How to create event sign up form in WordPress
It is always nice to know when the guests are coming, isn't it so?
We all went through a day in our life when unexpected guests knocked at our door, and we wished they at least had given us the slightest hint about their visit. Sometimes, I think that it would be awesome if we had one of that event sign-up forms. You know what I am talking about, right? The ones that people use to get more information about attendees of theirs. As technology evolves, there are various ways to make things easier, more convenient, and more pleasant to work with. Same with organizing events for different purposes. Event Management has been A THING since tribal times. In medieval times event management was in the hands of wealthy aristocratic women. Nowadays, to organize an event and get people involved, you do not have to be rich, an aristocrat, or a woman; Makes more sense right!
What is an event sign-up form and WHY use them?
Basically, those surveys are tools that call your guests for you. All you need to do is build an engaging, easy and short event sign-up form to get people involved Perhaps you are a businessman/businesswoman holding a trade show event, a teacher organizing workshops, and classes, a producer holding an award show event. Let's put it even easier you are a buddy-boss trying to cheer his employees with a corporate party, it would be a success if you knew beforehand the number of guests, their preferences, some personal information, attending time, etc. All these would be such a headache some 30 years ago but with the help of various event sign-up surveys, the mentioned process is just a matter of ten minutes or less.
Which Survey Works best?
Nowadays surveys are popular, and we all know that anything popular rapidly grows in number. Being even a little familiar with such surveys, Google Forms would be the first to cross your mind. But in fact, there are tons of alternatives with higher security and more advantages. I prefer using a WordPress Plugin called Survey Maker. Throughout my experience using various surveys, I find Survey Maker the best possible alternative because it has High-Security level, Diverse style settings, Target tools, Integrations, Copy protection, and many more. So many that I will probably miss the main point of my article, highlighting the advantages of the Survey Maker plugin over other plugins. It is better to create event sign-up step by step in WordPress using the Survey Maker and by one, show you the functionalities of my favorite plugin.
How to create an event sign-up form?
Getting back to our buddy-boss who wanted to make an event sign-up form for a corporative party he was throwing.
Below you can see all the necessary steps for creating one:
- To start creating you need to install and activate the plugin.
- After activating, click on the Survey Maker icon on your Dashboard, then "Add new", and the questionnaire will pop up on your screen.
The first fields areForm Title and Form Description . The title of my questionnaire would be "Corporate party." Now what concerns Form Description, there are some cases when form makers miss this field. However, It is an essential part of any survey. Here you should write an engaging short description so that people know what to expect and why to come. It does not need to be formal, especially in the case of our buddy-bos's example. So our buddy-boss would have something like this; "Big Family Fun Event, which will take place on the first floor of DoubleTree by Hilton, on Sunday, at 6:00 pm, waits for you to join" as a description.
After completing the first steps, the next one is:
- Filling in the questions.
The first several questions mostly ask for personal information such as First name, Last name, Phone number, Email, Date of birth,or gender; If necessary. It is also good to know, that in the case of not formal events and parties such as our example, it is not necessary to write all these questions formally. You can be creative and spice things up.
To create your first question
- Type your question in the "question" field, then click on "Radio" in the right corner and choose your question type.
There is a great variety of question types. Choose "name" if you decided to start your questionnaire with personal information. In the example above you can also see that each question is suited to the right question type.
The use of question types and the most essential ones
Having long answer questions is always better in terms of knowing your attendees better, on contrary, for some people it is draining, not to count those who simply do not have time to fill long forms, so if you want people to complete your form, do not overdo with questions requiring long answers. The best alternative can be forming your questions to get a "yes" or "no" answer and adding the option "other" to give a chance for a long answer․ The next important things are the essential questions that are missing in the event sign-up forms most of the time. For example, "Any contact number in case of emergency" or "Do you need an arranged transportation to and from the event", "Are you coming alone or with a plus one guest" "Do you have any food allergy" etc.
Try to be creative! Using Question type "Matrix Scale" you can ask your attendees to evaluate more than one-row answer. These are easy to interpret and answer but don't forget that too much of everything is bad, so don't overuse them or create endless rows just because they are easier to make.
Here is how "Matrix Scale" looks, on the edit page;
And in the form ready;
After completing the first section you can create a special section for the actual sign-up.
- To have another section just click on "Add section".
You can name the section "If you want to join our party": After this title, ask your attendees to fill in their phone number and Email address. If you want your attendees not to be able to submit the form without answering all questions or some of them, you may mark them as "Required".
How to give personality to your form
So much about making survey questions. Now, what about designing your survey! To give some personality to your sign-up form go to "Styles". Here you can see three already set-up themes; Classic Light, Classic Dark, Minimal, which you can fully customize if needed. You can change Survey color, Background color, Text color, etc. What I like about "Survey Maker" is that it has a hint icon for each function, so you always know what to do even without any instructions.
You can add any background and survey logo you want.
Here is how our buddy bos's sign-up form turned out
Tips and Tricks
As we were creating an event registration form, we made a one-page survey because the user comes to fill in the form intendedly, however, it's good to know that surveys created for entertaining purposes work better when each question is on a different page, it helps to keep the user interested in wha's coming up. This is very logical as the unknown things always trigger more interest. To make follow-up questions you need to write each of them in different sections. If you want your respondent to complete the form also keep it short do not fill it with open-ended questions (long answer questions), be precise and straightforward with the formation of the question. Do more research and Remember! that you must design your form only based on the interests of your target readers.
Other Settings
Coming back to the multifunctionality of the Survey Maker:
- You can also enable "Start Page" and show the title and description of your form before starting it.
- By clicking on "settings" you may look through all tools that will help you to make a more detailed and personalized form.
- By clicking on "Results settings" you can redirect form fillers to any site you want."Conditional Result" tool allows you to write a certain massage, email, or redirect the form filler to another site in terms of a certain answer.
- By clicking on "Limitation Users" you can put limits on how many people may fill in your event sign-up form, make logging-in required, give access only to pre-selected users by roles, or put a password on your survey.
- And last but not least the "Integrations" tool will help you store all the collected information in Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor, Slack, Google Sheets, Zapier, etc.
So much about creating an event sign-up form in WordPress. Do not forget to follow our Facebook and Twitter pages, in order to be informed and do not miss the info concerning new updates and plugins. And of course, do not miss the chance to learn step by step how to use our WordPress plugins video tutorials on our Youtube channel.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best plugin to create an event sign up form?
The best plugin for creating an event sign up form is the WordPress Survey Maker plugin, with enhanced features.
What is the Matrix Scale question type used for?
The Matrix Scale question type requires the users to evaluate different subjects in rows choosing from the same evaluation columns. The Matrix Scale is a close-ended question type.
How do I add a thank you message to my form?
Let’s say you want to create a contact form, to add a thank you message in the WordPress Survey Maker plugin click on the Add New button > Result Settings > Thank you message > type the message.