In this article, we’ll discuss how you can improve online registration to move from outdated desktop based registration process to a customer centric registration on mobile.
5 ways to improve your online registration process.
Imagine you want to register a 5-year-old to gymnastics for the first time.
You visit the ABC Gymnastics website from your smartphone and you:
You leave the website thinking you’ll register once you get home.
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But on your train ride home from work, you click on another club’s Facebook ad.
The experience is night and day. You can
✅ Find all the information you need without leaving the gym’s website.
✅ Fill out a registration form without creating an account.
✅ In just 3 clicks, the entire schedule is customized to your specific needs, showing only the best options for you.
All you have to do is choose your preferred class, sign the waiver and pay from your smartphone.
Everything is done in just a few seconds.
Now let’s see how we did this.
I’m not here to tell you to optimize for mobile. Everyone knows that.
But I think we need to move from mobile-optimization to rethinking of the entire registration process from a smartphone.
Here’s why:
With the increasing prevalence of smartphones, more people prefer to register on-the-go. A mobile-friendly registration process is no longer optional; it’s essential.
If your registration process isn’t optimized for mobile, you risk losing customers who don’t have immediate access to a laptop or desktop computer. This is especially important if you’re paying for ads on Facebook or Instagram to drive clients to your website.
Make sure your registration forms are simple and easy to navigate on mobile devices. A complex process can turn off potential registrants. Every piece of information, every question, every image must have its rightful place to avoid confusing registrants when registering from a mobile device.
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📌 Pro Tip: You can try out modern platforms like Activity Messenger to create fully customizable mobile first registration forms.
Enabling your desktop registration process on mobile does not necessarily make it mobile friendly.
You need to recreate the experience
The steps from discovering an activity to completing registration should be as smooth as possible.
We should minimize the number of steps and eliminate unnecessary complexity.
This includes integrating intelligent features such as conditional logic, where each question guides your potential client to optimal class choices for their situation.
Use conditional logic in your forms to only display relevant questions based on previous answers. This reduces unnecessary clutter and makes the registration process seem less daunting.
You registration process should be fully customizable to meet the specific needs of your organization and your clients. Yet most online registration platforms still offer a one size fits all process.
You should be able to customize every aspect of the registration either by adding, customizing or removing questions.
Make selecting classes or activities as simple as possible, with clear categories, filters, and search functions to help users find what they need quickly.
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📌 Pro Tip: Every dance studio, gymnastics club or swim school I’ve worked with recently has moved from a “show-all classes” registration process to a “guide the client” process. They start the registration form with questions that parents can answer, such as age, level, class type, day of the week, and within a few clicks, clients are only shown the best options for their current situation.
Flexibility in payment is key to accommodating a wider audience.
Offering payment plans can reduce help reduce drop-offs at the payment stage.
When a potential client sees that you payment flexibility, it lowers the financial barrier to entry. This can be particularly appealing for families or individuals on tight budgets who might otherwise hesitate to sign up.
Multiple payment options can lead to more consistent cash flow. Payment plans, in particular, provide a predictable income stream, allowing you to better manage your finances and plan for future expenses.
Including payment plan options with an automated system like Activity Messenger significantly reduces the time and effort required to manage payments manually.
This automation allows your and your staff to focus more on improving the quality of your classes, rather than being bogged down by administrative tasks.
Automated confirmation emails and reminders are essential for keeping registrants informed.
These communications should confirm their registration details, provide necessary information about the activity or event, and offer a clear point of contact for any questions.
But too often a confirmation email is unfairly treated as a basic email, while surveys show that 64% of consumers believe purchase confirmations are the most valuable messages in their email inbox.
And welcome emails have a 70-80% open rate.
It’s therefore crucial to maximize their content to reduce post-purchase inquiries.
Maintaining your brand’s identity throughout the registration process is crucial.
The last thing you want is for your customers to jump from your beautiful website to an outdated registration platform that looks like it’s from the 90’s.
With Activity Messenger you can embed the registrations process on your website. We integrate with Canva to ensure you maintain your brand identity from social media to checkout.
This not only strengthens brand recognition, but also builds trust as customers are in consistent environment throughout their journey.
A great way to improve your registration process and help increase your conversion rates is to automate your waitlist management.
Here’s a concise action plan to make to improve your waitlist management:
By taking these steps, you’ll transform your waitlist from a simple queue into a dynamic marketing tool that boosts registrations.
Now that you’ve created a seamless registration process, you’ll want to get more people to signup to increase revenue.
One of the simplest ways to this is to grow an audience with email marketing.
Here are a few tricks to get you started or improve your current email marketing strategy.
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These strategies can turn your email marketing into a powerful tool for nurturing leads, and ultimately driving conversion.
📌 Pro Tip: We had over 100 new subscribers in less than 10 days during peak registration times by simply adding an email subscription form. Many parents come to our website from ads or search and their child is still too young or they might be unavailable for the current session. These are quality leads who are happy to drop you their email address and become clients in future sessions.
