Event marketers work tirelessly to put new visitors into the top of the funnel and hopefully into the buying process, but not many invest time into looking at what these visitors do once they are dropped there.

Figures from Salescycle indicate that abandonment rates during the checkout process are on the rise. In fact their studies estimate that this has risen by nearly 15% in the last 5 years, what might be more concerning to anyone who is selling event tickets online is the average abandonment figure is estimated to be a whopping 75.6%.

Although an alarming stat this does present event marketers with an opportunity in that by reducing that % they can essentially sell more tickets without having to get any more visitors into the checkout process.

Below are our top 3 tips to improve your abandonment rate and sell more tickets to your event:

1. Make sure your checkout process is mobile friendly

Chances are your site will be a responsive design but is your checkout process? We see allot of responsive event websites which provide a great user experience up until the point the visitor makes the decision to purchase. At this point they get dropped into the top of a new funnel on a third party ticketing system which isn’t mobile optimised. Sounds madness when you say it out loud but it is happening.

Have a look at your websites analytics, what are the conversions like for mobile compared to desktop? Are there any drop off points within the checkout process that stand out, what do these pages look like on mobile?

2. Take action on a lengthy checkout process

An ecommerce poll conducted by Webcredible shows that another big reason for cart abandonment is a lengthy checkout process with 10% of respondents citing this as a reason that they would drop out of the buying process.

These multi page checkouts can be time consuming to get through and present customers with numerous forms to fill out and questions to answer, each additional bit of information you gather is another potential opportunity for the customer to abandon the process. The question to ask is are these all needed? If not can you streamline the checkout process?

If all these additional options are required, a good solution is to ensure that the checkout has a progress indicator so that the user knows where they are within the process. If the customer can see a clear path towards completion, they are more likely to follow through on the purchase.

If you have a complicated multi-page checkout process a quick look at your website analytics will certainly help you see if you are seeing allot of people dropping out. If they are this could certainly be a factor.

3. Eliminate hidden charges

In the same WebCredible survey 41% of respondents said they abandon their potential purchases due to hidden charges within the checkout process.  It really does pay to be open and honest about any additional charges the ticket purchaser may have to pay. For instance if there is a booking fee make sure that this is well displayed on your ticket information page.  It is much better to present the customer with this information whilst they are in that consideration stage of the purchase rather than spring it on them at the end of the checkout process.  The same can be said for shipping fee’s, if there are any let them know as early as possible.

When marketing events it is very easy to place a huge amount of your focus, time, money and energy getting people into the top of the sales funnel but how many of these people do you lose along the way, and more importantly how many do you lose who have actually made the decision to buy a ticket? Investing some time into looking at your checkout process will help you see greater return from your marketing efforts and sell more tickets.