How a Login Can Affect Your Registration Process
No matter how well organized and high quality your educational content is, it won’t be seen or experienced if the process to register for the class is difficult. One of the key moments to consider in the registration process is whether it will require a login.
How participants access your educational content—either through a login process or as a guest user without an account—can significantly impact their experience in interacting with what you’re offering and, by extension, the success of your program.
Benefits of Requiring a Login
A login provides the most benefit to participants who regularly sign up for multiple classes or events in your program. In many cases, having a login and an associated account can save class registration and participation history to refer to at any time as well as enable auto-filling for registration fields when signing up for a new course.
Having a login and saving any registration info to an account can also give participants one central place to see the courses they’ve registered for, track progress along a predetermined learning path, download course material, and access certificates of completion. For programs that offer continuing education credits, an account with a self-service portal allows participants to easily and quickly access the information they need to prove they’ve completed any requirements without being forced to contact an instructor or program administrator.
Attaching any kind of course data or history to an account starts with a required login at registration.
When a Login Becomes a Barrier
While a required login can simplify the registration experience in many ways, you’ll still want to be mindful of the number of steps in your registration process and whether a login could become a barrier to participation.
When your educational offerings are optional or infrequent, simply remembering username and password information can be a deterrent. For participants who only need to register for a single course and don’t need access to a learning plan or any information that might be stored in an account, adding a required login or account creation process can add unnecessary time and effort to what should be a simple process. If your registration form is already short and requires minimal information, any additional hurdles may lead to an increased number of learners who choose not to complete their registration.
The Case for an Optional Login
After considering both the benefits and the drawbacks of requiring a login to access your educational content, an optional login might be the best of both worlds. This could equally serve returning participants who need a seamless way to track course history and registration information and casual learners who can quickly sign up and check out as a guest. Flexibility is often a winning solution when it comes to participant experience.
Always Adapt to Situational Needs
Every organization is different and may have a unique mix of participants with varying needs. For administrators who may need to register multiple people at a time for a single course or series of courses, auto-filled registration information can save valuable time. For organizations whose own employees often sign up for ongoing training courses, a single sign on capability can allow them to easily log in with the same credentials they use for their daily work. For organizations serving both internal staff and external participants, offering a guest registration along with an optional login ensures no one feels excluded.
The most successful organizations always consider the needs of administrators alongside learners and adapt to situational needs along the way. Registration software like Learning Stream can help you tailor your approach, so your registration process does exactly what it needs to: encourages participants to sign up and enjoy the educational content you’ve developed for them.
Contact us to get started with Learning Stream today.
