“Any service used effectively, that reduces the workload, brings more delegates to the event and makes it easier for the delegates to register, must be considered as a valuable asset for any event organizer.”

Online registration for events has been around in various forms for about ten years. During the early period, only a few adventurous event organizers embraced the process and with very mixed results. The early systems were often insecure, unreliable or cumbersome to setup and manage. During these early days, some events had disastrous experiences including the loss of registration databases. Over the years, layers of security have been added, backup procedures implemented as standard, and setup procedures and tools have improved dramatically.

This created an apprehension amongst both organizers and delegates about this evolving process. Many delegates did not trust the process. More than just Internet security concerns, there was a feeling that maybe the registration might get lost in cyberspace. At the same time for the event organizer, the setup of the registration page was often slow and cumbersome and subsequent changes were often impossible. This contributed to some negative experiences for the delegates and organizers.

Today, the situation has changed.

Security
Things are a lot different today. The best service suppliers are fully secure and there is no risk of your credit card or personal details being stolen off the web.

Reliability
Modern IT practices have been employed with all reputable suppliers of online registration (OLR) services. Things like live copies of databases and regular backups make it almost impossible for data to be lost.

Setup and maintenance
User-friendly browser based tools allow a typical event to be setup quickly. Even with limited computer skills, you can now setup an online registration form by copying the key elements directly out of the main event web page or a registration flyer.

Once set up, your registration data is available 24 hours a day 7 days a week. With online registration you have more valuable information on hand than you typically have from a paper mailed-in application, AND you didn't have to spend one second keying the application data or trying to read writing that looked like is was done while the person registering was out on a training run.

Why would anyone endure the old manual process when they don't have to:

	go to the PO Box
	open all the mail
	key all the data into a computer (including the mistakes)
	make up deposits
	take them to the bank
	chase missing or bounced checks?
	the loss or misplacement of a batch of checks every so often

Other Tools
The beauty of a registration system is that you, the event organizer, have access to the full demographics of the signups. You have access to several tools that give you registration information including registrations by day, week and month as well as town and state and full demographics of the runners.

In addition, the service can act as a newsletter where you can send non-spam emails to registrants and advise them of any important information. You will be able to add other email lists to this master list and use the service as your main broadcast method.

 Fees associated with Online Registration
The cost of registrations is typically based on a percentage of each transaction (approximately 6%) and a small fixed fee of less than a dollar. This is a reasonable fee for this powerful service. Some Online Registration Service's provide additional powerful tools and services for a small fee and these should be considered.

Payments
Typically, periodical payments are sent to the event organizer every month unless prior arrangements have been made.

Benefits of an Online Registration Service
If delegates are encouraged to use the Online Registration Service, then there will be less data entry errors and the data entry task will be minimal compared with traditional data entry of typing in hard copy entries and dealing with missing and hard to read writing. It can save hundreds of work hours. You can also eliminate printed forms all together by providing an online form that can be printed. This can save thousands of dollars in printing costs and everyone who wants to register still has two options.