We moved the blog!

That's right, we're not just lazy...we moved the blog over to http://www.event-wizard.com/blog/.  Come join us and stay up-to-date with the latest tips, tricks and news about online registration software.

What’s up with your pricing?

I’ve been wanting to write about our Event Wizard pricing for some time.  Not what the pricing is, but why it is.

Event Wizard used to be based on a single per registration fee.  It didn’t matter if you had a very simple event registration form that captured basic information, or a complex conference registration form with many options.  This was great if you were the one running the complex registration form, but it wasn’t that great if you were the one running the very simple event.

When we released Event Wizard 5.0 we saw an opportunity to restructure our pricing so that our customers could decide what functionality they needed on any given registration form and have their per registration fee reflect that.

Gone are the days of paying $4.00 per registration for every registration you process.

How does it work?  Quite easy really, you simply start building your event and before making it live you choose the additional functionality your form requires in the A La Carte fees section ().  These are the A La Carte items you can choose from:

• Session capacities on radio buttons, dropdown lists, and checkboxes
• Fee item capacities
• Capacity management on discount codes
• Unlimited fee items (default is 5)
• Automatic price increases based on a date
• Unlimited number of discount codes (default is 5)

If you’d like to test out how the A La Carte items affect the per registration cost, please go here http://www.event-wizard.com/pricing/ and try out the handy cost calculator.

Don’t forget to choose your items before making your form live.  After you make your form live the appropriate amount of credits will be deducted from your account each time someone completes a registration.

So, to answer the question “What’s up with your pricing?”  The answer is simple – We don’t think it’s fair to charge you full price if you’re not using the full software.

How to create a custom theme in Event Wizard

Your website looks great and your event materials look great, so how do you make your registration form look great?  It’s actually quite easy to match the look and feel of your event materials or corporate branding with your registration form; it’s all done through themes within your Event Wizard account.

Creating a theme

The first thing to understand about themes is they are very powerful.  Yes, you must work somewhat within the framework of Event Wizard, but as many of our users have discovered, this doesn’t really mean anything.  Take one of our standard system themes as an example:

To start creating your theme, click on the My Themes icon () located in the main menu of your account.  From here you can either copy a theme that you already like and would just like to make simple changes to, or create a new theme from scratch.  For this purpose we’ll create a new theme from scratch.

1. Click – Create a New Theme
2. Enter a title for your theme and click OK

This is where the power of themes really shines.  Use each of the menus on this page to match colour codes, images, fonts etc. to your existing website or other materials.  At anytime click the green Preview Theme button at the bottom of the menu to see what your theme currently looks like.

It is important to note that your global fonts are controlled here so there is no need to update each form field individually, rather choose it here and you’re done.  As well, if you need to upload any images to your theme for the background, you must first upload the image to your My Files () area of your account so it can be accessed.  This also goes for any header or footer images you add to the form separately.

After you have completed your theme click Save Theme and you’re all set to add it to your event.

Adding a theme

There are two ways to add your custom theme to an event.  The first is to add your theme when you’re first creating your event.  After choosing your forms template and clicking next, choose your custom theme from the dropdown menu and click Create Event.

The second way to add your theme is to do so in your events task list.  Simply click the Event Theme icon () and follow the steps above.

Themes can be edited at anytime whether you’re in test mode or live mode.  They are also account specific, meaning the same theme can be added to as many events as you like.  This is especially useful if you have strict brand standards to adhere to.

This feature is standard across all Event Wizard accounts, so make sure you take full advantage of it.  Of course, if you have any questions about your theme let us know, we’re happy to help.

Cover your event registration software costs

Over the years we hear one question asked from our clients a lot, "How can I pass along my per registration fee?" The usual response is to roll this cost into the fees you are charging for your event.  Maybe this is percentage based, or perhaps it's a set dollar amount.  Either way you, as the person holding the event, must pay the fee we charge for each registrant.

Of course, this is our price and how we make our revenue to continue doing business.  That said, we thought if there was a way for our customers to not pay this fee at all, then that would make for some very happy folks.  So, just this week in our latest Event Wizard update we added a feature called the 'Service Fee'.  Basically, this feature allows you to run your events free of your per registrant charge.

Here's how it works:

• When enabled, the service fee is a charge of $4.75 that appears on your registration form and is passed on to your registrants, much like a service fee on a concert or airline ticket.
• The service fee will cover 100% of your standard per registrant fee and can be applied to any event where you are charging a fee. Free events are not eligible.
• When using this feature you must process your registrants fees through the DotCom Your Event payment gateway. Regular payment gateway fees apply.

Head over to our Event Wizard pricing page and see the service fee in action.

Tasked with Finding the Right Software?

One thing that I've noticed remains consistent in the world of online registration software is that often times people that inquire about it need to gather up information and take it back to a board, stakeholders, boss or committee.

The reality is this can be very time consuming, especially when you're not even sure where to begin or what it is you're looking for.  Sure, everyone that contacts us about Event Wizard knows they are looking for registration software, but sometimes that may be all.

I decided it was time to gather up this information and post it on our website.  Now, you may be asking yourself, in this situation I would need to gather information on multiple companies.  Which means, you would need to show what your competition is doing if you really wanted to save people time.  Well, you would be guessing correctly, and yes, we did that and it's right here.

We also created a resources page that has pretty well everything you need when reporting back to the groups mentioned.  We are going to keep adding to this page whenever possible so check back often as it's very useful if you're searching for software, or even if you already use Event Wizard.

If there are any other items you'd like to see on these pages let us know.