Sebastian Rios wrote:It was an annoyance for me as a local, but I'm downright embarrassed when I see how many guests are having issues too. I think we need to either dumb our registration rules down enough so that there are no issues, or start looking at another solution.
Only replying here and not picking on or disagreeing with Seb.
I think we need to define our problems and address them individually. Real quick (not complete):
1. Unique numbering - we seem to have issues with that for the 600# people and an occasional newbie.
a. Would motorsportsreg solve this? Not sure how it would. People could still enter what ever number, right? Is the solution moving our points card system onto the AxWare system? (if this is an option.) I don't see the too much of an issue with people pre-picking 600#s. The system won't allow duplicates - when they walk up and preregistered with 648, just flip through the stack and hand them 648 instead of what ever is next. No-reclassing required for that and no danger of picking a number that someone else already registered with.
b. Personally, I see the garage system as not too different than what we did on solo2.com. You have a car and a number. You register it in the event. In AxWare, you have your car/number in the garage, you register it in the event. (The import of the class is a separate issue.)
2. PayPal payments
a. People have problems with paypal when they try to register more than one driver at a time. (One of our convenience features is creating an inconvenience?) Maybe we get rid of the linked driver option so that it is all separate transactions. That would be similar to the old Solo2.com way, right? Except that you would still be allowed online payment.
b. Does everybody click that link to return to AxWare after paying with PayPal? I used PayPal for the first time in a long time (with solo$, etc., I've been paying at the event) and saw the link to complete the registration. It was rather small. I'm guessing that it let's axware know the loop has been closed on the payment? I'm not sure. Would need to ask Vitek.
c. Should the system go back to not allowing non-points card holders to pre-register? I think we get a lot of benefit from pre-registrations, even if they are a little goofed in the import.
3. How many guests are really having problems?
a. seriously, how many? And how many of those would have problems with anything other than pen/paper?
b. Are out written instructions not clear enough? Christine/Aaron/Rick have been updating the procedures for registering - i thought they were good. Are they confusing? Is there a better way to display them? I would imagine AxWare (as the old solo2 site) would be pretty intimidating to a newbie without those instructions.
c. Should we have a stack of directions at registration to hand out to any person who says they had problems or didn't pre-register? They get a $10 break in price if they figure it out. Seems worth it to me.
d. would it be easier to kill the garage and have everybody enter all the info each time?
e. I'm not sure why we keep the event section on solo2.com. we can set up events for practices on AxWare and just not allow registration. Then everyone uses the same system for each event and we can get rid of the info in two places problem.
4. Import problems
a. this is a more serious issue that is being addressed. through some testing that rick and i did at the TB event, we identified what we thought was the problem. It would appear that there are other problems too. Rick is discussing with Vitek. My opinion is these need to be fixed or the system scrapped. it is a royal pain for registration and is completely obvious to any participant who walks up. Yes, we're beta testing software, but some bits should be more stable.
Anything else?
1 - not sure if there is a real problem here.
2 - we can scrap paypal, but it is convenient for those who do it. And only a select few seem to have issues and it appears to be those with linked drivers, plus a few others who may or may not be following all the links. I don't care on this one - require payment on site if you wish. But a lot of our people use it and don't have problems.
3 - open to ideas?
4 - got to get fixed.
What problem are you (whoever responds) addressing, what is your specific solution and can you think of how it might impact other areas of event management?
We'd love to have everything pretty with a bow really soon. And I'm not opposed to trying new stuff. I'm also not opposed to modifying what we are doing to address specific issues. But we need to compartmentalize the problems and the bitch/moan sessions are too generic to be helpful.
Let's discuss! Help us help you!