Online Registration Analytics Tips for Event Planners - Bailing-Out Means a Failing Form

Upon first viewing the bail-out rate an event professional new to web analytics might be quite shocked by the figure, but the truth is that some amount of bail-out is natural. Any website that does business online needs to recognize that comparison shopping, the need to approve expenses, questions on how much to order, or plain-old lack of attention-span due to the amount of information available on the web all contribute to customers walking away from their virtual shopping carts. So some amount of bail-out is a necessary part of the internet sales process.

However, experienced internet merchants will also tell you that you can always improve your process too. So what should you look at in the bail-out information to help you decide what to do first?

The first thing you need to address is the overall bail-out rate. If 100 visitors come to your registration page, and 80 of them bail-out it is most likely a strong indication that your form needs some work. One of the most common issues in this case is that your potential registrants are not well enough informed about your event to make the decision to register final. For instance, if you don't tell registrants the price up front, when they see the price, they may balk and leave your form. This also applies to questions they will need to answer about their registration, for instance: flight information, group member registration, or payment methods (maybe they want to pay with AMEX but you only accept Visa).

Once you have addressed the overarching issues regarding the bail-out rate you now need to investigate where in the process your potential registrants are leaving the form. Are they bailing out on the pricing page? Maybe the price is too high, or not explained clearly enough. Are they leaving from the additional options page? Maybe the options are too complicated. Are they leaving at the payment stage? Maybe you should consider offering additional payment options. Finding out where the most visitors bail-out in your funnel allows you to take a critical look at each stage of your process to help streamline the entire funnel.

So how do you find the bail-out rates on your form? A few select online registration systems have begun offering integrated analytics programs as part of their standard service. But what if your current software doesn't offer this functionality? You can add a free stat monitoring program to any form which allows customization. In this case, you will need to compile the stats yourself by finding the total number of visitors to the first page of registration, and then the total number to each successive page. This will give you an idea of how your funnel is working.