Nowadays, whatever type of summer camp you’re running, providing a smooth online registration process for campers and their families is a critical precondition for success.
And having a clear and user-friendly camp registration form on your website is one of the key ingredients for getting more registrations and generating more cash flow.
In this article, we’ll cover the six steps needed to create camp registration forms that meet the high expectations of today’s users.
Choose the Right Tool to Create the Form With
The first step in creating a registration form on your website is choosing the right software tool for the job.
For example, many website builders like WordPress, Wix, and Weebly offer form-building plugins or widgets that can be integrated into your website.
However, their primary function is to manage website design and content.
In comparison, software solutions designed with camps and similar events in mind focus on digitizing, automating, and streamlining all registration and payment processes.
In other words, those solutions aim to integrate the three core components of effective camp management:
- registration (incl. form creation, customization, settings, adding form fields)
- payment processing (incl. online payments integrated into your form)
- communication with campers/parents (e.g., registration confirmation emails)
Integrating these components in one software solution provides a more cohesive user experience, where parents never have to leave your website to complete camp registration and payment.
One such solution that provides camper families with a seamless camp registration experience while lightening your staff’s workload is our camp registration software, Regpack.
The above highlights show how Regpack addresses many common pain points in the registration process.
For instance, it eliminates forms that are impossible to complete on smartphones or tablets or users being redirected away from your website to third-party payment processors.
As we’ll see in later sections, Regpack’s features include an online form builder that enables summer camp teams to quickly and easily create customized, easy-to-use, and mobile-friendly registration forms supported by triggers, i.e., conditional logic.
Since most other camp registration solutions cover similar form-building steps, we’ll use Regpack’s form setup procedure as an example of what creating a registration form with integrated payment options on your website involves in practice.
Therefore, you’ll first need to select a cloud-based, user-friendly, all-in-one camp registration software that fits your organization’s needs and budget.
After you complete your software provider’s sign-up, payment, activation, and setup processes, you can log into your user account.
From there, you can go to settings and forms (or similarly named icons), and create a new registration form.
Create a New Registration Form
When creating a brand-new form, you should select the initial form settings (category, name, etc.) and customize the form’s appearance to align with your camp’s branding and design preferences.
Think of this step as building the foundations and framework of your form before adding the form fields you want to have to collect necessary camper and parent info).
Depending on your chosen software solution, you might be asked which section of your future online form you want to structure first, i.e., a Parent or Child form.
This distinction is made in the software’s backend for organizational purposes, and it doesn’t affect the user experience of parents registering for camp.
In essence, this allows those parents who want to enroll multiple children into your summer camp to complete general family information, billing details, and emergency contacts only once.
After filling out that section of a registration form, parents/guardians will be guided to fill out the child (attendee) form for one or more children within the family (group) account.
This individual child section of your online form will collect specific information about each camper (such as their medical history, dietary preferences, program selections, etc.).
Given the above, you’ll probably select “Parent Form” and then proceed to choose or name a form category (only visible to you and your staff) and then name the form itself (visible to everyone when you launch the online form).
There are some other form settings you’ll need to decide on, some of which are nicely explained here:
For instance, when Roadblock is selected, this setting will alert users that they can’t proceed because they haven’t filled out all the mandatory fields in the previous section of their form.
As we’ll see next, you can decide which data fields are mandatory when adding the ones you want to have to your registration form.
However, before moving on, you should customize your form’s appearance (choose the colors and fonts, and don’t forget to add your camp’s logo).
That will create branding consistency and provide a more cohesive user experience that signals your organization’s competence and reliability.
Add the Form Fields You Want to Have
Now that you’ve configured the initial form settings, it’s time to decide what information about campers and parents you want to collect.
Then, simply drag and drop to add, customize, and arrange the desired form fields using your software’s online form builder.
When a camp manager (or another form creator) drops a form element (e.g., email, as illustrated above) onto the form canvas, they can customize it.
For instance, they can select whether the field is mandatory for form completion and add a field description to help users understand what info they are meant to provide.
Another important individual form field setting that should be activated is the software’s backend functions, i.e., enabling data filtering and triggering options.
For example, if you turn the “email” field’s filtering options on, you can easily generate an email list of your registered campers and use it to streamline parent/camper communications.
Camp administrators can also specify a field type, such as a short or long answer, number, date, email, yes/no or multiple-choice question, etc.
This is also where a registration form creator would return later to set up form-based rules and triggers that will adapt the user’s online form based on their actions and responses.
After adding the desired form fields and completing the initial customization, administrators can easily rearrange them to create a logical and user-friendly layout before integrating payments into their camp registration form.
Integrate Payments Into Your Form
This step ensures that, after camper parents complete the registration info section, they can seamlessly move through your form to select the preferred camp payment options and methods and pay for camp.
This integration enables parents to complete their registration and make payments within a single, cohesive workflow, eliminating the need for redirecting them from your website to third-party payment gateways.
In an integrated payment process, after the campers and their parents select the camp program and session dates and fill out other mandatory info, they can choose how they want to pay for camp, i.e., select a payment plan/schedule.
After selecting a payment schedule (e.g., one-time payment, deposit plus balance, installment plan), registrants proceed to choose their preferred payment method.
The payment methods typically include credit cards, bank transfers, e-checks, digital wallets, and any other methods accepted by the camp.
Naturally, the number and type of offered methods will depend on meeting the conditions and signing agreements with credit card companies and other digital payment providers.
That aside, your integrated registration and payment software should enable you to easily adjust payment methods to your camp’s and users’ preferences.
By integrating payments directly into the registration form, the right software allows camps to securely collect online payments on their website, creating a seamless and convenient camp registration and payment process.
At the same time, such integrated solutions offer support features such as automated billing, invoicing, and email communication, managing discounts and coupons, and payment reporting.
All of these features streamline camp management tasks.
Once the payment options and methods are set up and made part of your registration form, it’s time to automatize the registration process by adding triggers.
Add Triggers to Your Registration Form
Now that all the form configurations, appearance, and data fields (along with payment options and methods) are set, you can integrate them into one continuous, intuitive registration process by adding conditional triggers to your registration form.
In other words, you can apply conditional logic to forms for your users (frontend) to enhance their registration experience and your staff (backend) to streamline administrative tasks.
For example, the first trigger you’ll set is for the software to automatically add your parent registration form when a (family/group) user creates a new account and your child form when they come to the child info section.
Remember, such triggers are invisible to users and instruct your software on what forms to load and when, which automates the online registration process.
However, in an example where parents indicate that they want to enroll more than one child, a similar trigger will be visible to end-users.
In other words, the registration form parents of multiple campers fill out will show additional sections for each child (instead of just one), based on the indicated number of children.
Likewise, when campers select a specific program or activity, a set of follow-up questions related to that choice may appear (e.g., swimming and swimming skill level).
Here is a short video that shows how to trigger conditional logic for forms.
Source: Regpack on YouTube
Another form-based, conditional trigger we mentioned (roadblock) is activated when users fail to complete one or more required fields.
That way, they’re prompted to do so before they can proceed.
Overall, adding triggers to your registration form allows you to create an intuitive and dynamic registration experience that adapts to each camper’s specific circumstances and choices.
The result is a simplified online registration process for both your users and staff.
Embed the Registration Form on Your Website
Once your registration form is built, payments integrated, and triggers set, you can embed it on your website.
That improves user convenience, enhances data security, and strengthens parents’ trust in your summer camp organization.
Although the issue of whether parents are redirected to register and/or pay on the external platform the camp is using, or if the entire process occurs on the camp’s website, may seem minor, it is not.
Just consider that, according to a study by The Manifest, 29% of users will abandon an online registration process due to security concerns.
Another 27% will do so because the form is too long (and/or repetitive).
Here are their findings, along with some other issues online registrants prefer not to deal with, in general.
In light of this, being able to embed the registration form on your website with a single line of HTML code gives users peace of mind in terms of online data security, shortens the registration process, and makes the entire user experience more convenient.
In fact, studies have shown that when everything happens in one place (your website), this can increase the camper conversion rate by 27%.
Long story short, when your camp registration form is ready and its appearance customized to fit your camp’s branding, you can generate an HTML code snippet that will embed the form right on your website where you want it to appear.
When you’re done—unless you set a later date as a trigger—the registration form will go live, and parents can start enrolling their children.
Conclusion
Wrapping up, it’s clear that setting up a summer camp registration form (and payments) on your website can be pretty straightforward when using the right camp registration software.
So, weigh your needs against the offered features, and budget wisely.
As for the form-building steps described herein, we hope they help you better understand the process of creating user-friendly and intuitive online camp registration forms that fulfill the high expectations of modern users, including your campers and their families.
