Registration Questions That Make Matchmaking Work: What to Ask, and When

“What are you interested in?” is the most common matchmaking question on B2B registration forms, and one of the least useful. Ask it, and you get answers like “innovation, networking, digital transformation”. Those words describe almost everyone in the hall and distinguish no one, so the meeting suggestions built on them feel random.

The usual fix is to ask more. Add fields for markets, products, budgets and goals, and the profiles get sharper. But every extra field sits between a prospective attendee and the button that confirms their place, and some people never press it. Organisers end up choosing between a form that converts and a form that matches.

You can improve both by asking each question at the right stage. Before confirmation, collect only what you need to complete registration. After confirmation you ask the matchmaking questions, phrased as intent rather than interests. In this article we show what the research on form length says and which questions belong at each stage. We also cover how the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) draws the same line, and how to measure whether your redesign worked.

Why the registration form decides your matchmaking

Weak suggestions often begin with incomplete or imprecise profile data. Whether you match with a rule-based meeting matrix or with an AI-assisted ranking model, the system can only combine the attributes participants have given it. Vague answers make it harder to suggest meetings that serve a clear purpose.

Think of the sales lead at your largest exhibitor. Two weeks before the show she opens her list of suggested buyers. She never sees your matching logic. She sees ten names, and either three of them are people she would cross Europe to meet, or none are. Her verdict on your whole matchmaking programme forms in that minute. It was decided weeks earlier, by the questions her buyers answered.

The registration process of a B2B event covers every step from the registration page to confirmed attendance. At a matchmaking event it also includes collecting the profile data that meeting suggestions are built from. These are two different jobs. Registration is a transaction: someone decides to attend and provides the information you need to confirm their place. The profile provides the information used to suggest relevant counterparts until the last meeting slot is filled. Most of the trouble starts when both jobs are squeezed into one form.

What the research on form length says

Combining both tasks in one form can reduce completion rates. Research from other settings helps explain why. There is no robust public benchmark for event registration forms. The best documented evidence comes from e-commerce checkout research by the Baymard Institute, which studies the same moment: someone has made a decision, and a form stands in the way.

In its 2024 checkout benchmark, Baymard found that the average checkout has 5.1 steps and 11.3 form fields, while most sites would need only eight. 17 per cent of users said they had abandoned an order because the checkout was too long or complicated. If a share of that size applied to your event, 1,000 people who wanted to come would mean around 170 lost registrations. Treat that as an illustration of scale, not a forecast.

The same study offers a useful distinction. Baymard reports that the number of form fields affects checkout usability far more than the number of steps. That finding supports a two-stage approach: moving fields to a later step does not carry the cost that adding fields does. Baymard adds one limit, as usability does suffer once a flow reaches eight or more steps. A process with two short stages stays well below that threshold.

Two further findings matter before you redesign anything. Optional fields can still add effort and visual complexity. At one retailer Baymard tested, 66 per cent of users abandoned the payment form after being overwhelmed by promotional fields that were entirely optional. And forced account creation is one of the most cited reasons for abandoning a purchase. An optional “tell us your sourcing priorities” block on the registration page still costs sign-ups. A mandatory password costs more.

All of these numbers come from online shops, so do not quote them as event benchmarks. Use the findings to understand the sources of friction rather than to forecast event registration rates.

The questions to ask before confirmation

Keep the first stage focused on the information needed to complete registration. For most B2B events that is six items on one screen, with no account and no password:

• Name
• Company
• Job title
• Email address
• Ticket type or attendance day
• The consents you genuinely need at this point, each as its own unticked box

There is one sensible exception. At many matchmaking events the participant type, such as buyer, exhibitor, investor or visitor, also sets the ticket and the price. It is then part of the transaction and belongs in step one, and your meeting matrix can use it from day one. The same applies to hosted buyer programmes, where qualification questions decide admission itself; we cover those in our guide on how to qualify hosted buyers.

Collect the remaining profile information after registration, when participants can see its purpose more clearly.

The matchmaking questions to ask after confirmation

Once someone has confirmed, the profile questions offer a clear benefit: better meetings. The rule for phrasing them is simple. Ask about intent, not interests. An interest describes a topic. Intent describes the purpose of a meeting someone wants to have.

Fixed answer lists do most of the work. A rule-based meeting matrix compares explicit attributes, so “Spain” and “Iberia” in free text are two different answers to it. Keep the lists short and mutually exclusive, and add one free text field for the human reading the profile. AI-assisted matching copes better with free text, but it still ranks on what people wrote. Its reasoning is also harder to explain to an exhibitor who asks why a match appeared.

Which participant types may meet at all is a separate decision, made in the matrix rather than in the form. The common mistakes there are covered in our piece on who should meet whom. The form provides the attributes those rules use. When it is right, the sales lead from earlier opens her list and finds buyers whose stated need matches her offer, in her markets, in a language she speaks. That is the whole point of the profile.

When to ask: a four-step sequence

Knowing which questions to ask still leaves the order in which to ask them. A sequence that works for most B2B events has four steps.

The fair objection is that some participants will never complete the profile. The risk is real, but it is the smaller one. An incomplete profile from a confirmed participant can be fixed with a reminder, a phone call or a partial set of suggestions. An abandoned registration may leave you without enough information to follow up.

Three habits keep profile completion high:

• Timing over bulk mail: Send the profile request straight after confirmation, while the decision is fresh, not six weeks later inside the programme newsletter.
• A visible return: Whoever completes a profile sees suggestions at once. Relevant suggestions give participants a more concrete reason to continue than a progress bar alone.
• Partial profiles allowed: Even a few well-chosen answers may be enough for initial suggestions. A profile that only saves when complete recreates the old drop-off, one step later.

Where GDPR draws the same line

The split that makes sense for completion rates is also the one data protection law expects. Article 5(1)(c) of the GDPR requires data minimisation: you may only collect what is necessary for the purpose. Every required field on your registration form therefore needs a purpose that justifies it.

This is where registration data and profile data part ways. Registration rests on Article 6(1)(b), the performance of a contract: you need a name and an email address to admit someone. That legal basis does not cover matchmaking profiles. A buyer who states which suppliers she is looking for, or which markets her company plans to enter, does so voluntarily, which in practice means consent under Article 6(1)(a). She can withdraw it at any time (Article 7(3)). Article 7(4) adds the decisive point: consent is unlikely to be freely given if a service is made conditional on data that the service does not need. A registration that only goes through once the matchmaking questions are answered sits uneasily with that rule.

Three practical consequences for the form itself:

• Optional means optional: Mark optional fields clearly and never pre-tick a box. A pre-ticked checkbox is not consent.
• Sensitive data kept apart: Dietary needs and accessibility requirements can reveal health data or religious beliefs, which Article 9 treats as special categories. Ask only if you need the answer, and limit access to the team that does.
• Information at the point of collection: Article 13 requires you to state purpose, retention period and recipients when you collect the data, not only in the confirmation email.

To check whether your software can separate the two purposes cleanly, our GDPR checklist for event software walks through each point. This section is guidance, not legal advice.

Measure drop-off before you redesign

Establish a baseline before changing the form. Most organisers do not have one, because their registration tool only counts completed registrations. Four measures help you understand where participants leave the process.

First, count views of the registration page. Second, count completed registrations; divide completions by views to get your completion rate; one minus that is your drop-off rate. Third, record the last field someone touched before leaving the page, because that shows you where the form breaks, not just that it does. Fourth, measure the time to complete, since a form that takes five minutes has a problem even when people finish it. For the matchmaking side, add a fifth number: the share of confirmed participants with a usable profile two weeks before the event.

Compare these numbers with your own previous edition rather than with someone else’s benchmark: same audience, same promotion, comparable conditions. If you are still choosing the tool that should report them, our comparison of B2B event registration software shows what the common platforms offer. Clean profiles lead to confirmed, well-matched meetings, and those are the starting point for lowering your meeting no-show rate. And because registration ends at the entrance, the data you collected cleanly in advance decides how fast check-in and badge printing run on the day.

In Converve, registration and the participant profile are separate building blocks with their own field sets and their own consents. Registration handles the transaction, B2B matchmaking then works with the profile data through a rule-based meeting matrix, and participants can extend their profile at any time without touching their registration.

Frequently Asked Questions

What registration questions should I ask for event matchmaking?

Ask about intent rather than interests. Useful questions cover what the participant offers, what they are looking for in the next six to twelve months and which markets they target. Add the kind of meeting they want, their languages, their days on site and whom they should not be matched with. Use short fixed answer lists so a rule-based meeting matrix can compare the answers.

When should I collect matchmaking profile data?

After the registration is confirmed, not before. At that point the participant has already committed, and the benefit of answering profile questions is clear: better meetings. Asked before confirmation, the same questions stand between them and their decision to attend.

How many fields should an event registration form have?

The Baymard Institute (2024) found that the average e-commerce checkout has 11.3 form fields, while most would need only eight. For event registration itself, six fields are a good guide: name, company, job title, email, ticket or day, and the consents you need. Everything else belongs in a second step.

Should attendees need an account to register?

Not as a precondition. In Baymard’s abandonment research (updated 2025), 18 per cent of shoppers who abandoned an order cited forced account creation as the reason. Let people register without a password and offer account access through a link in the confirmation email, so the account is created when they work on their profile.

How do I measure drop-off on a registration form?

Track four points: views of the registration page, completed registrations, the last field touched before someone leaves, and the time to complete. Views without a completed registration give you the drop-off rate, and the last field touched shows you where the form needs work.

Can matchmaking profile questions be mandatory under GDPR?

Generally not as a condition of registration. Registration data rests on the performance of a contract (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR), while matchmaking profile data is voluntary and needs consent under Article 6(1)(a). Under Article 7(4), consent is unlikely to be freely given if registration depends on it. This answer is guidance, not legal advice.

Conclusion: ask in the right order

Short forms and strong matchmaking are not opposites. They only collide when every question is asked at the same moment. Ask before confirmation only what the decision to attend requires, ask the matchmaking questions afterwards, and ask about meeting goals and needs so each answer helps identify a relevant counterpart. Your registration rate and your profile quality can both go up.

The sales lead at your largest exhibitor will never read your registration form. She will assess the suggested buyers and use that experience when deciding whether to book again.

Planning an event where the meetings are the real product? Talk to us about your registration flow, and we will work out together which questions belong in which step for your audience.