What do you need help with?
Posted by Garth on Thursday, October 7th, 2010
The last five years of event management has brought about a lot of interesting discussions. One of the most frequent and heated topics has always been about how much information do you give potential customers and how many steps do they need to complete in order to finish the event registration process? My argument has always been that it will depend on the type of website you have and the potential customers you are marketing to. There are two polar schools of thought that are analogous to the experience of going to a golf course verses going to an amusement park.
Focused Registration – Like Going to a Golf Course
Focused Registration
The golf course customer, or golfer, has specific intentions for coming to the golf course. The golfer can look through products at the pro shop and make a purchase, work on his swing mechanics by hitting a bucket of balls, do some putting on the practice green or play a round of golf. As a customer, the golfer is always catered to and the sales pitches are never unrelated. The pro shop is helpful and directive, but never pushy. In general, the golf course tries to establish a relationship that will be lucrative over a lifetime.The putting greens are available to anyone who comes to the course, even if you’re not a paying customer. You can even hire a caddy to give you personalized attention throughout your round of golf to watch your swing and suggest strategies for playing the course.
Managing your events and registration process similar to a golf course is done by making it as simple and specific as possible. The event description should be rather simplistic and easy to understand but offer enough information for your customers to understand the event and become comfortable with registering. The event process should be as few steps as possible and as few pages as possible. This does not mean that you have to avoid any up-selling , after all don’t they offer a cart with your round of golf? The important thing is to consider who your potential customers are and what will serve them best. What kind of event registration process will meet their expectations and what will keep them coming back? If you have customers that are busy, but are familiar with your website and products, and that will pay extra for convenience, then make the event registration process really easy. Don’t be afraid to give them one up-selling opportunity but the option must be really easily understood and easily accepted or rejected so they can make a quick decision and move on.
Add-On Registration – Like Going to an Amusement Park
Add-On Registration
Think back to the last time you went to an amusement park, did you have a specific plan for the entire day or did you more or less wander throughout the park? You probably planned what time of day you wanted to go on the rides that get you wet and the ones you wanted to go on with and without kids, etc. You were probably drawn in by a barker to toss a few baseballs or shoot a few targets to win someone special a giant teddy bear. You may have even gotten lost in the amusement park and had to ask for directions to get out! After you pushed your fun equilibrium to the limit and emptied your wallet, you swear you’ll never go back.
This is a perfect example of an add-on registration strategy that presents multiple add-on opportunities to potential customers, encouraging them to increase the final transaction amount. This strategy works best for browsing customers who are aware of your products and services but are compelled to purchase because of a promotional opportunity. If you’ve ever searched for a job on one of the major job websites then you know what I mean. Just about every other step is an offer for an online class or degree. This approach can be very damaging to a relationship and can even discourage purchases (immediate and future), but the interaction value may be maximized.
Register It
Depending on how your website is designed, who your customers are and their intentions (focused or browsers) you should consider the event registration process you are taking them through in order to join your events. Make the registration process as easy as possible if you want to build a relationship with your customers. If you’re never going to interact with your customers again then an add-on event registration process may be the best strategy.
Smell the Aroma – (a.k.a, how Event Espresso can help with both strategies)
You can get the most out of your event registration process with Event Espresso (WordPress events plugin). The focused event registration strategy is accomplished by keeping your event titles simple, your event descriptions short, the information required to register is kept to a minimum, and the event plugin can even be configured to complete the registration process before receiving payment which affords you the opportunity to give the potential customer individual attention to finish the registration process if they happen to abandon it.
If you want to pursue an add-on strategy then give the potential customer as many registration options as you can imagine. Add information to products and other events in the description area of these events and include that same information in the confirmation emails. Eventually, Event Espresso will include a shopping cart option that will allow you to add related items to your events to try and up-sell the customer.
Which event registration strategy do you use or have you ever really thought about it? Tell me why you think your strategy does or doesn’t work.
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Posted by Seth Shoultes on Tuesday, October 5th, 2010
Event Espresso has been nominated for the prestigious “2010 Plugin of the Year Award” at WordPress Honors. Please take a few minutes to show your support for Event Espresso (and any of your other favorite plugins,) by voting.
Need a little more incentive? Each person that registers on the WordPress Honors website will be entered to win great prizes from other great WordPress theme and plugin developers.
So hurry up and cast your vote for Event Espresso and start winning prizes! 🙂
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Posted by Seth Shoultes on Monday, September 13th, 2010
Social Media Buttons
Now includes Facebook and Twitter share buttons.
Among several minor bug fixes etc, we have included a simple social media plugin/addon that can be used to display Twitter and Facebook buttons in your Event Espresso templates. If you have relocated your template files to your uploads folder, you will need to make these changes to your template files.
I have also provided templates for the payment and return to payment pages.
Calendar Week View
The calendar has also been updated to include weekly and daily agenda views and a settings page to manage the calendar options.
Here is a list of recent changes between the last four versions.
Changes:
3.0.16
Added simple buttons for Twitter and Facebook. Templates have been updated to include these changes.
Added payment and return to payment templates.
Added required text to form fields.
Added a new function to Get a single start or end time:
* function event_espresso_get_time($event_id, $format = ‘start_time’)
* @params $event_id (required)
* @params $time (optional, start_time (default) | end_time)
Changed the plugin to use the built in jQuery library, instead of the Google jQuery API.
Adjusted the questions display query to order by group order. This will work if the users do use the group_order field. Otherwise the questions will get mixed up.
Added the search and replace values to the invoice email
3.0.15
Moved the system questions and question groups function into the database install scipt. Hopefully this will fix the problem with the system questions and groups not getting installed.
3.0.14
Applied some formatting to the category name in the category listing.
Removed the wpautop function from the category editor.
Added the end_date of an event to the event_list.php.
Fixed the following issues
1) Edited questions always defaulting to ‘required’.
2) Deleting of questions and groups via checkbox.
Follow us on Twitter @EventEspresso
#WP #eventprofs #plugin
2 Comments
Posted by Seth Shoultes on Thursday, September 9th, 2010
The Event Espresso team is excited to be a part of WordCamp Las Vegas 2010 (follow on Twitter: @lvwordcamp #wclv,). This will be our second WordCamp sponsorship after we sponsored WordCamp Utah, right here in our hometown of Salt Lake City, Utah. We enjoyed networking with everyone at WordCamp Utah so much, that we decided to do it again in Vegas.
Be sure to follow us on Twitter or join our WordCamp Las Vegas Twitter list of attendees and be online during the event. One special Twitter follower will walk away with a free download of Event Espresso to use on their site (or a clients) WordPress installation.
Can’t wait until WCLV for a chance to get your hands on the premium version of the plugin for free? Use the coupon code LVWORDCAMP to get $20 off! Hurry the code is limited to the first 10 uses.
Download now >>
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Posted by Garth on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010
Event Espresso (EE) has been available for almost 18 months and we’d like to highlight all the different type of events that our customers now manage more profitably and efficiently. Is your event type listed?
- Boat Sailing Appointments
- Workshops
- Conferences
- Personal Training
- Consultations
- Classes
- Concerts/Gigs
- Others???
We know there are probably dozens if not hundreds of other types of events you’ve used Event Espresso for, so leave us a comment and let us know if we don’t include your type of event on the list. We’d like to hear back from as many of our customers as possible. If you know someone else who is using our WordPress event management plugin, let them know we’d like to hear from them.
If you’d like to showcase what you’ve done with Event Espresso, feel free to post your website profile in our Website Showcase.
4 Comments
Posted by Garth on Tuesday, August 31st, 2010
Keep the Cash Campaign
This weekend we had the opportunity of attending WordCamp Utah. For those who haven’t attended a WordCamp, it’s a great opportunity to be inspired by and network with skilled developers, writers, webmasters, and entrepreneurs. We even had a town hall meeting with WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg and a live presentation from Will it Blend, yeah, seriously! Needless to say, we had a great time.
Even though we had a great time at WordCamp, there was a $30,000 problem that really bothered us. Each of the 153 attendees had to pay an additional $1.49 to cover the cost of registering for WordCamp through Eventbrite. With all the plugin development around WordPress, why would WordCamp not use Event Espresso to manage their events? Event Espresso only costs $59.95 for unlimited events, and no fee per registrant (compare that to $1.49 per registrant with Eventbrite). WordCamp could either use that $1.49 for cool WordCamp things, or they could give us all a discount.
There have been or will be 136 WordCamps in 2010 and if, on average, each WordCamp gets about the same number of attendees as WordCamp Utah, attendees could collectively pay $30,396 just to register for WordCamps! That could fund the development of a sweet new feature or theme or be used to publicize WordPress as a CMS. Developers can help their clients save more money too by using Event Espresso.
To help make WordCamp better, and save a lot of cash, we have decided to donate our event manager plugin, Event Espresso, to every WordCamp site. We do not want to see all that money go toward just registration fees – we’d like to see WordCamp use that money to make it better or let us all keep the cash. We’re here to help you manager your events better, so if you’re in charge of planning or hosting a WordCamp, contact us to get your free event manager plugin.
You too should make more money from your events, or make them more affordable with Event Espresso.
Put a Banner on Your Site:
Save the Cash Campaign 125x125
Save the Cash Campaign 234x60
Save the Cash Campaign 468x60
Save the Cash Campaign 728x90
7 Comments
Posted by Garth on Friday, August 27th, 2010
We our proud to be a sponsor of WordCamp Utah 2010!
What is WordCamp?
WordCamp is a conference type of event that focuses squarely on everything WordPress. Everyone from casual end users all the way up to core developers show up to these events. These events are usually highlighted by speeches or keynotes by various people. Read more…
Since Bluehost is providing lunch for everyone and Nametag.com is supplying the badge holders and lanyards. We figured we could help out with a few extra refreshments in addition to the small cash contribution we already made.
We would also like to give a very special shout out to Joseph Scott and his team for bringing WordCamp back to the great state of Utah! Not only did Joseph and his team bring WordCamp back to Utah after two long years without it. They have managed to round up a great group of speakers, which includes the founding developer of the WordPress project himself – Matt Mullenweg as the keynote speaker.
1 Comment
Posted by Seth Shoultes on Tuesday, August 17th, 2010
Announcing Event Espresso 3.0., the most complete registration and event manager plugin available for WordPress. Brand new features and enhancements to nearly every feature makes this version the most powerful event management available with WordPress. Download Event Espresso 3.0 and do more with your events.
New Features:
Download Event Espresso 3.0 and get the most advanced WordPress event management system.
The First 100 Save $10
For the first 100 shoultes.net and Event Espresso subscribers, use the discount code 3SPR3550 during checkout and save $10.
Affiliates Earn 20%
Earn 20% by helping other event mangers understand the power of Event Espresso by becoming an affiliate.
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Posted by Seth Shoultes on Saturday, July 10th, 2010
Event Editor
Redesigned interface for managing events.
Attendee Groups
Group registrations are now easier to manage.
Customizable Templates
Templates can be moved to your uploads directory and easily customized.
Multiple Payment Options
Multiple Payment Options
Payment options such as Authorize.net, PayPal, PDF Invoice, Check/Money Order and Bank Transfers can be customized using the new payment gateway management interface.
1 Comment
Posted by Seth Shoultes on Friday, June 25th, 2010
Event Espresso makes it easy to manage and customize events and registrations to to your business, personal website, or sporting event needs.
A few of Event Espresso’s built-in features include:
- Built-in event functionality, just install and activate!
- Fast and efficient Event Management
- Uses Wodpress’s own WYSIWYG editing interface
- Integrated Shortcode support
- Streamlined single-page event data entry
- And more….
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