ashlie Daviscertainly a choice.

So now we'll go to our next one, and I believe this is one of our submitted ones.

And

Adam ParryThis is a this is just a bit I was I was kind of making slight fun of the last one being overly liberal in its choice of using colors, but this one seems really like beige.

Hannah DetersYeah. Like, no event logos or anything. I mean, at least brand it for for your own event.

Ashlie DavisI would say some continuity between what we're capitalizing and what we're not.

That's something that if I was registering, I would notice.

This swap registration does not it's not the same size. So those are those are the little things that people, for me, people always skip over those, but those are the things that stand out if I'm registering for something else.

Hannah DetersI do like that they tell you what, like, class a is, but I think that might be more beneficial if it was next to the option of class A.

So I could see

Adam Parrythat all in all without having to go back up and down, up and down. I'm trying to see where

Hannah DetersI actually fall into place.

Ashlie DavisThis is a lot of attendee types.

And it looks like you can actually put text here, so I definitely think that they should add that text underneath here.

Adam ParrySo This this this strikes to me where you're gonna get lots of people who are ultimately gonna register under the wrong type, maybe through being intentional with that, maybe through some confusion as well. Great.

Ashlie DavisSo here it looks like I can register for VIP guests.

I know a lot of the events that we build out, we have access codes for those specific VIP guests that only allow them to go under VIP. Or we have promotional codes that if they go under a regular registration, they get moved over to the VIP. So I would definitely look at having something like that for the VIP guests, the staff, speakers, any of these ones that are free. I would definitely look at having some sort of access code or some sort of filter that stops that.

Adam ParryEven

Hannah Deterssome of the ones that look like they may be just discounted, maybe you have that be somewhere else in the field.

I mean, because having to choose between a committee member, it looks like a lot of those are just discounted fees of kind of like, they're all gonna be an attendee. Right?

They're just

Ashlie DavisGood.

Adam ParryThink some additional information on attendee types maybe at this point would be better.

Ashlie DavisGo ahead and continue. Definitely think this should be done into the columns.

Adam ParryYeah.

Ashlie DavisThink having long forms like this tend to make it harder for people to finish it.

Adam ParryThis reminds me of, like do you ever use Google Forms?

Ashlie DavisYes.

Adam ParryIt's very Google Form, isn't it?

Hannah DetersI do really like kind of how we were talking on the last one that we didn't know where we're at before. I like that they have the steps. So I know in five pages, I'm done.

I don't know how long those five pages are gonna be, but I at least know kind of where I'm at in them.

Adam ParryDo you know what I've not noticed on any of these is a safe to complete later?

K. Like, it would be nice for me to be able to, like, pause my registration and it just hold it there so I can come back to it later. Like, send me an email. I can pick up where I left off kinda thing.

Ashlie DavisI do like the fact that the emergency contact is a required field.

Because I don't know about you guys, but I have had it where somebody has not woken up

Adam ParryOh.

Ashlie DavisAt an event. So having an emergency contact is very important.

Oh, they have a profile picture. I do like that you have a profile picture, though I do wonder if this is a required field or not.

Adam ParryOh, what it's being used?

Ashlie DavisWhy what it's being used for, why is it not required versus being required.

I do do like the food allergy question, except they do not have other on here. So I food allergy. Okay. They do have food allergy.

Okay. I do like the inline filtering. If you do have a food allergy, you can write it down. The one thing that I would say about that is I would probably recommend for them to have a little space on the side that tells you how they want the actual food allergies. So peanuts, comma, strawberries, comma, so on and so forth. If somebody starts listing all out, once you pull that data, it is gonna be hard to fix.

Adam ParryI'm officially no longer a young professional. I've just realized that. Only just.

Ashlie DavisK.

Then let's just use that as a password.

I do like that they have it where it will pop up if you are missing something, and it takes you back to that. Again, the sizes, I definitely would recommend that they put the sizes fixing the sizes.

Adam ParryI think the only thing is, like, a code of conduct. I don't see anywhere that it actually explains what that is or it's linked. That does seem to vary quite a bit from event from event.

Ashlie DavisYep. And as a swap card person, swap is capitalized, but card is not.

Adam ParryYep.

Ashlie DavisK. I definitely also think this should be in line with that.

Adam ParryYep.

Ashlie DavisThese are sessions.

Let's add That's interesting. You it's shown here, but you can't select it. We do have guests. I'm not gonna click that. Let's just go through here.

Hannah DetersI do like that it adds the guest there because then it has to tie it to someone. But my question would be if you're gonna add it there, why is it an option on the front page to choose it just as a single person, a single guest.

Ashlie DavisYeah. I would agree with that. And then here's the payment page, but we are not gonna go this far, and we will move on to our next one.

Adam ParryThis is nice. Oh, wow. The London page is nice. I like how this is laid out.

Ashlie DavisThis is definitely nice. I like the countdown, the ticker countdown.

I like the fact that there's a

Adam Parrythere's a little help thing on the right hand side always.

Ashlie DavisI like that you can open up the disclaimer. That's really good. Like that it tells what you get. Yes.

Hannah DetersAnd it's clean. It's not you you can see what you're gonna get. It's very I think much more obvious of what you need to choose versus some of the other ones we've put out.

Ashlie DavisThis I have not seen before, where that has exactly who you're talking to. You can email them, and you can send them a WhatsApp. I do like Just so you know, now that I'm in Europe, I love WhatsApp and I love that you can contact people on WhatsApp.

Adam ParryI would honestly prefer to be contacted by WhatsApp if somebody needed some information.

Oh,

Ashlie DavisThat seems very good.

I do like that, but the only

Hannah Detersthing I would maybe suggest is, they all the same specialties?

Do I need to contact one person if it's about this?

Adam ParryGood point.

Ashlie DavisThat is a good point.

So I can add it in. Okay. Oh, that's interesting.

It automatically adds the one in, which if you saw when I did it, I clicked on it. It went to two already because I thought I needed to click one. So that would be one of the things that I would probably I would question if there's a reason why we're doing this because then that ends up with people not even recognizing that there's two in there and then being charged more.

Adam ParryThey did

Ashlie Davisthe donation.

I do like that you can donate. Do you guys have anything?

Adam ParryUp to now, this is clean. This is really nice. I like it.

Hannah DetersI like that those the more information are drop downs and they don't I do really like

Adam Parrythat too, that you the details.

Does the privacy policy link for the Amazon Web Service processing?

Ashlie DavisYep. It all opens its new pages.

Adam ParryIt's good. It's really good. K.

Ashlie DavisAnd it gives you your price. The one thing that I would say, and maybe it's my my my young eyes, is I cannot read that. I almost skipped that because I cannot see that.

Hannah DetersAnd I would say we've gone through a couple pages so far, and they still haven't collected any of my actual data.

Yeah. I think actually, that's something important to kinda grasp on the first. I think you have to agree to some of those fields, the checkboxes.

Ashlie DavisThat would be something that there you go. That would be one of the one things that I I would probably as you can see, I missed.

So then here we go. Interesting.

You can pay by Bitcoin.

Adam ParryWhat? Interesting. Definitely, clearly, the demographic of the event that those choices. Right?

Ashlie DavisCrypto payments. I do like that they show that they're subject to a seven percent processing fee.

Get deposit address. Okay. So let's move on because it is getting close to our time.

Adam ParryOh, this is the best registration.

Ashlie DavisThis is also one of our submitted ones.

Adam ParryYeah. I'm just not gonna really say much right now.

Ashlie DavisLet's go through it. I do like that it tells you how long it'll take for the registration.

Hannah DetersYep. I like that just on the front page, it gives you kind of all the main information you need, location, date, right there.

Ashlie DavisI like that it shows that it's free.

Adam ParryCome on, guys. There's gotta be something wrong with it.

Ashlie DavisI'll be perfectly honest. I don't like having the date here and here.

Adam ParryFair. Okay. Yeah.

Ashlie DavisI would probably take that away and only keep it here and then maybe put the Excel London on the second line here with the address.

Adam ParryOkay.

Ashlie DavisSo have this one on one line and then have that on the second line.

Hannah DetersThat's fine. Like that.

Ashlie DavisLet's posted buyer. So, Adam, if you if this was your form, which one would you tell us to go through?

Adam ParryHannah would be a visitor Okay. Or potentially a hosted buyer if she if she was in the market to source.

Ashlie DavisOkay.

So once

Adam Parryyeah.

So if I were

Hannah DetersI guess I could read these and it might make a little bit more sense, but I mean, my question would be, what what do I get for being a hosted buyer for my visitor pass is free?

Maybe like what, and maybe that's travel if I would read more, it does say travel right there. So that makes sense.

Adam ParrySo the honest truth of one of the limitations shall we say of the system we are using is it doesn't allow us to put lots more information in, but it doesn't allow us to put like an icon without having a lot of information there in that. So that's where we've got the section at the bottom, the registration attendance information, but you would have to scroll down in order to see that.

Ashlie DavisI would definitely say move that to the top.

Adam ParryYeah.

Ashlie DavisUp here in between these two sections.

Adam ParryYeah. I agree.

Ashlie DavisAnd, again, this is me and my my eyes. I think this should be a little bit bigger.

Adam ParryI

Ashlie Daviswould definitely say having it a little bit bigger than what it is would be good.

So then let's go ahead and register for that one.

Adam ParryI'm sweating.

Hannah DetersI do, kinda to the point of where you're at in the where it says step one of two. I do like that.

I think

Adam ParryDo you think the countdown time is a bit of a pressure thing, though?

Hannah DetersIt is. I was just gonna say it makes me a little nervous.

I know I can fill this out in fifteen minutes, but maybe not.

Adam ParryAfter fifteen minutes, this registration form will dis self destruct. That's basically what happened.

Do you know what? I've never actually sat there for fifteen minutes to see what would happen.

Ashlie DavisLet's just put in the contact phone number. I would definitely recommend having the contact phone number actually putting in how you'd like the contact phone number.

Adam ParryYeah. I think, again, that's one of the limitations of being able to choose one of the other forms did it really well where you put chose the kind of, like, the region code. Right? And then the actual number. Yeah.

Ashlie DavisThat's actually one of the things that we do with Swapcard is we can actually select the primary one, and it will automatically put in that country code.

Hannah DetersAnd do you think it makes the form look cleaner on these drop downs even if they're multiselect, having them be drop downs and not having all of the, you know, all of the different options listed on this one page. It makes it look a little cleaner, which is nice.

Ashlie DavisI definitely like how clean that is.

Adam ParryYou have just so you are aware, Ashley, with you buy with you choosing a hosted buyer registration

Adam ParryWe do at this point, obviously, try and glean a little bit more information than maybe others just so we have the right context to quantify that they are the right the right kind of profile on that.

Ashlie DavisK. I like the opt in and opt out.

Ashlie DavisAgain, the mobile number is really the only thing that I would say.

Hannah DetersYeah. I think some of it which just I mean, as an organization, making sure you're you're really using that data. But why why ask if you're gonna if I'm gonna be booking a hotel, wouldn't you learn that from, you know, pickup reports or is that you know, just using what you have?

Adam ParryCould you just repeat that? Sorry, Hannah.

Just

Hannah DetersLike so, like, why are you like, here, are you really gonna use will you be booking a hotel room as part of your visit?

Are you using that you know, is the organization using that in some kind of pre event data collection that they're doing, or could that also just be found by looking at your pickup reports post event? You could see that Hannah did book a hotel.

So

Adam Parrywe we use that just to target or to not to target.

That's the wrong word, but to send those that are looking at booking a hotel information on, room blocks and options rather than making it part of registration. And also not, like, not sending it not sending hood like, not sending an email about hotels to people that aren't looking at booking a hotel.

Hannah DetersThat really makes sense. Okay.

Ashlie DavisI would say paragraphs here.

Adam ParryYep. That's a good point. Yep. Give me a job to do tomorrow.

Ashlie DavisK.

The one thing that I would say would be if I wouldn't have clicked it, I would not have known what this was for.

And making it known it's required? Yeah. Making it known that it's required.

If possible, moving it

Adam Parryup somewhere

Ashlie Daviscloser to here or even

Adam ParryAlmost like a required field as part of the registration?

Ashlie DavisYeah. Putting it through the registration.

I would probably say put it there because if I wouldn't have clicked on it, I as an attendee, I wouldn't know what it

Adam Parrywas for.

Ashlie DavisI would just get that.

Adam ParryI think that's fair.

Ashlie DavisThat's easy enough. If we look at it, confirming.

Then we have our checkout, and we have ten minutes left.

So, I won't check it out, but we can move to our next form. This is good. So it does say that the session is timed out on our last this is our last form, you guys. It does say the session is timed out, so that is good to know because there are events where people, like you said before, they'll get up, they'll walk away.

They will still think that their registration is done or they've started their registration and it has not collected that information.

Hannah DetersThat is one of my pet peeves and a lot of register you stop it and then you go back and you fill out half of a or a whole pages worth of information, click continue. And it's like, oh, no. You actually can't. Your time is done. Yes. So letting them know that ahead of time is is great.

Adam ParryMaybe should maybe somebody should invent event registration auto complete for people.

Like, over time, it just builds this profile of a view of, like, all the different answers that you put to all these different events and things like that, and then it's like Yes. One shot.

Ashlie DavisWe'll talk to the devs about that.

Interesting

Adam Parrythat we're asking for a secondary email address.

Ashlie DavisNow I can actually give you a note here. One of the things that I have come across in doing registration is if you have a work email address and say your company will completely block it every day for the a week and a half, and it still will block that. That's having that secondary email address. So having a Gmail account or something like that actually makes it easier for you to get your information.

Adam ParryI like that. So and I think there's other use cases as well. Right? Like, maybe you have an assist I don't have an assistant, but maybe you have an assistant and you want them to be copied into registration or vice versa. So, yeah, I think the second email address is a good idea. I just wasn't sure what it was for.

Ashlie DavisWhat it was for. So they probably put more information there.

Adam ParryYeah.

Hannah DetersWe see it a lot too.

Like if one person is registering the whole staff and they want to get all of those confirmation emails too,

Ashlie Daviswe get that a lot.

Adam ParryWe have some exhibitors that, like, have a a global email address for their team as well, like a marketing at x y zed.

Ashlie DavisOne of the things that I noted here is that you can select multiple company sizes. I can be manufacturing and nonmanufacturing.

You

Adam Parrycan be anything you wanna be.

Ashlie DavisI was actually thinking butterfly in the sky. I would definitely recommend they put the USA at the top.

Adam ParryYeah.

Hannah DetersYeah. Definitely. If it's a US based event, I think that would make sense.

Ashlie DavisI do like that they have the share buttons on Facebook, X, and LinkedIn.

Adam ParryDo you know if there's a place to put them there?

Hannah DetersIt seems weird right in the middle. Who's gonna go out in the middle of registration and share it and then come back to Reg? Like, it makes sense. May but maybe on the confirmation page.

Adam ParryYeah.

Ashlie DavisMiddle. It is a pop out, which you can't see, but it is a pop out, so that's good.

Adam ParryK.

I

Ashlie Davisdon't like that you have to actually type in NA.

I think it should be a yes or no question where you then type it in or where you then put Not

Hannah Detersrequire it.

Ashlie DavisThat's interesting. When you select it, when you drop it down, it brings up a white box, but there's nothing in that white box.

Adam ParryPushes the page up, doesn't it? Yeah. I think it's a bit I think it's an expanding div that's pushing the site then.

Ashlie DavisK. Let's just select one. It's interesting that you get a little processing button.

Hannah DetersI wish there would have been some kind of validation because as a nonmember, is someone really going to say, Oh yeah, you're right, I am a non member, let me pay that. Are they just going to skip that non member fee at the bottom right there? Are you just going to skip that?

And then is it the organization going back and forth trying to get that after someone's already registered?

This might be tough.

Ashlie DavisI definitely would probably put that in with the actual pass. One of the things that I noticed, I don't know if you guys notice it, they have six different ways of putting this in. So they have full conference in person where neither are capitalized.

I is capitalized. There's not a space here.

Adam ParrySpace. Yeah.

Ashlie DavisThis is yeah.

This I would probably they're missing Wednesday, Thursday only.

Tuesday, Wednesday. I would definitely probably make that into a separate category where it's just the two day pass, and then you select Tuesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Thursday, so on and so forth.

Right.

Adam ParryI'm not gonna say anything on the format, and I need to put a couple extra paragraphs in.

So

Ashlie DavisCapitalization, again, I am very big on that, making sure everything looks the same.

Hannah DetersWhen you click the link about membership, does it take you to a new screen? Okay. Yep. That's nice.

Ashlie DavisOne of the things that I did notice is the nonmember fee versus the individual member fee that gets the same cost. So usually when people are seeing that, then they go in and go, oh, well, I might as well just pay that. But I do think nobody's gonna click the nonmember versus individual member.

Hannah DetersYeah.

The

Ashlie Davisgroup registration, I can add in a group.

Fifty plus. They have the discounts in here. So the discounts are already built in.

Adam ParryWhat's the maximum you can go up to on the last one?

Ashlie DavisTen plus.

Adam ParryBut it's fifty plus, isn't it?

Ashlie DavisSo does that mean five hundred people?

Adam ParryIf you were to choose ten, that is standing by the fifty.

Ashlie DavisIs that ten packs of that?

Or

Hannah DetersI would read that as ten people, but.

Adam ParryI would as well, yeah.

Let's go

Ashlie Davisnext and see what we have.

Oh, we're getting close to our time. So yeah. No. That is ten times fifty. Okay.

Hannah DetersWell, I think you're registering nineteen people here, so it shouldn't have I don't yeah. There should just be some kind of gatekeeping on whatnot. Like, have to click you have to put in fifty or above in that that one because it did register. It did allow you register ten people at that discounted rate.

Ashlie DavisK. So let's go ahead and stop sharing our screen. How did that feel?

Adam ParryIt was interesting. I was I I was I'm not gonna lie. I'm glad it went through mine. I really am. There's a few you you kind of become and and maybe this is where we we we draw a little line and a a caveat for anybody who's deployed any of these registration solutions.

It's definitely one that it's worth having another pair of eyes look over these things, isn't it? That's what I've learned today.

Hannah DetersAgreed. I mean, even formatting, I think you look at your own registration form so many times when you're building it out. It's, I think it's so easy to miss a space or so having other people look at it, I think it's great. I actually like this. I mean, maybe that's what we do in the future is I send it to someone outside of my organization even saying, can you just look at this for me real quick? Let me know your thoughts.

I

Ashlie Davisdefinitely recommend that kind of stuff simply because like you said, you're looking at it.

You're looking at it. If you've built it, even taking two days and then coming back and looking at it helps you when you're building. Having somebody who is not in the industry look at it, helps you take that step back and say, okay, well, how would an attendee do?

Whenever we're building forms, one of the things that I taught my whole team was look at it how an attendee

Hannah Detersis looking at it.

Ashlie DavisTake the step back of being a registration person and knowing it and seeing how an attendee would see it. It. How a first timer would see it.

Adam ParryDo you know what I'd love to see thinking about it with my, like, content head on? I would love to see something in the market that kind of gives some real good stats on like certain things and certain features like a like a progress bar, like a countdown timer. Did these things positively impact registrations that are successful? Are there formatting that shows a marked improvement and things like that? Because I think, you know, there's clearly a lot of different ways to do this but, like, what is it that people and the way that they interact with them that really helps get people through it smoothly? There's got to be an almost standardized way to a degree of doing these things, I would think.

Ashlie DavisWhich when you have those limitations within those different systems, it's so hard to standardise it. Yeah. It's completely hard. So with us, we do like, we have our standard set up for our registration and we put people in there. And then there's those outliers that want to have it a little bit different, and that's easy, but we still keep that same those progress bars. You keep those you know, this is how where you start and things like that.

So go ahead.

Adam ParryI'm sorry, Hannah. Go for it. Go for it.

Hannah DetersDifferent industries. Right? Like someone that's filling out my registration form that's in the trade show industry that plans events, that does all this. What they see is going to be something completely different than what maybe a doctor or a nurse in a health care affair when they're trying to go to an event.

They're going to expect and read things so differently.

So I think just knowing your audience too is super important.

Adam ParryYeah. And I would love to see, I think, especially for like membership and association events, obviously, they already understand who their primary audience is.

Like, I would love to be able to just kind of like log in and it already pre populate quite a lot of my information just to make it easier for me. And even I think that's even an opportunity to update that that member information at that point. How's your how's your telephone number changed? Things like that. So that's just a quality of life comfort and convenience thing, I think.

Ashlie DavisThat would be one of those things where you use the AMS and you have that two way integration.

Adam ParrySo you

Ashlie Davishave some of those that actually do that where they have their AMS and it pulls in that information.

Adam ParryYeah.

Ashlie DavisAnd then it also will push it over to Swapcard. That's with Launchpad, which I'll talk about that. So now and just moving on with these forms, we really need to remember, the experience and flow doesn't just end when someone hits submit. The on-site experience can be just as important here. Badge pickup, in my opinion, is the kickoff to the entire on-site experience.

For starters, your confirmation and follow-up email tells them their next steps, where to go, how to access the app. Cool. You got them registered, but you haven't really helped them prepare. This is where I I mean, Swapcard really shines. In my opinion, on-site is a reward for all of that hard work before. We partner with organizers to have a smooth batching experience, layout to technology, to even just standing there and telling people where to go.

I have an example of this. We're not calling out the entire UK, but there was an event that I did where I had to literally stand there and say, please go to any open iPad. The queue of the British United Kingdom people is it's an interesting thing.

Adam ParryWell, very good at it, Ashley. Very good at it.

Ashlie DavisI appreciate it. Everyone stands in their line, but having to stand there and go, please go to any open iPad and everyone just standing there looking at me.

I was trying to get the line moving was a little bit difficult.

Adam ParrySo I had to go, you go to this iPad, you go to this iPad, you go to

Ashlie Davisthat iPad.

Everyone started moving, but my goodness.

Hannah DetersSee, and I always said here, that is one of the most important things for me is making sure your self check-in is easy because that's where everybody's going to go. Everyone's going to want to go to not align. So it's interesting.

Ashlie DavisSo Adam and Hannah, do either of you have a check-in horror story?

Adam ParryMean, the only check-in horror story I have is when venue tell you your Internet's working, but all of your machines aren't pulling the latest register down. So, yeah, I think that's one of the things that we, like, check, like, six times now that we've got the most up to date fresh registration data on the kiosks for badge printing, but they've actually they've actually switched the Internet on as well because they venues tend to lie a little bit.

Ashlie DavisI'm not gonna call out who I'm thinking of.

Hannah DetersYou know, I don't. I've I've been in ones where there's long, long lines. Never fun. Right? But so far, really simple.

Adam ParryI will tell you one after thirteen, fourteen years of doing it, one little mistake that we slipped up on last year, I'll hold my hands up and we nobody everybody missed it. We only single side printed our badges instead of double side printing them. So anybody who's badged, it just like naturally flipped around. You couldn't tell who it was. There was no QR code, no sponsor branding, things like that.

Tiny thing, but an annoying thing.

Ashlie DavisThat would probably are you using double clips or single clips?

Adam ParryOh, sync we used it. Sorry. We used a single clip so it could spin. Yeah. That was the problem. That was the problem.

Ashlie DavisOff subject, I highly recommend the double clips. They stop them from spinning like that. Yeah. So moving on, what we really wanna be seeing is easy flow for the check-in process. Yes. We all know there are a few people who aren't gonna have their QR codes or their IDs ready, but for the most part, we wanna have them prepared. You wanna have signs that say, have your QR code and ID, signs with your on-site registration QR code, which helps with a lot of on-site registrations.

Clear signage at the doors, on kiosks, where to scan your QR code, where to get support for registration or for app. Even going as far as making sure the way your iPads are set up within the area also help make your checking process smooth.

You also have to remember there needs to be enough space between the iPads for people with luggage and posters and just general stuff. I have seen I've seen some interesting stuff on-site.

If you've never had an attendee or an exhibitor actually carrying a sixty inches television through your registration area, I would highly recommend watching it because it is hilarious.

Being prepared for attendees or exhibitors wanting to need or change their information. Everybody knows there's gonna be somebody that's like, oh, my title changed. I need to change that. Making that easy also makes it so that people aren't lined up. Your customer service is not gonna be full. Things like that.

My favorite one is no lines. We know that it's never gonna happen. So I believe in having a quick one. There should be a place and a space for your line if they happen, but you wanna make sure that you're keeping them moving. They have their badge, so then they move to get lanyards, and then they get their bags and giveaways, and then they move on forward.

So tying it back to the form, when you set up your registration form with the on-site experience in mind, it makes that experience so much better for everyone. Say I want my first timers identified, so their experience makes them wanna come back. I need to know that during the registration process. One of the things that I have heard is the goal for is for them not to need assistance. If you give your attendees the best start for the most impactful finish.

Now after all of this, let's remember why registration is important. Registration is the foundation of the event ecosystem and your first revenue driver.

You can enable impulse buying with conditional logic. Say they sign up for a gala event. Let's display our foundation that allows for underprivileged students to attend the event.

Registration, as much as people just think it's a form, it really is the first impression of your event. And if it's clunky and overloaded, like you said, people drop off.

If we aren't asking questions to help drive that on-site experience, we make on-site harder for everyone. This could be questions on the form like we saw about accessibility needs, dietary restrictions, even providing a tour for those to check first timer on form.

Now as a side note, I have now started to see that people like to have tours for first timers. It is, like, really big on my events. There are people that stand in the registration area with lollipop signs for tours.

Hannah DetersOkay.

Ashlie DavisThat it it's things like that that make it special. People that register early may get special privileges, such as a private tour for special lounge access, sponsorship opportunities, not just a discount. If people indicate they are a young professional or a special interest group, connect them. Now I'm gonna insert a shameless swap card matchmaking plug.

With the information that they enter in the form, set them up for a full profile completion, which assists in the AI recommendation and matchmaking because, really, networking begins at registration. So we have the opportunity to get people excited for the event by making it comfortable, easy, a good experience, not painful. Also, you can get people excited by giving them context on what to expect. So if there's side events, happy hours, things like that.

With Swapcard and other apps, make sure you're giving the attendee proper visibility.

Now, Hannah, tell me if I'm wrong, but there's nothing we love more than to having to explain to attendees that an invite only event is invite only if it's showing on their schedule.

Yes.

That it hey. At customer service, no. It's an invite only event, but it's on my schedule. I understand. It's an invite only event. So that means I'm invited.

This is where data and marketing need, making sure marketing teams reach out to the right people who have a great time in the process. Newcomers can receive communications around what to expect, what to bring, what to even dress like, which I've had people call as, well, how am I supposed to dress? You wanna make sure things are personalized. You wanna make sure they have a clear path and the data is connected so they don't have to enter all their information at the time, which Adam, you did say having something built out like that.

All right. So question to Adam and Hannah, How are you using the data in your registration post event?

Hannah DetersYeah, I think you kind of hit hit it on the head with the AI matchmaking. Both exhibitors and attendees, they're just different than what they were in the past. They want this more personalized. They want it easier for them to connect. So making sure you collect that data in registration and then use it during pre event and helping these people connect.

Attendee says they want this exhibitor provides that helping them connect pre event so that they can also connect on-site ROI for both sides. So just using that data that you collect in a really meaningful way for both attendees and exhibitors is really important.

Adam ParryYeah. One of the ways that we're using it is actually to run reports for the industry to read. Actually, some of those mostly focused on our exhibitor profile and the supplier profile. They can understand kind of like where the industry is at, buying trends, interest trends, where the people looking to place budget, what that looks like, what scale and things like that. So they can make some kind of like marketing and commercial decisions as well around how they kind of roll out their marketing and sales for the next few months after the show.

Ashlie DavisAnother thing that I've seen is they actually use this data for their exhibitors. So they are showing the exhibitors, this are the types that are attending your booth, like with session or excuse me, like with lead retrieval with Swapcard, you can scan and see exactly who has attended your booth and the type of targeted personas you need to look at for your future events.

So just so you know, Swapcard provides reports at every step so you can see how to improve things as you go. Say you need to adjust your food and beverage orders because you have a lot of people with allergies, even promoting a session. It's just not looking at the end of the event, but also before the event starts.

Well, it is finally time to wrap up. Some key takeaways for our audience viewing today are when creating your registration form, you always want to keep the following in mind. Accessibility. How easy is it to access the form on a computer, mobile, even a tablet? Your conversion rate design. Is your form optimized to turn those lookaloos into attendees?

Adam, hopefully you know what a lookaloo is. I tend to struggle a lot with doing being American and saying stuff like loopy loo or loosey goosey.

Adam ParryI have no idea what you're talking about, but I think it's every phenomenon.

Ashlie DavisSo turning those, the people that are just looking through your form into attendees. Also, your data intentionality and length. Being sure that the data you collect is going to be used, just not a, oh, we may or may not need this. I've seen a registration form for B2B.

It was stressful. They had forty five questions just to attend the expo.

On-site, get out. Yeah. Yes. On-site, it took thirty to forty five minutes to register a single person on a computer.

And there were questions about, well, why is the customer service line so long? Well, can we cut this registration form down?

Only get the data that you need. And then finally, thinking about the full flow experience. Be sure to start building the form for what you want the on-site experience to be. This is one of the big things that I say all the time. Start at the end, and then you can build it back.

Adam and Hannah, do you guys have anything to add?

Hannah DetersI think one thing I thought of as we were talking, a best practice that I've learned recently, we talked about the badge, people going to having to go back to check out Maybe in one of your final emails before the event, a little know before you go, here's the information that you submitted for your first name, last name, company title. Is this all still right? Because this is what's gonna print on your badge.

You know, it does not everybody reads it, not everybody fixes it, but it does catch a good amount of them. They fix it pre event on-site. They just run through the the registration. They don't have to go talk to anybody.

So that's been really helpful. But that's my last tip, I think.

Adam ParryI think the thing that's actually come to mind since we've just started chatting and and actually that last point is, are we stronger about no on that on-site registration? Right? Because then you don't necessarily I think a lot of people just be like, I'll just register on the day when I turn up, and then those create the big queues and lots of customer service. So, yeah, I'm thinking about putting something in my registration that no on-site registrations will be accepted. We'll probably still do that, but tell them they're not gonna do that.

Ashlie DavisI I definitely would say have a cut if you're gonna have the cutoff, hold as strong to the cutoff as you can.

And if you aren't gonna have a cutoff, use the QR codes. Yes, I know it's signage costs, but having that QR code cuts down on having people come to customer service. Right? Because they're standing there, they scan the QR code, they're entering all the information on their phone, which that's how you wanna make sure it's assess accessible on your phone as well. But then instead of having seventeen customer service, you can have six here, and then you can have people that are just kinda walking around at a area for on-site registration using the QR code, which I've seen before. They'll stand there and just kind of help people as they're registering on-site with that QR code.

So, thank you everyone for joining our registration roast.

If you have questions, please drop them in the chat and we'll make sure you get an answer. Adam, Hannah, thank you for joining me.

If you're looking to optimize your registration form or you're on-site, please reach out to us. We'd be happy to get this conversation started. And just know you will be absolutely making my year because I thrive in making registration forms easy. At a previous job, I took fifteen forms down to two, and I am still riding that high from twenty nineteen.

All right. Adam and Hannah, thanks for joining us in Roasting Forms. I hope you had as much fun as I did because I really enjoyed this.

Adam ParryThanks, Poppin.

Ashlie DavisThank you.

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