Top 3 Ways To Boost Delegate Registrations On Your Conference Website

Conference websites can be confusing and overwhelming for visitors, resulting in a less than stellar conversion rate

By implementing these three core principles you’ll be well on your way to boosting the number of delegate registrations at your next conference

Use these tips to boost delegate registrations

You spend a lot of time and money building a website to promote your conference and chances are, you want a return on that investment. After all, there’s no point in having a beautiful site if it doesn’t actually produce any paid delegates, right?

There are really only three key considerations when the goal is maximum delegate registrations. You have to;

Get people interested fast.
Ask them to take a simple action.
Stay on their radar after they leave.

A few overall best practice website guidelines before we get specific:

More people now access the internet on their phones than on laptop or desktop so make sure your site is responsive and the display is optimized for any device. You don’t want to lose a big chunk of your visitors because of a bad viewing experience.
Keep it simple – too many choices up front just confuses visitors to your site and they’ll often leave without taking any action.
Make sure you build in a way to follow up with visitors who didn’t take action the first time. We have some ideas for you later in this article, so keep reading!

Ok, that’s the general stuff out of the way, now we’ll look at exactly how to get their attention, entice them to act and how you can keep the conversation going even after they’ve left your website.

Get Attention Fast

We all have short attention spans these days and it’s only getting worse. The average for an adult now is around seven seconds, so you have to make your point quickly and well.

You need to think like your potential delegates to understand what they want to know and give it to them.

To get attention quickly, the website header is prime real estate because it’s ‘above the fold’ which just means you can see it without scrolling, so it should contain the most important information:

Who is it for?
Where is it happening?
When is it happening?

The image you choose for your header should be eye-catching but not too busy, since you want to include text to answer the who/where/when questions. Do this as simply as possible with the conference name, dates and location plus a logo for branding.

Pro Tip: Google can’t read text on an image, so add the same information to the ‘image alt text’ and you’ll appear earlier in organic search results – that’s free traffic to your website.

Now you’ve got their attention, what’s next?

Ask For What You Want

You want more conference registrations from your website or you wouldn’t be reading this article. Good marketers know that a confused mind always says ‘no’ so giving visitors too much choice most often results in them leaving without taking any action.

To avoid this:

Ask them to do just one thing and make it clear e.g. ‘Claim Your Early Bird Discount’.
Use compelling words to get the desired action, e.g. Claim, Download, Submit etc.
Ask for as little information as possible up front. Remember, you’re planning on staying in touch after they leave.

Stay On Their Radar

There’s a well-known marketing quote by Jim Rohn that says “the fortune is in the follow-up”. Simply put, it means that if you aren’t staying in touch with your visitors after they leave, you aren’t getting as many registrations as you could be.

The two most effective ways to stay in front of our audience are:

Offer something of value, like an early-bird discount coupon or an entry into a prize draw, in exchange for an email address then stay in touch via an automated email series.
Take advantage of the technology Facebook has developed (called a retargeting pixel), which allows you to show paid ads to people who have previously visited your website but may not have registered yet.

With so many choices of what to include on your conference website, it can often end up confusing and overwhelming for visitors, resulting in a less than stellar conversion rate. By implementing these three core principles you’ll be well on your way to boosting the number of delegate registrations at your next conference.