Online
registration has become so easy that it’s now available as a DIY service.
That’s obviously a great advantage but it carries potential pitfalls.
The most
obvious is that it’s tempting to go on adding questions until the form is so
long that registrants lose the will to live.
Yet how much
of the information collected is of any real use? For example, how many meeting
planners really need a postal address for registrants if nothing is being sent
by post? Maybe the marketing department wants to know where the registrants
come from but a town or even a postcode will be enough for that.
The difficulty
is that, the longer the form, the less accurate the answers. Some questions
seem almost designed to give misleading information. The most obvious is ‘How
did you hear about this event?’, especially when somebody who clicks ‘Magazine’
is then faced with a list of titles. The chance of getting an accurate response
is marginally above zero because, as with all forms asking too many questions,
registrants will probably click the first box they see.
So what is
needed? First and last name and email, definitely. Organisation name, probably.
Beyond that, a question should only to be on the form if the answer is useful.
Originally published in Conference News
