Creating events

[OpenArmsK]

This was a long and painful process as a first timer. It was a lot different from creating a campaign email which is quite easy and streamlined. The differences between the registration form information, the landing page information, and the email with the links were not adequately explained until I got to the email, by which time the other parts were live. Font sizes were all too small, and who set grey as the default type colour? Inserting images on the landing page was the worst - you have to guess what size is correct, try, go back, try, go back, try ... well you get the drift I'm sure. Also you have to delete each time too, or you end up with multiple images, all of different sizes. The image placeholder instruction about inserting/replacing images in the block bar was difficult to understand, especially as the placeholder remained after the image was finally, and with great frustration, inserted. Sending a test email at the end - it doesn't seem to link to the contact list at all, so the test email did not have my name on it, just the organisation name. Probably it will be ok when I send the real email as presumably that will go from a contact list, but who knows? Viewing any of the parts in "mobile" view was pointless, as it seemed to show that the various bits did not arrange themselves for a mobile page (had to move it from side to side, so why bother?), whereas when I sent the email, everything is visible on my mobile just fine (thumbs up for that). Also, the test email did not appear to be sent on first time, so I did a double take and sent (again as it turned out). Sorry to be so negative, I should probably have read up on it first, but usually these things are pretty obvious once you get started. Conclusion: pretty clunky, hard to work out what to do at each stage, or what was coming next. Needs a bit of work to get it as good as the main campaign email creation.

[Frankie_P]

Hi @OpenArmsK thank you for sharing this feedback with us! We're always open to ways we can better our user's experience. In fact, where in your account were you looking for more information about the difference in sections of your event campaign. Do the articles in our Knowledgebase Help Center  help fit these needs? As for editing your font sizes, what font sizes were you looking to update? In the meantime, we have tracked all of your feedback with our Product Team. We also recommend using the permalink or the link in your Event Dashboard  so the link will automatically redirect to the mobile version when viewed on a mobile device.

[OpenArmsK]

Hi Frankie, thank you for your reply. In fact, as there is apparently a big re-do of the whole events process, I'm hoping that most of these bugs will have cleared up by the time I attempt events again.

As far as the process I experienced went, there were two parts to the experience. The 1st part, where you choose the different bits of your event; dates, venues, etc and the second, where you design what it will all look like. Both were frustrating in their own way. As I'm not sure from your reply that I was entirely clear before, I hope the following will help to clarify.

The first part was frustrating because it was difficult to know what was coming next, after setting up the event details. There is the Registration page and the Landing page. TBH, I wasn't clear about the difference between the two, my bad. But I feel that there could be more insight within the process as to how this will all look to the end user. In the fields where you type text, the requirements for the information you should share disappear as soon as you start typing. Panic! If I don't share the link to the zoom here, will it appear anywhere in the process? I don't know as I've forgotten what the instructions were and they've disappeared! In the end, it seems I input pretty much the same old info in each of the possible fields, without really understanding what the purpose of each was and how it would look to the customer. It seems odd that I was encouraged to share the link to the online event within a text field, that made me wonder if this was the only place it would appear and how my registrants would know how to join if they didn't have it. It would make sense to be able to choose where to show such info - before they register, or in the automatic email after registration, and not to have to input that info in a text field.

The 2nd part (design) was frustrating because I had to change the default font colour and size everywhere. Images were a particular nightmare too. When I eventually worked out how to input a logo, it was too big, but there was a lot of empty space around it, so when I made the size of the box smaller, the logo became tiny. When I tried to crop it, the image was literally less than a cm across in a tiny maybe 2.5cm strip across the middle of my screen, which was impossible to work with. Every time I tried to replace the placeholder image, it just moved and I had to delete it. These are the problems I remember, but there were more frustrations pretty much everywhere along the way.

As for the mobile view, I'm not really sure what you mean. There was an icon to click on to view the event as it would look on a mobile, but tbh, it didn't look anything like it. So if I'm supposed to do something else with a permalink or whatnot, in order to preview, when there is an icon in the process which is apparently to preview, then that's not really clear or fair to me as the user. "Just do A and B will happen" ... "Oh actually, B didn't happen because you didn't do X, Y, or Z". As I said in my original feedback, when I received the actual campaign email as a customer and viewed everything on my phone, it all looked fine and as I would have expected, but nothing like what the preview suggested.

Another problem I encountered afterwards was the events pop up code in my wix website. I managed to change the background colour and the dotted line around it, but any changes I made to alter the hex numbers to change the colour, or edit the size of the font made no difference, so it was really tiny on the screen and the colours were not what I wanted. Also, wix did not let me see the full code in the box - it was there but I was unable to scroll to the end. This may be a wix problem though.

A further problem was finding my registrants! The event email campaign did not automatically show as one of my recent email campaigns, I had to click all campaigns or events to find it EVERY TIME. Then I had to click on the event to get to reporting. If I clicked on something within the report, there was not always a link to get back to the event, or it went back to "reporting". You should be aware that the reporting tab does not include reporting on events, which seems bizarre to say the least. So back to Campaigns tab, click events, click registrants etc etc etc. Clunky.

I've read the link you provided to "Create an Event". I'd say it might have been helpful if I'd read it before going ahead, but it wasn't hugely inspiring or illuminating.

As I said before, there is a way to go before Events is a user friendly process. But here's hoping!

[OpenArmsK]

Sorry, one other thing that is quite important. There are a range of responses that the end user can choose when registering. I think it was possible to edit the wording, but it was not possible to see what the end user would see when clicking on any of these. So I didn't edit any of the fields, just in case. In fact, one registrant did choose one of the other fields aside from "register to attend" (or whatever it was). So, unbeknownst to me, that button linked to a comments field where they were able to send a message. This message was only visible in the events dashboard if you clicked on that one number alongside declined! I had no idea there was even an option to send a message, so would very easily have missed that if I had not been exploring which of the invitees had declined. Actually, in writing this, I just discovered that 2 registrants sent messages. This IS REALLY IMPORTANT TO ME. THESE ARE OUR MEMBERS AND IF THEY SEND MESSAGES WE NEED TO KNOW. WE RELY ON THESE PEOPLE TO HELP US IN OUR CHARITABLE WORK AND NEED TO CONNECT WITH THEM. PLEASE DO NOT HIDE THEIR MESSAGES! THEY THINK THEY'VE MESSAGED US VIA YOUR PLATFORM AND WE HAVE NO IDEA THAT THIS IS EVEN HAPPENING. YOU NEED TO ADD A VISIBLE FIELD TO SHOW VERY EXPLICITLY THAT MESSAGES HAVE BEEN SENT AND PROBABLY EVEN SEND US AN EMAIL

[Caitlin_M]

Hi @OpenArmsK I apologize for the delay in our reply. We are in the process of redesigning our event tool that we hope will alleviate some of these issues. I will be "closing" this post but I encourage you to comment or vote on the below ideas that I think cover the biggest pain points you mentioned. If we have updates to share surrounding the event tool, they will be posted there.

Mobile responsive event landing pages and invitations

Show event emails on dashboard

Improved editing experience with creating event invites

We have some internal notes as well for those that do not have an open idea but we're hoping to have a better creating and editing flow