8 Common Event Registration Mistakes to Avoid

Planning an event takes a lot of effort, but convincing people to register for it requires a strategically driven registration system. After relentlessly working on an event idea, planning for it in every step to give it shape, witnessing registration drop-offs can be frustrating for event organizers. If this sounds familiar to you, then this article is for you.

Instead of trying to improve registration numbers blindly, it is crucial for an event planner to know about the common event registration mistakes and go to the roots of the issue.

In this article, we have covered the common event registration mistakes that an event planner must avoid. Before pointing out to the mistakes, let us show you why event registration is important.

Why is event registration important?

Event registration is one of the most vital aspects of event management that highly influences its success rate. It not only shows the number of attendees but also provides you with the data that helps you offer a personalized event experience to your attendees.

• Event registration is the first step that your audiences take towards becoming your event attendee. It works as a first impression of your brand on them.
• Through the registration process, you get access to your attendee details, which are very important to know about their tastes and preferences.
• A well-organized event registration system allows you to track attendee check-ins, which is useful for event analysis.
• Accurate event registration data helps you create personalized marketing campaigns for your target audiences and guarantees smooth communication.
• It also restricts unauthorized entries to your events, ensuring security.
• Registration analytics offer a clear picture of your event registration and ticket sales, helping you in measuring your event success.

If you are struggling to maximize your event registrations, then you need to figure out what is going wrong. Go through the below mentioned common event registration mistakes that you must avoid and take steps to improve if you find any of them familiar.

Critical event registration mistakes to avoid

Here are some critical event registration mistakes that an event planner should avoid:

1. Complicated registration form

A long and complicated registration process instantly turns people off due to which they step back. So what makes a registration process complicated? A registration form containing long and irrelevant questions is a big no for your events. Attendees look for a fast, simple and straight forward registration process. In a nutshell, they prefer the registration system that takes less effort to complete.

Pro tip: Include only those questions that are important for you to know in the event registration syste. For example, in small events with limited attendees, such as a webinar or an educational session, you can stick to the attendees' names, contact details, ticket types etc. On the other hand for big events with bulk attendees, add questions that are important to offer them a personalized experience. 

Use an event registration system that allows you to create a customized registration form for each event just like WP Event Manager's Registration add on. 

2. Lack of mobile optimization

Research says the source of more than 60% of online traffic is mobile phones, which means most people are likely to go through your registration form with their mobiles. This makes it necessary for you to have a mobile-friendly registration form.

Here are some of the event registration challenges that you and your attendees might be facing due to not having a mobile-friendly registration form

• If your event registration form does not have a responsive design, then filling up the registration form becomes a frustrating experience for your attendees as it becomes difficult for them to access all the fields easily on their mobile screens.
• Secondly, a registration page that takes more than a few seconds to load also carries the risk of form abandonment because users are impatient and want everything quickly. Poor mobile optimization is also one of the biggest reasons behind its sluggish loading speed.
• Mobile users usually look for the comfort of one click payment through Apple pay, Google pay or digital wallets, which makes it necessary for you to introduce such payment options and ensure a frictionless checkout experience for users.

Again, the solution to this issue is to switch to a registration plugin that offers mobile responsive design and everything that is required to make your registration form mobile friendly. The Registration addon from WP Event Manager not only provides a customizable registration form but also ensures mobile friendliness

3. Confusing ticketing system

Registration and ticketing go hand in hand. Besides offering a hassle free registration system, you also need to ensure that the ticket purchasing process is equally smooth and secure.

if your event lacks well-designed tickets at different price points, then your paid registrations will face a huge drop off. You must keep in mind that ticketing is more important than registration as transactions is involved in this process. When it comes to selling event tickets online, you must pay attention to its security. Similarly, maintaining transparency is also important.  if the amount of a buyer's event tickets changes or increases while checking out, he or she instantly takes note of the hidden cost.

Protip: Use the Sell tickets addon from WP Event Manager that carries all the essential features that event organizers need to streamline the ticketing system.

4. No reminder emails

Another critical event registration mistake is to send no reminder emails. Getting attendees to register does not signify the end of the game; you need to keep their spirit high till the day of the event. in simple words, you need to keep them engaged with your brand during this period through emails.  Firstly, attendees expect a confirmation from your side once they finish the registration process. Otherwise, they will be in doubt about securing as spot in your event.

Secondly, if you don't stay in touch with them through email reminders about the event and its dates, they might miss it or forget about it due to the struggles of daily lives. So if you want to avoid this situation, make sure you keep sending reminder emails to your attendees.

Pro tip: Regularly sharing follow up emails to your attendees manually can be laborious and difficult to track. The best way to do this is to automate the entire process using email marketing tools. Consider the marketing addons of WP Event Manager that include Zoho CRM, Hubspot CRM, Salesforce CRM and more. They automate email marketing and allows you to send personalized email content to attendees.

5. Poor check-in management

The system of event check-in is directly linked to the registration process as based on this, attendees are allowed to enter in the event promises. One of the most common event registration mistakes that event organizers often do is manually managing the check-in process without any system. It ultimately results in long queues at the event gate and a time-consuming verification process which annoys attendees and drains their energy even before the event begins.

Pro tip: To avoid this, embrace the modern way of tracking attendee check-in through QR codes. The Sell tickets addon from WP Event Manager empowers your events with the same feature. It offers a unique QR code to each event ticket that attendees scan at the event gate and organizers instantly receive their check-in status which helps them track attendees in the event.

6. Not paying attention to payment flexibility & security

Offering a secure and flexible payment method to your attendees must be your priority. Imagine a situation where attendees complete the registration happily and then they find out at the check-out point that their preferred payment option is not available. Frustrating right? To avoid this event registration mistake, you need to offer them multiple payment options so that they can choose their preferred ones and complete the payment process without hassle.

Besides payment flexibility, security is also a crucial part of event registration, especially when transactions are involved. This is because your attendees share their confidential data on your website while making the payment for your event ticket. As a responsible event organizer, you must ensure that their data is secured with you and it will not be misused. This will help you boost business credibility and earn more attendees.

Pro tip: To save yourself from committing this registration mistake, use a WordPress event management like Sell Tickets that offers 100% payment security with WooCommerce  plus multiple payment options for attendees.

7. Overlooking past attendees

The people who have attended your past events are not just past attendees; they are your company assets. Prioritize your past attendees because they have trusted in you in your previous event and are most likely to embrace your events in the future as well.

In order to attract more and new attendees to your event if you overlook your past attendees, then this will be a big event registration mistake that must try to avoid.

Protip: Make your past attendees feel valued in the following ways:

• Ask for feedback as a post event activity so that you can improve their future experience.
• Share personalized email invitation to your past attendees and acknowledge their presence in them. Make sure you highlight the areas of improvement in the upcoming ones.
• Provide loyalty incentives to them in terms of discounts as a token of appreciation to look for consistent support.

This will help you retain your old attendees and create a community of loyal participants.

Overcome event registration mistakes with WP Event Manager

The answer to all your event registration mistakes and challenges is WP Event Manager's Registration and Sell tickets addons.

The combined strength of Registration addon adn Sell tickets addon offers the following:

• Customizable registration forms.
• Real time registration status emails.
• Secured payment method with WooCommerce.
• AI powered matchmaking for participants. 
• Registration and ticket sales reports and analytics.
• QR code based check-in.
• Detailed check-out page.
• Sharing event tickets in emails in PDF forms and more.

The best part about the WordPress event management plugin is that you will get a branded Mobile app absolutely free.

Trust WP Event Manager for all your event management requirements.

Wrapping up

A simple event registration mistake can ruin a well-planned event very easily, We hope that the article will help you overcome such issues and provide a much better registration system and experience to your attendees. Trust a WordPress event registration plugin like WP Event Manager's registration addon to make the process smooth.