10 Ways Webinars Are Broken—And How To Increase Your Webinar Attendance Rates

After an explosion of interest in webinars and online conferences, many organizations have seen their average webinar attendance rate fall off. It’s frustrating because webinars still take a lot of time to organize, even if you don’t have to fool with ordering coffee and setting up chairs as you would for an in-person meeting. And, of course, low webinar attendance is hard to stomach knowing that the potential audience should be almost unlimited.

Why Are Webinar Attendance Rates Low?

There is probably not one single reason why you’re seeing lower webinar attendance rates. (And, granted, some organizations have seen their webinar attendance rates increase; more on how to do that, below.) Instead, there are likely a number of factors working against filling all of the virtual seats in your webinars.

Also, there’s a difference between webinar registration numbers and how many people actually show up—as well as the number who stay to watch all of it. Finally, there’s a related question of how many people view the webinar later if it was recorded.

1. There are now tons of competing webinars. Just as you can market to the whole world, so too can countless other events include your potential attendees. Webinar attendance rates inevitably go down when they all slice up the pie in what may be thousands of ways.
2. People are busy. Attending a webinar is often a nice-to-have rather than a must in one’s schedule. It comes after doing one’s regular work, but then also takes a backseat to making meals, taking care of the kids and all the other daily minutia.
3. No need to commit. First, as opposed to traveling to a conference or even a presentation downtown, people aren’t necessarily holding space in their calendars for webinars. It’s easier to avoid being pulled away by a work project when you’ve booked a flight to a distant city as opposed to sitting in front of your laptop at home. Also, no one seems to know if you show up to an event where you’re invisible so there’s little remorse to not signing on. And, finally, there’s no need to register or attend when we don’t feel any sense of scarcity and know that there are potentially unlimited seats online.
4. Screen fatigue. Be it daily staff meetings, watching a movie or attending webinars, people are spending a lot of time staring into digital screens. The prospect of spending more time passively parked in front of a computer is fatiguing. That’s doubly true if what one is watching isn’t top-notch entertainment but is, instead, a mediocre webinar.
5. Burned by bad webinars. To be plain, a lot of webinars are bad and boring. Having endured enough of these, potential webinar attendees are then hesitant to sign up and sit through another one. Once bitten, twice shy. Even good webinars are guilty by association as they are all lumped together by potential attendees.
6. Monetizing webinars. There’s no reason that webinars need to be free; after all, they involve real cost, take significant time and should deliver true value. However, it’s harder to induce people to sign up if there’s cost—and punching in one’s payment details means extra time and friction. A smaller, more serious paid audience (with fewer no-show attendees) may be better than a larger, unpaid group, but adding that price tag will probably have an effect.
7. Attending live isn’t important. So many webinars are recorded that people rightfully assume that there’s no reason they need to show up when it’s first being shown live. In fact, they get the same content and experience later, on their terms. Indeed, a viewer can skip ahead, pause the session or even play it at a faster speed. If there’s no strong reason to be there live and still be able to see it later, this will decrease webinar attendance.
8. No online engagement. Whether it’s attending a brown bag presentation at the office, going to a lecture in town, or flying to a conference, a big driver is not necessarily the presentation itself but being able to interact with the people there. That’s something that tends to be sorely lacking with online presentations. If attendees are unable to network with each other, have their questions answered, or meet the speaker, it may very well explain why webinar attendance decreases. Indeed, many webinars promise online engagement, but they just don’t deliver.
9. Too salesy. When registering for webinars, most people are not so naïve as to believe that there isn’t a sales component. But there’s a difference between watching someone do the equivalent of a dry 45-minute sales pitch in a showroom versus actually going out and enjoying a test drive. Too often, webinars are full of selling, but are short on actual, useful information. This is a big turnoff to attendees and a quick way to ensure that they don’t return.
10. Overpromising. Lots of webinars overpromise what they will or can realistically deliver in what is habitually 60 minutes. This may be offering to reveal a secret that is, in fact, never revealed or covering material so cursorily as to be worthless.

How To Increase Webinar Attendance

You might not be able to offset all of these reasons for your webinars’ low attendance rates. However, you may be able to pick off at least a few to maintain or grow your audience. Can you control how many other webinars are offered by competitors elsewhere in the world? No, but you can choose more specific, niche topics and offer them at times that speak to the attendees you wish to attract.

Perhaps the best way to combat the pitfalls of decreasing attendance is to eat your own dog food. Ask yourself, “Would I want to sit through my own webinar?” If it’s a low-energy speaker who is simply narrating dozens of text-heavy slides, probably not. And if there’s no compelling reason to show up live when you can—at least with the best of intentions—watch it all later, would you?

To this end, think about increasing your webinars’ engagement and participation while decreasing the amount of time that the audience is passive. If, for example, you’re offering a webinar on economic trends in your industry (as a way to establish thought leadership and eventually win new clients), can you take more than five minutes of questions at the very end? Can you bring up guest attendees from the audience? Can you give attendees a chance to meet each other as well as your staff in small breakout groups and get to share and debate the topic?

Of course, it’s hard for a webinar to win an unmovable place on people’s busy schedules these days. However, the bar for most webinars is very low. Thus, if you promise attendees a good, helpful, engaging experience and then actually deliver, you’ll likely see them come back again and again.