Make Your Life Easier; Let your Website Work For You (part 3)

The past two weeks, we have discussed how to make your website work for you.  Your website should be an effective tool for your organization, not a time waster that exists just because people think you should have a website.

Today I want to talk about the first of 4 specific ways that your website can save you time and money:

Online Event Registration

Are you still passing out paper forms to people going on a trip or coming to an event?  If so, this is typically the process:

1. The form needs to be created on a computer.
2. The form needs to be printed out for everyone who will be participating.  Usually you print out 20-25% more forms that you think you will need, just to account for the possibility of increased participation or lost forms.
3. The forms need to be passed, mailed, or emailed out to everyone participating.
4. The form will be manually filled out by those participating.
5. Participants must physically turn the completed forms to someone.
6. The person collecting the forms needs to file them in case they need to be referenced sometime in the future.

Besides the inefficiency and cost of the above process, the following problems can occur:

1. Someone other than the person who is holding the file of completed forms needs to access any of the information, they need to contact the person storing the forms.
2. Someone loses a complete form and a new form needs to be completed.

Wouldn’t you rather only have to complete two steps and avoid the potential problems with paper forms?  Here are…

5 Benefits to Using Online Event Registration

1. All you need to do is create the form from your website and email participants the link to the online form.
2. All of the information from the completed form is stored on the back end of your website.
3. No more dealing with the problems of lost forms or keeping track of all the forms that returned.
4. Save time and staff costs over the inefficiency of using paper forms.
5. Many online event registration options allow for online payments.  This solution will eliminate the hassle of dealing with paper checks and gives participants a simpler way to make payment.

What does your organization do for event registration?  Are you still living in the days of paper forms?  If so, is it time to save time and money for your organization and provide online event registration?  Please post your thoughts below.

If you are ready to take the next step in becoming more efficient & cost effective and want to talk to one of our website experts about how we can help, please contact us here.