20 Event Registration Websites That Drive Conversions
Learn how to drive conversion through your event registration website in this list of website examples from leading brands. Get ready to be inspired!
Nearly all event websites share the same purpose: to persuade visitors to register for the event. To gain a better understanding of how to build an event registration website that not only looks good but drives people to register, we’ve compiled a list of examples that exhibit the qualities of a strong event registration website.
What exactly are these qualities, you ask? Although the following factors are by no means exhaustive, each one is characteristic of event websites that do well to increase conversions.
Vibrant calls to action – A great event website is able to effectively transform a website visitor into an attendee. Getting visitors to take a specific action on a page is known as a call to action. A call to action (also known as CTA) is usually in the form of a button or a series of buttons. An exceptional event website will clarify what the CTA is to the visitor by drawing attention to that specific action.
Concise value propositions – You can probably talk for hours about your event, but an event website should be strategic in its communication of value propositions. By being concise with this information, website visitors can quickly discern how this event will benefit them which then expedites their decision making process.
Leveraging your strengths – Each event has one or two unique selling points that should be heavily emphasized throughout the website. Whereas being concise with value propositions answers the question of, “What will I get from this event?”, being able to leverage the event strengths answers the question: “How is this event different from any of others?” Successful event marketing entails a self-awareness of what makes this event stand out from the rest and by further highlighting this point throughout the site, visitors will feel more inclined to register for the event.
Unified brand aesthetic – As with any stand-out website, exceptional visual design leaves an impression on visitors. However, great design means very little for an event website if the event brand is not properly showcased. Stunning aesthetics must always be intertwined with the event brand to create a memorable website experience for those who come to the website. This will help ensure that potential attendees will differentiate your event from the rest.
The following examples are placed under one of these five categories to show what it might look like to apply these best practices on actual event websites. And though these examples lean heavy towards technology events, the best practices can be applied to all types of event registration websites.
Whether you are organizing a non-profit summit or a SaaS user conference, this list of examples serves to spark inspiration and unveil knowledge on what it takes to drive conversion on an event registration website.
To navigate through this post, click on a category to go directly to that section.
- Elevate 2018
- Culture Summit
- ZoomInfo: Growth Acceleration Summit
- Magento: B2B Experience
- Coindesk: Consensus
- SalesLoft: Rainmaker
- MozCon
- Boston Magazine: The Cue and Burger
- Namely: HR Redefined
- Virgin: Disruptors
- Great Place to Work
- Marketing Optimization Week
- Payscale: Compference
- CX Summit
- GlueCon 2018
- Emma: Marketing United
- HubSpot’s INBOUND
- Zoomtopia
- Customer Validation Conference
- Slack: Frontiers
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What is particularly impressive about this event registration website, in addition to its outstanding design, is how the CTA buttons still stand out amongst such a colorful backdrop. The challenge of a design like this is that the buttons can easily get lost in the rest of the visuals, but the website does a great job of keeping the CTA noticeable by triggering a mouseover effect on each button.
Key takeaway: Think of non-conventional ways to make the CTA even more noticeable to the reader, especially if it is against a colorful backdrop.
Having a loop video play in the background of a color contrasted CTA can heighten the urgency to register for the event. By juxtaposing the visuals of last year’s event with an eye-catching CTA button intensifies the fear of missing out on the experience and thus the desire to attend.
Key takeaway: Placing CTAs in front of a well-edited loop video can increase the feeling of FOMO which can lead to quicker clicks of the button.
ZoomInfo: Growth Acceleration Summit
The Growth Acceleration Summit website exemplifies the cardinal rule of CTA design: stark color contrast. While still maintaing a simplistic and on brand aesthetic, the website draws attention to each CTA by making each button orange. This choice of color helps the CTA to stand out from the rest of the site. Also having repeated “Register” buttons keeps this particular CTA top of mind as readers navigate the page.
Key takeaway: Don’t be shy with your CTA buttons. As long as they are strategically placed and designed, place them all along the site to guide readers towards the next step.
In this example, minimalism is key. Magento does not overbear the reader with several different types of CTAs. Though that strategy may be applicable to other type of events, Magento knows that they best action that a website visitor could take is to register for their site. Having a singular, strategically orange-colored CTA on the page forces the reader to give it attention.
Key takeaway: Sometimes, less is more. If your registration page has minimal content to begin with, only include one CTA on the page to have it draw maximum attention.
Before writing a lengthy paragraph to persuade people to register, consider using simple icons that convey each reason more succinctly. Coindesk does a great job of summarizing their value proposition in 6 simple icons, making the reader immediately understand the benefits of attending the event.
Key takeaway: Using icons to convey your event’s value propositions is a quicker way to convey information to the reader than by writing lengthy sentences
SalesLoft’s event website for their annual conference, Rainmaker, also does a great job of illustrating their value proposition through quick-to-understand icons. However, what makes these icons stand out even more so is their color contrast with the main header. Just like CTA design, visually representing the value propositions can be more effective when using color contrast. This brings clarity to the reader’s website experience.
Key takeaway: Use color contrast for the value proposition section to have it stand out to the reader.
While certain events can be accurately explained with a few icons, others require more explanation along with the image. MozCon’s event website does this successfully by having a clear title and short description of each value prop while also linking to another page that goes into the value prop more in depth. The additional hyperlink ensures that the description on the homepage remains concise.
Key takeaway: If a single icon or sentence doesn’t accurately sum up your value proposition, link it to another page to avoid a lengthy description on the main site.
Boston Magazine: The Cue and Burger
When an event’s main value propositions are burgers and barbecue, conveying this solely through icons and words probably won’t cut it. For Boston Magazine’s Cue and Burger Battle event, they chose to convey their value prop through up-close visuals of the food that attendees will get to enjoy. Having a loop video as well as two more videos embedded on the main site helps to more effectively communicate the value prop than if they had only used icons and words.
Key Takeaway: Explore different mediums through which you can most effectively convey your event’s core value propositions.
Namely’s HR Redefined event website immediately captures the reader’s attention because of its simple color choices and unified on-brand aesthetic. In addition to having consistent colors throughout the site, the fonts used throughout are also all congruous, even the font used in the icons. Having a harmonious visual language makes for a much more pleasant user experience for the reader.
Key takeaway: Being on-brand means being detail-oriented. Be thorough and consistent in the usage of brand colors, fonts, and shapes to ensure a harmonious visual experience.
Similar to the HR Redefined example, Virgin’s Disruptor’s event registration website is comprised of only three colors – red, white, and dark grey. Being simplistic and bold with your brand identity helps to make the event brand more memorable in the minds of your potential attendees.
Key takeaway: Don’t be afraid to make bold design decisions to create a memorable on-brand event website.
Great Place to Work: For All Summit
Though this event has already passed, there’s still much to learn from this example. The For All Summit, hosted by Great Place to Work, displays a beautiful palette of colors while not coming off as overbearing. Though the homepage that needs to be scrolled down, the content on the page does not seem superfluous. Each section clearly offers a different value proposition of the event while keeping the on-brand aesthetic.
Key takeaway: Deploy the right balance between website content and branded elements to effectively communicate your event vision both verbally and visually.
A branded event website can consist of more than just colors and brands. In the case of the Marketing Optimization Week event site, geometric shapes were a big part of their brand and they thought of clever ways to incorporate them throughout the site. Perhaps your event brand includes a quirky mascot. If that’s the case, make sure to include it on the site in a creative way.
Key takeaway: Make sure to incorporate all aspects of your brand throughout the event website, especially if your event brand consists of more elements beyond fonts and colors.
Compference is an annual event that explores topics of compensation and human resources from different perspectives. And while the event content is surely the main reason why people register, there’s no denying that the particular event venue compels people to register as well. It’s not so common that a business conference is held in Disney World and includes a park ticket being offered with registration.
The team behind Compference knew good and well that this was a clear strength of their event and were not shy about making it known. Having the Disney World details precede the actual event description shows how confident they were in knowing that the venue and complimentary ticket would grab readers’ attentions.
Key takeaway: Play to your strengths. Be honest about what attendees will want most and make that front and center within the event website.
Often times the most enticing aspect of an event is the speaker lineup. For the CX Summit, the keynote speakers were given extra emphasis by having dedicated speaker cards on the event website. By using up ample space on the site to spotlight their speakers, readers are able to receive the full scope of the experience, relevance, and knowledge of the keynote speakers.
Key takeaway: Dedicate ample website real estate to your event’s strong points to further persuade readers to register.
With U.S. tech conferences so often taking place on the west coast, it can be refreshing to come across an event with a different setting. Set against the beautiful sunny backdrop of Phoenix, GlueCon isn’t shy to showcase its uncommon event setting by including an eye-catching video loop of the Arizona desert. This visual, along with their speaker lineup, are strong points of the event that they put front and center on the event website.
Key takeaway: Convey your event’s strong points in the simplest way possible.
Every year, Emma, a well-known email marketing software, strives to attract the best talent for their conference speaker lineup. Given their exceptional collection of speakers each year, it makes sense for the event website to showcase these speakers in multiple ways that are more engaging than simply a profile picture and bio. The interactive homepage banner enables readers to flip through the keynote speakers. They also include a beautiful layout of profile pictures with a mouseover effect that brings each picture to color. Creative visual features like these help to further emphasize the talent of their stak speaker lineup.
Key takeaway: Think of creative ways to highlight your event strengths that go beyond the usual image and text format.
A common obstacle that prevents would-be attendees from registering from the event is indecisiveness. Especially if all ticket options are expensive, buyers have a difficult time discerning which option would be best for them. Anticipating people’s inability to choose, the INBOUND registration page highlights the middle package and denotes that it is the most popular option. Though a seemingly unimportant notation, this suggestion is crucial for the buying process as it eliminates indecisiveness through social proof. Attendees feel more at ease knowing that the option they chose is the one everyone else chose as well.
Key takeaway: Eliminate indecisiveness from the registration process by suggesting an option for the potential attendee.
Imagine that a prospect reaches your event website, becomes very excited at the event content, and decides that she must register. Unfortunately, shes needs approval from upper management. Instead of hoping the she receives approval, you can offer resources to help her make the case to her manager. This is exactly what the Zoomtopia event website offers for its site visitors. They have a downloadable template letter right on their event website that helps make the case to upper management. Making resources like this readily available can make the buying process much smoother for event attendees.
Key takeaway: Anticipate the push back that would-be attendees might receive from management when trying to register for your event and create a templated letter that justifies the costs.
Customer Validation Conference
Often times, especially when registration is expensive, people are curious exactly what value they are receiving with their purchase. Instead of being vague with the reasons, you can clearly spell out the ways in which their fee is being invested back into their event experience. This will give them peace of mind when finally decided to register for the event. The “Included in Your Registration Fee” breakdown section of the Customer Validation Conference’s website does well to justify the cost of registration by being transparent with how the fee will be used.
Key takeaway: Clearly explain to potential buyers how their money is going to be invested back into their experience to justify the cost of registration.
Instead of communicating all of your information on the homepage through images and paragraphs, sometimes it is more helpful to have common questions be answered directly through an FAQ section. For their annual conference Frontiers, Slack dedicates an entire section on their homepage to commonly asked questions that addresses people’s queries in detail.
Key takeaway: If you anticipate that your target audience will have numerous questions before registering for the event, make it easier for them by having a dedicated FAQ section.
Wrapping Up
At the end of the day, an event website is another type of event registration tool. The content, visuals, and structural design of the site all work together to persuade website visitors to become enthusiastic event registrants. To recap, here are 5 key takeaways for creating an event registration website with a high conversion rate.
- Using icons to convey your event’s value propositions is a quicker way to convey information to the reader than by writing lengthy sentences
- Explore different mediums through which you can most effectively convey your event’s core value propositions.
- Use strategic color contrast to make your CTAs stand out.
- Don’t be afraid to make bold design decisions to create a memorable on-brand event website.
- Directly address any concerns they might have during the registration process by providing resources right on the event website.
Although there may be no such this as building the perfect event registration landing page, there can be such thing as creating your perfect event registration page. The needs of your event are unique and as long as you measure and A/B test different website solutions, creating your ideal event registration website is well within your reach.
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