How to Design the Registration Page

Before we dive into the weeds of optimizing your registration process (whether we're driving traffic through free channels or testing your headline or crafting notification emails) let's explore the overall design of the page itself.

If you recall from the previous lesson, we had a few different tools (let's call them elements) available to use when designing your registration page. Learning how to use these different elements in an effective manner will be a critical step in building a registration process that converts.

Let's break each one down!

Headline: These are typically the most prominent item on your page. It's the one (sometimes two) lines that you'll be afforded to grab the potential registrant's attention and communicate what this whole webinar-thingy is about.

We'll explore how we can optimize the headline in an upcoming lesson, but here are a few handy tactics that work well: include numbers, use colorful language to stand out, try to spark emotions.

Description (or the Main Copy): Now we're dealing with the meat of your page. Here's the spot where you can outline details about the webinar and expand on the headline you created. Of course, we don't want to add too much to the page. We still want to keep everything focused on the overall aim.

The aim? Let the potential registrant know exactly what benefits they will walk away with if they attend the event.

A really effective method is through the use of bullet points. They let you quickly share 3-5 digestible benefits that will result from your webinar—they work amazingly well from a readability perspective too.

Another great option to include in your main copy are testimonials, either in the form of engaging comments shared by previous attendees or real results that your presentation helped others achieve.

Call-to-Action: If you've built landing pages before, you'll know that a call-to-action is commonly used to describe the next steps available to anyone viewing the page.

When considering the call-to-action for a registration page, we need to remind ourselves of the main goal: to capture registrations.

Remember that your webinar is the primary vehicle we'll use to deliver value (and ultimately convert prospects)—that's not the job of the registration page.

With that in mind, registering for the event should be the only call-to-action (a.k.a next step) available.

Form: Let's look at what we'll be using to capture your registrant's details—the form. For the essentials, you'll want to capture their first name (a personal way to address your registrant) and their email (so we can communicate with them).

After that, it'll be up to you and what data you want to capture. To maximize registrations, we recommend you avoid adding any additional fields (or at least make them optional) that don't serve a specific purpose. Remember, each field is something you're asking of potential registrants and it's best to keep those to a minimum.

Of course, there are many circumstances where additional fields may be worth the additional ask. If there's data that you need to segment the leads you capture (in other words, you're going to use this data to group your contacts differently) it'll make sense to grab that through the form.

Another option is using the form to pre-engage your audience. Asking them a question like: What are you most looking forward to on the webinar? or Which of the benefits would be the most valuable to you? or even allowing them to pre-ask questions is a great way to engage your registrants and have them invest in the webinar. You also have the added benefit of seeing some pretty handy responses!

Dates & Times: It goes without saying that including the exact date and time of the webinar is a critical step for any registration page.

If you're offering multiple time options, you'll want to add the date selector as part of the form and make sure that you clearly indicate all of the available time slots.

Be mindful of different timezones. One option would be to include the time adjusted to some of the more common timezones for your audience.

You may also want to include a countdown timer so that any potential registrants can grasp how soon your event will occur.

Visuals (in the form of Images or Videos): A great way to add some personality to your registration page is through the use of images and videos. It's a useful way to support one or more of our key objectives.

Videos are unique in that they allow you to engage with the audience using a similar medium to that of the actual webinar. It's a great way to communicate with your audience in a human way (part of what makes webinars so great).

If you decide to use one, be aware that it may be used to pre-qualify the upcoming event. Err on the side of using a video with higher production quality when possible. Of course, this comes down to understanding your audience so feel free to go with whatever feels right.

Presenter Biographies: Here's an element that is crucial to one of our core objectives—building trust. Equally as important as communicating what is going to be covered on the event is knowing who is going to be covering it.

Your audience wants to know who they're going to be tuning in to watch and why they're qualified as an expert on the topic. Adding short bios on your presenter(s) are a great way to accomplish this.

Whether you're using the default registration page that is offered by your webinar platform or you decide to build a custom one, these are the elements that you'll want to include.

Next, we'll look at how to further optimize a few of these to better meet our core objectives.