Have you ever felt frustrated by the limitations of other software providers or outdated processes and procedures? If you were to sit in on one of our demos, most likely you'd hear someone rave about the flexibility of the software and how it's going to allow them to do everything they've ever wanted to do with online registration.
This response does not happen by accident. We intentionally built our software to be as flexible as possible. However, with infinite possibilities of choice, comes great responsibility — the responsibility not to go too far.Let us explain.We want event organizers and fundraisers everywhere to think twice before requiring any piece of information for their registrants and donors.
When you create an event, a ticketing page, a fundraising page, or even a volunteer form, our software presents to you a horizon of possibilities. Here are some of the options available to you if you are hosting a marathon or race.
As you can see, you have the world at your fingertips when it comes to collecting data and presenting options for your registrants.
For every piece of data you capture, our software gives you brilliant analytics, charts and graphs in real time allowing you to be the master of your data.However, there is a lesson to be had in the powerful flexibility of software:
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
With infinite data capture possibilities, organizers and fundraisers tend to believe that more data is better; capture as much information as possible. After all, it can be a rush to capture and report on so many things in real time — especially if you have never had visibility into your event or campaign like this before.
The end result is a registration page that collects too much information. Not too much for the organizer, but too much for the registrant. A registration process that asks too much information and takes too long will also see high abandonment rates. People have limited patience and get turned off by a treadmill of questions.
But we wanted to dig a bit further to see if we could find any interesting patterns for why longer registration forms have higher abandonment rates. We found a fascinating statistic across our event registration products…25% of all transactions had more than one registrant on the order.
That means 25% of all registrants also added a friend, family member or co-worker (the record had 25 additional registrants on one order!). Unless the registrant is adding a family member, it’s highly unlikely the person entering the data on the page has all the information on a friend or co-worker.
If the registration process is simple, quick and minimal, the ability to add additional people is easier. But if the process is long and has too many personalized questions, the abandonment rate shoots up; usually because the person ordering doesn’t have sufficient information on the additional person they are adding.
That means every question, every data point you capture will have a 25% chance it will have to be answered on behalf of someone besides the person filling out the page.As an organizer, it’s easy to get high on data, but it can be sobering to realize customers don’t want to take long to get through the process — especially if they are completing registration on behalf of someone else.
So why would we care if some organization requires 400 questions to register for their basket weaving competition?
Along with partnering with event organizers to create the best possible online event and giving pages, our mission is also to create is the happiest event-goers and donors. We’re not just aiming to make our customers happy, but also our customer’s customers. That means simple registration processes; as few steps as possible and fast transaction times.
So before you add required information to your event, giving page, volunteer form or survey, ask yourself the following questions.
- Do I really need to collect this information?
- Can I collect this information in some other way besides prior to purchase? (Perhaps an optional survey or maybe an extra step with an incentive?)
- How easy or difficult will this be for a person who is signing up someone besides themselves?
Thinking twice about your data requirements will help you keep the process smooth, fast and welcoming for people to get their friends to sign up. This also equals more money for you and happier customers.
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