5K Event Website Features
To start, we had to settle on some of the most important and 'must-haves' on the site to ensure the event would be a success.
Must-Have Features Include:
- Website landing page and informational pages
- Run and/or Walk Registration with payment
- Donation capabilities
Not to forget that we must also build a back-end database to house all of the data as well as design and build in registration/donation email confirmations to be sent to the participants and donors.
What helps with bringing in more participants?
Our next wave of development is geared around features that our donors and participants would like. Teams. If a family or runner could create their own team page on the website, they may be more inclined to share the event on social media.
Adding registrants while registering can also help eliminate a lot of follow-up and back-and-forth someone may have trying to get friends and families to sign up, so we created an easy way for you to register your friends and families for them.
A team 'captain' is needed to be able to administer their team, send them messages, register more people, and view total donations and registrants they've brought in.
A thermometer or 'goal' has been put in place to help the team captains and members visualize their standing.
And a little friendly competition never hurt anyone... the top 10 teams are listed on the forefront of the site. These teams are likely to battle for the top place.
How do we keep track of all this?
Our third wave of development is a very thorough back-office dashboard that gives the staff capabilities that can help them move the process along for their participants, donors, and sponsors.
Staff can create participants, teams, and sponsors on the fly. They can download a report of all runners and walkers, look at the total donations received and run timeline reports.
They can also prepare the event on the website each year with new information and look back at historical information.
Staff needs the ability to modify teams, registrant information, as well as create sponsors so they can add to the overall donations raised count. This will also give them the ability to help donors who have difficulty.
Some over-the-top features were also built in. Create a bib number for all runners at the event, share it with the company that manages the bibs and creates digital bib trackers. This also helps when running a report to send out t-shirts.
Custom Event Integrations
This development never stops. Each year we are tasked with unforeseen requests such as participants who want to pay by check. Or a special team that wants their people to create their own teams within that team. We call it nested teams. And when the ideas come, we integrate.
