Webinar summary with ASP’s Jon Monk and Grip’s Tim Groot
Recorded September 2025

For most organisers, registration is the most critical step in the attendee journey. You can pour resources into PPC, social campaigns and email blasts, but unless visitors actually complete the form, all that investment stalls at the final hurdle.

In today’s events market, where audiences expect seamless digital experiences, the registration flow is no longer just an operational detail. It’s a conversion engine that directly impacts revenue, attendance, and exhibitor ROI.

That’s why ASP’s Jon Monk, Head of Performance, sat down with Tim Groot, CEO and Founder of Grip, for our latest webinar: From Click to Connection – How to Maximise Attendee Conversions.

Tim Groot, Founder and CEO of Grip, has been transforming the events industry since co-founding the AI-powered event success platform in 2015. Under his leadership, Grip has become a global leader in matchmaking and networking, helping organisers boost engagement, lead generation and ROI. While his focus has always been on connecting people and opportunities through technology, over the past 18 months Tim has gone deep into the intricacies of registration workflows - bringing fresh innovation and insights to one of the most critical conversion points in the attendee journey. 

Together they explored three major themes shaping conversion success today:

• Domain & User Experience – where registration lives and how smooth the journey feels.

• Tracking & Data – fixing blind spots and using analytics to pinpoint drop-off.

• Form Design & Testing – optimising every field, question and interaction.

What follows is a deep-dive summary of their insights, practical tips and data points you can apply immediately.

In a hurry? Here are the essentials at a glance:

• Host registration on a subdomain to reduce friction and fix tracking.

• Optimise for group bookings - they drive a disproportionate share of revenue and registrations.

• Use smart, minimal forms (pre-fills, relevant questions only).

• Don’t chase “zero friction” - a little effort increases commitment.

• Put marketing in charge of registration and align to one North Star KPI.

• Measure everything (GA4, heatmaps, benchmarks), and design for mobile first.

• Post-reg engagement (favouriting sessions, requesting meetings) strongly correlates with on-site attendance.
   

The first decision that shapes conversions is deceptively simple: where does your form sit?

Too often, visitors are bounced from a carefully branded event website to a third-party registration page with a totally different look and URL, plus an extra cookie consent screen. That jolt breaks trust and creates friction just when you need reassurance.

The three options:

• Best practice: Host registration on a subdomain (e.g. register.yourevent.com). This keeps everything within your brand, simplifies consent, and allows for richer flows like e-commerce style multi-ticket purchases.

• Workable but tricky: Embed the form directly into the event site. Responsiveness and checkout-style UX can be hard to maintain.

• Limited use case: Use native CMS forms feeding into a reg system via API. Fine for simple free events, but fragile for anything more complex.
   

Bottom line: keeping registration inside your brand environment, ideally on a subdomain, solves trust, UX, and analytics issues in one move.

Another overlooked friction point is the multi-person booking experience. Grip’s data shows that while only around 40% of users register multiple people, that flow accounts for 65% of revenue and total registrants.

If your form treats group booking as an afterthought—hiding it five steps in—you’re leaving money (and attendees) on the table. Think of the airline model: people expect to book several tickets at once and fill in details later if needed.

For paid events, this is essential. For free events, it may be even more interesting: letting one user claim multiple “placeholders” creates opportunities to re-engage them later to assign tickets. That intent signal is gold for marketing follow-up.

Form design is where CRO principles meet psychology. Every small decision can either reduce friction—or build commitment.

• Pre-fill smartly: Auto-detect country via IP, pre-set phone dialling codes, nudge logical defaults.

• Make it feel familiar: Remove unnecessary distractions if visitors come directly from your site; they don’t need to be “re-sold” mid-form.

• Adapt dynamically: If someone selects “CEO,” there’s no need to also ask for seniority in a separate field.

Interestingly, Tim warned against going too far towards “frictionless.” Grip’s data showed that one-click registration increased pre-regs but reduced on-site attendance. Why? Because filling out a form is an act of investment. Without it, commitment is weaker.

The answer isn’t to make forms deliberately clunky. Instead, balance efficiency with micro-commitments. Encourage pre-show actions (favouriting sessions, requesting meetings). Grip found that pre-regs who engaged this way converted on-site at 84%, compared to just 56% for non-engaged registrants.

Ownership is often the hidden factor behind form quality. Historically, registration lived with operations teams focused on on-site logistics like badge printing. Online, however, the game has changed.

Tim argued strongly that registration should sit with marketing.

• Marketers can align the form with campaign messaging, website UX, and analytics.

• They can iterate quickly instead of waiting months for vendor updates.

• Crucially, they can anchor the form around one North Star KPI (maximising conversion) rather than juggling competing asks from exhibitors and ops.

When marketing owns registration, it becomes a true conversion tool—not just a logistical hurdle.

Every field you add introduces potential drop-off. One high-growth show Grip worked with asked just two demographic questions and still delivered excellent networking outcomes.

The trick is choosing the right questions:

• Profiling questions (job role, company size) are useful and relatively stable.

• Intent questions (product categories, buying stage) should not be in the reg form. Intent changes over time and can disengage people if asked too early. Better to capture it later in matchmaking platforms or apps, where it drives value immediately.
   

If your registration lives on a third-party domain, chances are your tracking is broken. That means you don’t know where registrants came from, where they drop off, or which campaigns actually drive conversions.

The fix is straightforward: put registration on a subdomain. From there, you can:

• Track “Register Now” clicks through to completion in GA4.

• Build funnels segmented by device, channel, or campaign.

• Layer on heatmaps and session replays (e.g. Hotjar) to see exactly where people rage-click, hesitate, or abandon.

• Use benchmarks (conversion rates vs number of form fields) to guide changes when A/B testing isn’t feasible for annual shows.

Grip is also rolling out AI-powered dashboards to forecast likely registrations and highlight high- vs low-commitment cohorts.

One of the starkest blind spots organisers face: assuming their audience registers on desktop. Even in B2B, mobile often accounts for a huge share.

Optimising for mobile doesn’t just mean shrinking the desktop form. It means:

• Larger tap targets, clear spacing, readable text.

• Long single-scroll forms (which feel like short sections on mobile) can outperform multi-step tabs.

• Testing the flow yourself on a phone—if you wouldn’t finish it, your users won’t either.

• Even exploring separate desktop vs mobile forms, with different field sets, to maximise conversion on each.
   

A/B testing sounds great but is often impractical for one-off annual shows. Instead, Jon and Tim suggested:

• Building cross-event benchmarks (e.g. average conversion rates for forms with <5 vs >10 fields).

• Testing design tweaks via heatmaps/session replays.

• Iterating year-on-year instead of starting fresh and losing learnings.

The goal is to build a cumulative picture of what works for your audience, not chase generic best practice.

• Move registration to a subdomain.

• Track a basic funnel in GA4 (click → start → complete).

• Make multi-person booking the default path.

• Trim your fields to essentials only.

• Add light social proof (logo strip, testimonial) alongside the form.

• Use your thank-you page for a post-reg engagement CTA (favourite a session, request a meeting).

• Run Hotjar for two weeks and fix the top 3 UX pain points.

• Final word

  Registration is no longer just an admin step—it’s a conversion lever that shapes attendance, exhibitor value, and event ROI. By hosting forms on a subdomain, designing smart and minimal flows, making marketing the owner, and measuring obsessively, organisers can unlock more attendees from the same marketing spend.
   

As Tim summed it up: the future isn’t about frictionless forms—it’s about the right balance of ease and commitment.

Watch the full webinar back here...