Simplify Your Online Registration Process

Simplify Your Registration Process to Increase ROI

Registration is the first step that people have to take before attending events of classes. And since it’s the first step, it needs to be perfectly streamlined in order to increase your return on investment by capturing maximum registrants.

In the modern digital age, people can be fairly fickle and impatient with online processes. They prefer everything to be smooth and effective. If they have to wait several minutes for the registration or if they have to go through a number of complex steps before the registration, they are much more likely to procrastinate the registration or perhaps get distracted and forget about it altogether.

As such, even if you have brilliant incoming traffic, you may still not get enough conversions — people actually taking action and registering for your event or classes — due to a lengthy registration process. In order to increase your ROI, you have to ensure that your page visitors can become registrants at the fastest rate possible.

In this article, we’ll discuss exactly how you can simplify and streamline your registration process for maximum ROI and the factors to consider when selecting a good online registration software.

How to Simplify the Registration Process?

The following are key points to focus on if you want to simplify your registration process, increase conversions, and consequently increase ROI.

Mobile Optimization

In recent years, people handle all of their digital tasks through their smartphones. In fact, as of March 2015, far more people are operating and accessing the internet through their mobile phones rather than their desktops — and this trend continues growing at a rapid pace, mobile users quickly outpacing desktop users. That’s why it’s necessary to ensure that your registration process is optimized for mobile usage.

According to a study commissioned by Google, approximately 58% of all smartphone users are far more likely to make purchases from applications and websites that are mobile-friendly. You can ensure this by using an online registration software that doesn’t require the users to pinch and zoom the screens but rather has a mobile interface built into the platform.

Quicker Checkout

The longer that people have to spend on the registration before the checkout, the more likely they are to abandon the registration altogether. However, schooling registration and events like conferences do require quite a lot of information so you can’t eliminate all of the steps completely.

Instead, you should focus on streamlining the checkout process and weeding out all the fat — keeping the registration focused on the core essential steps. You can inspect every aspect of the registration process to see if it’s necessary for your event.

A few quick pointers on how to streamline the process:

Eliminate the need to sign up or log in before registering — unless absolutely necessary.
Choose a registration software that can store the registrant’s personal information so they don’t have to start from the beginning if they stop the process in between.
Let the registrants know what they’ll be paying at the very beginning. If you display it at the very end, some may abandon the process simply due to their frustration with the lack of transparency. Some may not even begin the process because they don’t know what they’ll be paying.
Try to make sure that the entire process can be completed on the same page.
Either eliminate or simplify CAPTCHAs. Every time someone fails to enter the right letters, they are more likely to abandon the registration.

Increase Accessibility

Make sure that the registration can be accessed by anyone, at any location, and at any time. The registration should be optimized for desktops, tablets, and mobiles. Furthermore, it should be available on social media platforms like Facebook and directly on your webpage. You should also make sure the registrants can start the process directly at the source — be it at the social media platform where they found it or directly on your website — without being directed to another external ticketing site. This will minimize user fatigue and help increase conversions.

How to Choose the Best Online Registration Software?

The first thing you have to ensure is that you use a comprehensive online registration software or system. The software you select should be highly scalable — allowing you to use it effectively for events, festivals, adult classes, and school registration. It should also be flexible enough to be as complex and comprehensive or as simple as you need it to be.

The following are some of the primary factors to consider when selecting an online registration software.

Comprehensive and Centralized Solutions

There are a lot of registration software that only collect basic and incomplete information such as the registrant’s age and contact information. This may be suitable for certain festivals and events. But it’s not suitable for schooling registration, for which you need a lot more information.

Registration for classes requires asking for parental permissions and a wide range of other documents. Your online registration software needs to be scalable and flexible to handle all of these solutions. At its basic structure, it should allow you to simply take the bare minimum information. But you should be able to scale it further in order to gather all the necessary information, document submissions, and payment for classes.

A comprehensive online registration software should be able to capture information, contact details, necessary documents, and payment — all from a single centralized source.

Collecting all Required Forms

As mentioned previously, your online registration software should be flexible and scalable as well. You should be able to add custom questions and fields to gather specific information. Furthermore, the registration software should have the ability to collect digital documents in a single location.

Automated Payments

Some events require a single payment at the time of registration. Some classes require weekly, monthly, or even yearly payments. Your online registration software should have a customizable auto-payment feature so that it can receive payments on a regular basis through the registrant’s credit cards or checking accounts. The registration software can also send routine reminders. Automating this feature can save you countless hours that you would otherwise spend on following up on payments.

No Manual Data Entry Required

Good registration software has the ability to automatically log all data during the time of registration. As such, you can easily collect and access information and statistics whenever you want. Furthermore, you don’t need to dedicate human resources to physically entering all of the information, saving countless work hours and increasing your ROI considerably.

Conclusion

People are getting increasingly impatient in the modern digital age. If they can’t find the solutions or actions they’re looking for immediately and make quick registrations, they are likely to abandon the process completely. That’s why you can’t leave any stone unturned when it comes to streamlining and simplifying the registration process.

In order to achieve that, you have to use a comprehensive and scalable online registration software— one that’s mobile-friendly, offers quick checkout, can collect documents and payments, and automates all data entry processes. A streamlined and comprehensive registration software will drastically boost your conversions, and, in turn, increase your ROI.