Using Gravity Forms for Events? Spice them up with Gravity Perks
By the Gravity Forms community
Published November 24, 2022
Written by the Gravity Wiz Editorial team …
Gravity Forms gives you a unique edge when it comes to events. Its extensible toolset allows you to mold WordPress into whatever event needs you or your client may have.
If you’re here, you probably know that with Gravity Forms you can, for example, capture attendee information, accept payments, register attendees to your WordPress website, and add automations to the event process.
But did you know that you can also manage customizable ticket inventory, create QR codes for check-in, and create drip campaigns in the weeks leading up, all based on one form submission? Without writing code?
Gravity Perks are a suite of 45 no-code Gravity Forms plugins that let you turn Gravity Forms into anything. In the spirit of Black Friday, we’re sharing a treasure trove of tools that will do more than just make event forms more powerful — they will make your events themselves better, and bring a smile to your attendees.
These apply to any kind of event you’re running — webinars, conferences, concerts, local meetups, or a massive game of tag (you’re it).
Let’s go!
Quick Tips for Starters
To kick things off, here are a few helpful resources if you’re just diving into things.
- If you haven’t created events before in Gravity Forms, here’s a step-by-step guide with everything you need to get started.
- Start with a template: Gravity Forms has a customizable event template pre-configured.
- Gravity Forms allows you to accept payments from nearly any payment gateway, including Stripe, Paypal, and others. Learn more about taking payments.
Now, for the good stuff.
Improve the Event Registration Experience
Break down larger registration forms with multi-page navigation ⏭
If your event registration process includes lots of information collection, Gravity Forms comes with the ability to create multi-page forms with “previous” and “next” options for navigating. You could, however, take this a step further with Gravity Forms Multi Page Navigation — allowing you to control how pages are navigated, convert page names into clickable links, and, optionally, take advantage of Gravity Forms’ Save & Continue functionality (which you can also make automatic).
Tip: Polish this off with Gravity Forms Page Transitions to create smooth, animated transitions between form pages, or automatic page progression after the last field on the current page is completed.
Autocomplete addresses and speed up form submissions 📍
Gravity Forms Address Autocomplete allows event registrants to enter the first few numbers of an address and get relevant associated suggestions they can autocomplete with a tap. This speeds up the registration process while ensuring addresses remain accurate.
Ensure attendee phone numbers are real ✅
If phone calls or texts are an important part of your event preparation process, making sure you have real phone numbers helps. 😅 Advanced Phone field allows you to validate phone numbers entered in Gravity Forms and comes with a few other bells and whistles, like automatic country code detection and visual cues.
Manage Inventory and Attendees
Manage tickets, reservations, and date-based capacity 🎟
If you’re selling tickets or manage inventory of any kind, Gravity Forms Inventory provides flexible inventory control. Just specify the available inventory in your Product field and Inventory will handle limiting how much of that item can be ordered.
Here are a few examples of Inventory in action:
- Set a limit of say, 50 webinar spots and use your event registration form on landing pages — with each registration lowering the total available.
- Create a choice-based inventory of 25 tickets for adults, and 30 for children (and create separate pricing for each).
- Scope tickets by date: set an inventory of 50 tickets for a specific date, where each ticket sale updates the total amount of inventory for that date.
Tip: Combine this with Gravity Forms Limit Dates to automatically block dates from your Datepicker after a ticket inventory is exhausted. Check out a solid demo with the two combined here!
Register multiple attendees at once with Nested Forms 👨👩👧👦
Nest your forms together and collect multiple event attendees in one place. Gravity Forms Nested Forms makes it easy to add Gravity Forms repeater fields to any form. Layer forms within forms, each with the ability to capture unique attendee information — and use that data to do more — like cost breakdowns, conditional pricing (including age-based pricing), or personalized email notifications.
Here’s an example:
Combine Nested Forms with Gravity Forms’ User Registration Add-On, and you now have the ability to quickly register multiple people at once to your WordPress site, opening a plethora of additional possibilities. Here’s a quick guide on how to set that up: register multiple users in Gravity Forms.
Tip: Display nested forms conditionally (for example, only appearing if the user has selected more than one ticket).
Simplify order management, pricing, and registrations 💰
Gravity Forms provides support for payments in the form of powerful add-ons for Stripe, Paypal, and other gateways.
There are however Perks that can also help integrate these gateways with your forms:
- Gravity Forms Unique ID: generate unique alphanumeric (or just numeric) submission identifiers. Display these in ticket confirmations, and use them to identify attendees in the backend.
- Gravity Forms eCommerce Fields: Make Gravity Forms eCommerce friendly with support for tax, subtotals, discounts, and more.
- Conditional Logic Dates: Anything you can do with conditional logic, applied to dates and times. Combine this with eCommerce fields and create discounts that only apply before a given date.
- Conditional Pricing: Create ticket pricing levels, and quantity-based pricing (i.e. bulk), and more.
Attendee Communication and Check-in
Schedule drip campaigns and email reminders 📧
Communicate with your attendees before, during, and after your event. Use Gravity Forms Notification Scheduler to send Gravity Forms notifications at specific dates and times. Create event reminders, or a series of pre-scheduled emails leading up to the day of and promote engagement. You can also use Gravity Forms Email Users to send one-off emails to anyone who’s registered on your forms in less than five minutes.
Check-in attendees with QR codes 🔐
Instantly check in attendees IRL and automatically sync check-ins with your forms. Gravity Forms QR Code allows you to generate QR Codes from any Gravity Forms field value, or scan QR codes to input values into fields. Said another way, you can generate QR codes for attendees on event registration, and scan an attendee ticket’s QR code on the day of the event to mark them present. ✅
Manage Sponsors and Speakers
Use form submissions to display speakers and sponsors 📣
Most events — digital, or in the real world — have speakers, presenters, artists, or sponsors. Managing these and creating a system to showcase them, especially in large numbers, can be a headache.
Gravity Forms Entry Blocks allows you to automate and simplify the process by providing an easy means to display and edit Gravity Forms submissions on the front end of your website.
Whether speakers, performers, or sponsors, it’s as simple as whipping up a form with the information you require of them (like name, logo, and link) and sending this form to each. Once they fill it out, Entry Blocks works its magic, and their form submission will automatically send form information to a published website page.
One of the great things about the Gravity Forms ecosystem is how plugins often provide code-free alternatives to what would amount to dozens of hours of custom development to make Gravity Forms meet your dynamic requirements.
Managing anything with a real-time component can be stressful. Attendees, logistics, and a handful of variables do not exactly scream fun time. Our hot take: your technology stack should work in your favor, not add to the migraine!
Gravity Perks go beyond improving the registration form — they can improve your event process as a whole.