There are a number of motivations for a webinar – establish brand awareness, enhance credibility and thought leadership, educate your audience, build a business case for your solution/services, drive qualified leads for your sales force to pursue, etc., etc., etc.; but none of that means a thing if you can’t get an audience, and the only way to build that audience is to get registrants. If you have made the effort to get people to your registration page, you need to do all you can to convert them into registrants. Optimize your page so that your visitors have no reason to leave without registering. These tips will help increase registrations, attendees and your overall webcasting ROI.
1. Submission Form Design
When designing your submission form, less is more. The optimal number of fields for your submission form is from 4 to 7. Each additional field you add causes a higher percentage of people to leave without registering. You should only require a field if it makes a direct impact on your follow-up campaigns. Also, be sure to have fields aligned in one column, preferably on the right side of the page. Placing the form on the right side instead of the left side can increase conversions by 24%. When designing the page, make sure the “Submit” button is contrasted with its surroundings and make it as noticeable as possible.
2. Provide Incentive
If you are trying to get registrants to sign up in advance for your webinar, give them a reason to sign up now instead of hoping they come back later. Try providing teaser content that is related to what the webinar is about, such as an eBook, email, or whitepaper. Something that has worked really well for us and our clients is to leverage video on the registration page, essentially using it as a webinar trailer of sorts. It’s extremely effective! That’s not surprising when you consider that video is consistently ranked among the top two content marketing tools on the market today (along with webinars!).
3. Page Content
Your page content should be limited to a brief description of the webinar and what your audience will learn by attending. Think like a registrant – anticipate any questions your audience may want answered before they decide to register. What value are you providing that will make your audience want to take 45-50 minutes out of their day to hear what you have to say? Repeat after me: “short and sweet.”
4. Show Registrant Count
Providing the number of registrants you have shows potential registrants the demand for the webinar and can help influence them to sign up. You can get folks asking themselves the question, “If my colleagues are signing up, am I missing something by not doing the same?” Creating legitimacy is important to snag those visitors and convert them into registrants.
5. Sharing is Caring
Provide social media share icons to enable your webinar content to be shared with ease. This is a hassle-free way to drive additional registrations. Also, provide the ability to add the webinar to your personal calendar. This helps increase your registration to attendee ratio, which for some companies is quite poor.
6. Keep ‘em while you got ‘em
If you’ve driven a visitor to your registration page, design the page so they are less likely to wander off. Customize the page with company logos, color schemes and pictures related to the webinar. As mentioned earlier, leverage video when you can. Registration pages are like a plate of food; if it looks great, you’re much more likely to dig in. If you’re using a webinar provider that doesn’t allow this level of customization, you’re with the wrong provider. Limit menu dropdowns and any other distracting elements that are not directly related to the webinar. Keep them focused on the webinar, and be sure to have your call to action throughout the page such as, “Register now to learn about…” or “By registering today, you will receive our free eBook…”
7. Get personal
Let the visitors know who the webinar speaker(s) are. Provide pictures, names, titles, bios, etc. This enhances credibility and makes the webinar a more personable experience, as opposed to “some person” that will be presenting information to them. If your presenters are willing to take it a step further, ask them if they’re willing to provide their email or a virtual business card on the page.
Give it a try! Play with the theme, wording, placement… mix it up until you find the perfect balance. Now watch your registration numbers climb and do your happy dance.