TicketSignup has a lot of fancy features to enhance your event website and promote your event, but we know that the most important thing is for you to be able to sell tickets, fast. If you have a simple setup, you can get your event up and ready for sales in just 5 minutes.
This blog walks through the essential steps for setting up a simple ticket event with no frills or major customizations. That doesn’t mean they don’t include some branding, event-specific styling, and pricing options, though. Each of these three ticket event websites include default header images (set by the event type) and simple ticket options – and yet, they still look professional and branded for the event. And you’ll never find ads for other events on your TicketSignup event website!
Get Started:
You can create a new ticket event anytime from this direct link: https://www.ticketsignup.io/TicketEvent/New. There’s no need to bookmark that, though – you can always go to www.ticketsignup.io and just click the Get Started button.
If you are not already logged in, you’ll be taken to the Login Screen. Note: if you have an account on RunSignup or GiveSignup, you can use the same login for TicketSignup. Our system is Single Sign-On, and your login will work across all products. If you do not have an account, click on the Sign Up! button to create your account before you get started with your Email Marketing dashboard.
If you are already signed into TicketSignup (or GiveSignup or RunSignup), you will jump directly to the Wizard below.
Step 1: Basic Info
That Get Started Free button takes you to the Ticket Wizard. The first section is pretty self explanatory.
- Event Name: This is (of course) the name of your event.
- Is your organization a nonprofit: This question improves your onboarding experience and ensures that we can send you all the pertinent information for your event.
- Event Type: Your event type determines the default header image that will appear on your website. You can always customize your header later, but if you’re in a hurry to get your event up, selecting the most accurate event type will give you a better out-of-the-box website.
- Event Date and Time: This will typically be the entire range of your event, from the start of your earliest ticket to the close of your latest ticket.
- Event Description: Share the details of your event – and why people should buy tickets!
- Event Logo: Add your logo to brand your event page. Don’t have a logo? You can also create something simple on a site like Canva. You can update this logo later if it changes (or if yours isn’t ready when you set up your event).
- Contact Information & Links: Add a contact email that you will be monitoring. This email will be used by attendees and prospective attendees interested in your event. If you have an external website and/or Facebook page, you can also add links to those.
- Location Information: Your street address is usually a literal location for the start of the event, and can be helpful for directions. The Location Description may be more general, like the name of the Country Club for your golf tournament or the park downtown where your scavenger hunt begins. For a virtual event, this can be something like Wherever You Are.
- Event Visibility: This determines if your event is “live” and can be found/seen by the public. Many events will select Draft to start (meaning you, as the organizer can see, edit, and manage the event, but other people cannot) and make their event Public once they have confirmed that all the details are correct. Private is usually only used for things like a dinner that’s only for a specific group of members; Private events can be seen by anyone with the link, but isn’t found on our public lists of events.
- Event URL Identifier: This is your default URL and exists even if you bring your own domain. It’s important because it helps ensure that search engines recognize and share your event. Keep it simple and include your event title, but don’t add years (or things like First Annual) so you can renew the event in future years without creating confusion. You cannot change this URL after creating the event.
- Donations: If you are a nonprofit or are supporting a nonprofit, you can enable basic donation collection here. This can also be turned on from your dashboard after you create your event.
- Event History: This information, including whether the event is new, the estimated attendees and donations, and last year’s URL (if it exists) helps our support team provide the best recommendations for your event.
- Event Contract: This does not mean you are agreeing to any subscription or monthly fee – we make all our money through processing fees. You can read through what is in our standard contract, including our privacy policy, and our code of conduct before proceeding.
Step 2: Tickets
This is where you set up the tickets for your event.
- Simple Tickets: For simple events with only a few options for tickets (I.E. Standard Admission and VIP), you can set up your full ticket options and pricing on this step.
- Advanced Tickets: If you have a more complex ticket setup that needs Ticket Groups (I.E., Monday tickets with 3 options for timeslots and Tuesday Tickets with 3 options for timeslots), you will set up the advanced ticket grouping later, from your event dashboard. We’ll cover Advanced Tickets in more detail in a later blog (or you can refer to this How-To) but you should name your Tickets in this step as you want your Ticket Groups named (I.E., Monday and Tuesday).
- Purchase Period: If you are offering different ticket prices based on the date of purchase, you can add those price increases here by clicking Add Another Purchase Period.
Step 3: Payment
This is the step where you determine where and how you will receive payment from your tickets.
- Use Existing Payment Account: If you already have a payment account setup for events on RunSignup or GiveSignup, this is super-easy: just select your existing account.
- Create New Payment Account: If you do not have a payment account setup, you will need to go through the steps to create a new one. This requires both personal and business information to ensure that the funds are sent to a real person/bona fide business and prevents fraud on our platform. If you are creating a new Payment Account, you’ll want to set up your event a few days before you want to sell tickets to ensure that your account is approved. More information about the process of creating a Payment Account can be found here.
- Other Options: If there is someone else in your organization, like a CFO, who should be setting up the Payment Account, you can have an email sent to them to allow them to complete this step. Additionally, you can opt to set up your account later or operate in Test Mode until you are ready to collect transactions.
- Processing Fees: Pass the processing fee onto your attendees (I.E., the attendee pays the amount you set in pricing plus the processing fee) or opt to absorb the processing fee (I.E., the attendee pays the amount you set in pricing and the processing fees are deducted to what is paid to you). Or, you can choose to absorb the fee, but give the registrant an option to pay it (this is mostly seen with events for nonprofits). Standard processing fees can be seen here.
- Customize the Statement Description: Reduce chargebacks by ensuring that purchasers recognize your charge. You can add a short descriptor (we recommend something short that is evocative of the name of your event) to make your event more identifiable on credit card statements.
Step 4: Finish!
And that’s it! Your simple ticket event is ready to sell tickets at this point.
Want to Do More?
If you have more time, want to make your event website really special, or have a more complex event, there are several customizations you can jump into next. We will share more on the blog in the coming weeks, but a few places to start:
- Enable Advanced Tickets if you need to group tickets (I.E., three timeslots on Monday and three timeslots on Tuesday)
- Add a Cover Page for a sleek, professional website look
- Use the Website Builder to add additional pages and sections to your event website
- Enable Referral Rewards to convert attendees into ambassadors
- Collect additional information about your ticket purchasers and/or ticket holders
- Allow for Ticket Management to enable attendees to change their ticket option
- Feature photos from previous events with the free Photo Platform