Webinar sign up best practices: where people quit

A webinar sign-up page asks a stranger to do three things in order: choose a session, give their details, and trust that a seat was taken. The first step is where time zones go wrong. A session listed as 2:00 PM means little to someone in another country, and a page that shows only your zone sends them to the wrong hour or to a session they thought was next. The second step fails on fields the host added for a sales call. The third step fails when the confirmation says thanks and nothing else. None of this shows from your side.

• Each session shows its date and time in the visitor's own time zone, with the zone named.
• Past and full sessions are removed from the list, not left to fail after the form is filled.
• The form asks for a name and an email, and every other field is marked optional.
• The confirmation shows the date, the time and the join link or a calendar file.
• The confirmation email arrives in the inbox the visitor typed, with the same time on it.

Wrong: a list that reads Thursday at 2:00 PM, with no zone, and a small line at the top naming your time zone. Right: each session reads in the visitor's zone with the zone written out, for example Thursday, 2:00 PM Eastern, and a line below that gives the time in your zone. A visitor in another country cannot convert your zone in their head, so they either pick the wrong hour or assume the session has already happened.

The list can also open on the first session, which may already be full or past. A visitor who does not scroll registers for the wrong date, or the form fails after they filled it in. Remove the past sessions, and show the full ones as full before the form opens. The report shows this as a stop on the session list, with the visitor's own words about which time they picked.

Every field on a webinar form has to earn its place. A name and an email are enough to hold a seat and send the join link. A phone number is a field the visitor may not be able to complete, and a visitor cannot receive a text message in a test, so a required phone field stops them there. A company size dropdown with no default, and a required question about budget, make the form feel like a sales call before the seat is booked. Wrong: every field marked required. Right: two required fields, and the rest optional with a short reason shown beside each one.

The tell in the report is the field where the visitor stopped. A visitor who stops on the same field after two attempts has hit a rule they cannot see. A visitor who stops on the submit button, with no message near it, has hit an error the page never named. Read the visitor's thought for the field they mention, then put the error beside that field, not at the top of the form.

A confirmation page that says thanks for registering gives the visitor nothing to act on. The join link and the time belong on that page, and the same details should follow by email. Check that the email reaches the inbox the visitor typed, and that its time matches the page. A time that differs by an hour, because the email was written in your zone, is one way a registered visitor misses the session. Wrong: the email reads 2:00 PM with no zone. Right: the email reads the same time and zone as the page, with a calendar file attached.

Also check the choice between attending live and getting the replay. A visitor who picks the replay while expecting the live session, or the reverse, has registered for something that will not match their plan on the day. Put the difference in one line on the same screen as the choice, and send each visitor to the confirmation that matches it.

Signup flow testing

A host adds a session, moves a date, or changes the form, and the list can reopen the old fault. Rerun the same visitors after each new date and each change to the form or the confirmation email. With paid credits, visitors can register behind a site password while the page is in staging.