Events
Event registration survey
Take the seat in under a minute, and ask only the things that change what you arrange on the day.
Why this survey gets sent
“Two hundred people registered and a hundred and thirty came. I had catering for two hundred, a room laid out for two hundred, and no way of knowing which hundred and thirty I was going to get.”
A registration page is not a guest list; it is the instruction sheet for the day. Every question on it should end in something you do differently — a room size, a catering order, a badge, a printed set of handouts — and every question that does not is a reason for somebody to close the page and not register at all.
What is in it
- Full name and email (required)
- Phone number, for the day itself
- Organisation and job title
- Which sessions will you attend? (several answers allowed)
- Anything we should know about food?
- Anything we should arrange so you can attend comfortably? (open)
- How did you hear about this event?
- May we email you about this event? (a clear choice)
About 4 min to answer
Event registration survey
About 4 min
How to write this survey
Every field has to earn its place
Registration is the one survey where each extra question costs you attendees outright. Apply a single test to every field: does the answer change something we will do? A name changes the badge, an email sends the confirmation, a session choice sizes the room. A field that only satisfies curiosity is paid for in people who never finished registering.
Keep the required list to two: name and email. Organisation and job title are useful for the badge and for reading the room afterwards, but a person who is between jobs, or who is coming in a personal capacity, should not be stopped at the door by an asterisk. Ask for the phone number too, and say plainly that it is for the day itself, not for a call next month.
Ask which sessions, and say why you are asking
The session question is the one that pays for the whole page. It tells you which hall to book, how many chairs to set out, how many handouts to print and when the coffee has to be ready — and it turns a single attendance number into a timetable. Allow several answers; nobody attends a conference one session at a time.
Write the choices as the attendee will read them in the programme, in the order they happen, with the time beside each one: an attendee who has to work out for themselves which two workshops overlap will tick both, and your numbers will be wrong in the most expensive direction. If a session has a hard limit, say the number in the choice itself and close it when it fills.
Food and access: ask once, plainly, and keep it open
A short closed list covers most catering answers — nothing special, vegetarian, no nuts, no gluten — and it is far easier to count than free text when you are placing an order the night before. Finish the list with an option that points to the open box underneath, so the one person with an unusual requirement still has somewhere to put it.
For access, ask what you can arrange rather than what is wrong with the person: “is there anything we should arrange so you can attend comfortably?” invites a step-free route, a seat near the front, a sign-language interpreter or a quiet room, and it does not ask anybody to declare a condition. Leave it as a single open box, never a checklist of impairments — and make sure it reaches whoever books the venue while there is still time to act on it.
Make the email question a real choice
Registering is already a request for the confirmation, the location and any change to the timing — you do not need permission to send those. What needs a clear answer is everything after that: the agenda, the reminders, the recording, and later the invitation to next year. Offer two plain options rather than a pre-ticked box, and honour whichever one they pick.
Say on the page what the confirmation will contain and when it arrives, then make sure it actually arrives within the minute. The gap between registering and the first email is where an attendee decides whether this event is organised, and a confirmation that lands an hour later teaches two hundred people to check their calendar instead of trusting you.
What to do between registration and the door
Registrations are not attendance, and the gap is predictable: a reminder three days before and another on the morning itself is worth more to your turnout than any amount of extra promotion. Make it trivially easy to say “I can no longer come” in those messages, because a released seat is worth more than a polite silence.
Close registration when the room is full rather than letting the page keep taking names, and offer a waiting list instead so the first cancellation has somewhere to go. Then keep the answers: the session choices and the channel question together tell you what to programme next time and where to announce it, and that is a better starting point than a blank page in eleven months.