The form builder

Where: Registration → Registration Form

A three-panel editor: the tabs and structure on one side, the settings for whatever you have selected in the middle, and a live preview of the real form on the right.

The preview is the actual form. If it looks right there, it looks right to participants.

The principle

Shorter forms get more completions. This is the most reliable finding in the whole product, and it is worth being ruthless about.

Before adding a field, ask what you will do with the answer. If the answer is "it might be useful", leave it out. You can always email participants later; you cannot recover someone who abandoned the form.

Intro Content

The text above the form — the last thing someone reads before deciding to commit.

Cover what they get, what it costs, and when it happens. Keep it to a few lines. This is not your landing page; they have already decided to be here.

Account Details

Name, email and the account the participant will use for the event.

Largely fixed, because the platform needs these to create an account and send confirmation. There is little to configure and little reason to.

Form Fields

Everything else you ask.

Required and optional

Mark a field required only if you would genuinely refuse the registration without it. Everything else is optional.

Emergency contact for a physical event: required. T-shirt size when you are shipping a shirt: required. How they heard about the event: optional, always.

Ordering

Put the easy questions first. Someone who has answered three quick questions is invested and will push through a harder one. The same hard question first loses them.

Group related fields together. Jumping between topics feels longer than it is.

Conditions

A field can be shown or hidden based on other answers or the event mode, so people only see questions that apply to them.

Use this rather than a form that asks everyone everything and says "leave blank if not applicable".

Not everything on the form lives on this tab

The intro copy, and the referral, coupon and address fields, are configured elsewhere in the builder rather than under Form Fields. If you cannot find a field you know participants see, check the other tabs before concluding it is missing.

Qualification

Entry requirements — conditions someone must meet to register.

Only relevant if your event restricts entry to people who qualify. Most events leave this alone. If you are using it, confirm with a test registration that a qualifying participant gets through, because a misconfigured requirement silently blocks everyone.

Merchandise

Items sold during signup. See Merchandise at signup.

Upgrade

Paid upgrades offered to participants after they have registered.

Free events can still sell upgrades

Free entry and paid upgrades are not mutually exclusive. A common and effective pattern is free registration with an optional paid jersey — it maximises signups while still earning revenue from the people who want the merchandise.

The period during which upgrades can be bought is set by the Upgrade Window dates.

Success Page

What participants see immediately after paying.

Do not waste it on "Thank you". Tell them what happens next: when they will get their confirmation email, when the event starts, what they should do now. This is the moment they are most engaged and most likely to act — connect Strava, join the group, share it.

The page differs depending on whether they bought merchandise, so check both variants if you are selling.

Saving and testing

Save, then register yourself from the public site. The preview shows you the form; only a real registration shows you the emails, the payment and the participant record.

While testing, the Re-Registration setting in Registration Options lets you replay the whole flow with the same account. Set it back to disallow before you launch.

Changing the form after launch

Adding an optional field is safe.

Adding a required field is not: everyone who already registered has no answer for it, and you now have an incomplete dataset that you will have to chase by email. Decide your required fields before you open registration.