This guide gives you tips on how to create user-friendly and tailored registration forms to draw in bookers/attendees to your or your customer's event or trip. By applying the below practices, you'll be on your way to creating registrations forms that impress and convert.
🟩 ANALYSE THE NEEDS OF THE DIFFERENT STAKEHOLDERS
📋 Your needs (Project manager)
Do you have all the necessary details of the event or trip?
Is there a minimum requirement of bookers needed for the event/trip to go ahead?
Will payment be required? If so, which forms of payment should be available to the bookers and are there any exceptions to the general payment rules?
Determine what information you need to collate. (If this information is sensitive, check in accordance with GDPR and include necessary information on how the participant's information will be used.) You might require information such as payment information, address details, date of birth or passport information. (Check out this article if you are unsure about what information to provide to your participants and how to store personal information.)
Do you need to allocate allotment? What is the available allotment per offering?
Are there any deadlines for booking?
Do you have the design details/materials to display your brand or replicate your customer's brand? (Such as the logo and brand colors.)
📋 Your customer's needs
Customers will need information on which participants have booked, who have not booked (if registration invites have been sent out) and cancellations.
What other information does the customer need? If it is an internal event, the customer may require information such as the name of the department they work in, their job title, or more.
📋 Suppliers' needs
Suppliers might need information regarding accommodation such as rooming lists and special requests. Any flight bookings need traveller names and other suppliers may require information such as allergies, dietary requirements, menu choices, amount of participants and so on.
📝 Everybody needs lists!
You, your customers and suppliers will require lists with relevant information. Ensuring you ask all the right questions via your form at the beginning will contribute to successful project management from start to finish. So it is important to think about how you want your lists whilst creating the form to ensure you obtain the relevant information.
Make sure to test your list output before going live with the form. This can be done by making test bookings (more on this further down the page) and checking how the information reflects in the lists.
Qondor lists are dynamic and therefore updates each time participant details, bookings or any other information on the list changes. They are live lists, so you don't need to worry about sending out a new list after each update.
📋 The participant/booker's needs
1. Explain the booker process guiding them on how to book
This can help to prevent unfinished bookings, frustrated bookers and questions. You can do this by adding instructions in the invitation, on the Front page, in the Personal details step and/or across the relevant form steps where needed.
Provide information on:
Terms and conditions
Deadlines for booking
Change options, how to edit booking (if permitted) and related refund policies
Payment options, when and how to pay
Cancellation policy and how to cancel
A note on when more information will be sent out to the bookers
Who and how to get in contact with the organiser/you
2. Provide a FAQ section
Answering common questions empowers bookers to search for answers themselves and get answers instantly without having to contact you, preventing unnecessary questions for you and waiting time for the booker.
🟩 PLAN THE ORDER OF YOUR REGISTRATION FORM
Planning is 70% of the work, execution is 30.
Now that you have all the relevant information you need to map out the flow of your registration form. Qondor has the start and end already sorted for you, with the Front page, Personal details, Summary, (payment if needed), Confirmation and Thank you page already defined in a convenient and user friendly flow. You just need to determine the middle if you are adding more steps with products for activities, workshops, meetings, transport options, accommodation or other.
🟩 TAILOR THE FORM TO EACH BOOKER'S NEEDS
In some cases, bookers may have different requirements or should only be exposed to certain choices, so there are ways in Qondor to customise the form so that bookers gain a tailored booking experience. This way the booker only sees what they need to, making for a more satisfying booking process. This also allows you to keep control over what bookers can view and select in the form.
Participant categories
You may create categories if you need to categorise participant information, booking options or define access codes. Bookers will select a category from the Personal Details page (the first step of the form).
Participant categories are useful in cases where you may need to reserve allotment for a prominent category such as VIPs, you are offering different prices or form of payment per category, you need to hide certain products from specific categories and so on.
Form conditions
Form conditions also allows you to tailor the form to the booker's needs, and can be used to expose bookers to products that are relevant for each individual only.
Form conditions can only be used on products and requires you to have two product steps in addition to the Personal details step in order for the conditions to work. This type of personalisation is useful where for example the booker must select a destination they are departing from for relevant products such as flights or accommodation to be revealed based on their choice of destination.
🟩 REPEAT CRUCIAL INFORMATION
Reinforce information the booker must be aware of such as the event date, time and location, any additional information they need to provide and by when (for instance, guest names for accommodation, dietary requests, allergies), refund and cancellation policies, payment deadlines, and so on.
You can achieve this by repeating this information in more than one place such as in the registration form invitation, the form front page, the terms and conditions section and the booking confirmation email. If you are sending out any event reminders or follow up emails, consider including this information here too if necessary.
🟩 DESIGN AN ON-BRAND FORM TO BUILD BRAND RECOGNITION AND FAMILIARITY
Example of a form front page for an internal event
Whether you are building a form for an internal event or your customer's event, bookers should be able to relate or identify with the hosting company instantly. The easiest way to do this is by reflecting the company's brand in the form design.
Head to this article to find out how to easily replicate your customer's design from their website.
🟩 USE VISUALS TO EVOKE EXCITEMENT AND PROMOTE THE PRODUCTS ON OFFER
A picture paints a thousand words. 🖌🎨
In today's world, bookers are surrounded by noise and disruption and attention spans are short. Using a strong image will grab bookers' attention as most people are likely to respond quicker to imagery than texts.
Not only that, but the right use of visuals can create a sense of excitement and anticipation for the upcoming event!
Where to place visuals:
Enable form front page to create a landing page and consider using images here.
Include a background image that appears on each form step to maintain the excitement throughout booking!
The image chosen here is on theme, represents the company 🐟 and you can't go wrong with a beautiful view of the sea! 🌊
Set up your own background image in Form Settings --> Design
Lastly, images can be used to give the booker a sense of what they are booking. For instance, if you are offering overnight accommodation such as a hotel, include an image of the hotel or an image of an activity.
Hotel product
Activity
🟩 INCLUDE LINKS TO ALLOW BOOKERS TO FIND OUT MORE AND GENERATE MORE INTEREST
You might want to include more information that has no place on the form itself.
Using links to direct bookers is a great way to get in more information and to give bookers the opportunity and choice to learn more themselves.
Use Menu Items to insert links to yours or your customer's homepage, the program for the event, FAQ page, testimonials/comments, etc. These will appear on each step of the form.
Embed links into texts on the form front page, any form step, product introduction or description or any place you feel fit. You can do this in any HTML editor by using - right Click -> "insert/edit link or image".
🟩 TEST ALL BOOKING SCENARIOS BEFORE GOING LIVE❗
Now your form is complete, it might be tempting to just distribute the link, BUT first you need to run a few tests as an actual booker yourself. This is where the 'View as booker' view comes in handy!
Run through the whole booking from start to finish, proof-read and check that it is understandable for the booker, in all possible booking paths.
Things to test:
If using participant categories with exposure to different categories then complete a booking per category to ensure that the set up is as intended.
If using form conditions with exposure to different steps/products then complete a booking by selecting different products to ensure that the set up is as intended.
Ensure mandatory fields have been set to mandatory (as in preview mode you can skip these. These fields will have asterisks and cannot be skipped in booker mode).
If you are including links, test that all links work.
Test payment scenarios. This is crucial to ensure the booker can complete payment!
Verify that the booking confirmation email is as expected and includes necessary information.
🟩 DELETE TEST BOOKINGS
Remember to delete the test booking before going live. This will tidy up the bookings overview, balances and lists ensuring only real bookings are reflected in the project.
❗ 'Delete booking' should only be used for test bookings, as all booking history will be deleted, meaning there is no way of recovering this.
🟩 SHARE, SHARE, SHARE THESE TIPS
Sharing is caring. 💜
Do you know a colleague who needs some help with getting started on forms? Share this article with them and best practices internally. Lastly, be proud of the forms you create and proudly present your forms with others in your team to help and inspire them.