How do I preview, test, and prepare my eWebinar for launch?

Before launching your webinar to your audience, it's essential to preview and test all elements to ensure a flawless attendee experience.

With eWebinar, you can conveniently preview each component of your webinar as you build it, test interactions and chat features in the eWebinar test room, send yourself preview email notifications, and view your registration pages. These features allow you to have peace of mind knowing that your webinar is ready to captivate and engage your audience.

In this article, we will cover how to test the different elements and full experience of your eWebinar and prepare for its launch:

• How to test your interactions and chat in the webinar room
• How to test your email notifications
• How to test your registration pages
• How to reset your analytics before launch
• How to promote your webinar before launch
• How to A/B test your webinar over time - ADVANCED

If you need to set up a sales funnel for your webinar before launch, read this article: 

How do I set up a basic sales funnel for my eWebinar?

How to test your interactions and chat in the webinar room

Here is a step-by-step video guide on how to test your webinar before launch. Click START to launch the tutorial.

If you want to ensure a seamless experience for your webinar attendees, the Webinar test room is the ideal place to conduct your testing. You can test out the timing of your interactions and experience how chat worksby using the Webinar room test link. Here are the steps:

1. Publish your webinar
   Before you can test the webinar room, you must first publish your webinar. Don't worry though, as long as you don't share the registration page link, no one will be able to find your webinar until you're ready to launch it.
   
   NOTE: Keep in mind, if you're using the Upcoming Webinars page to list your active webinars for your audience, a published webinar will appear on this page by default. To exclude a published webinar from this list, go to the Sharing section on the Settings tab of the webinar in question and hide it. Don't forget to change it back when you're ready to launch.
   
   
   
   
2. Click Share to access the Webinar room test link
   Once you have published your webinar, go to the webinar in question and click Share. The ‘Share modal’ will open, and you will see different options for sharing your webinar, select the Webinar room test link.
3. Generate Test Attendee
   When you go to use the Webinar test room link for the first time, a prompt will appear asking you to Generate a test attendee. This will create a test registrant in the Registrants tab of your eWebinar analytics dashboard. The test room is effectively the same as the live webinar room, but with added flexibility to test integrations, chat functions, and session types — and to jump around, as needed.
    
   
   It's important to note that the generated registrant will be labeled as a test registrant in the Registrants tab. If you don't want the test registration to affect your analytics, you can manually delete it after testing. 
4. Join Webinar Test Room
   Click the link and the webinar test room will open in a new tab. Alternatively you can also copy and paste the link into a new tab.
5. Navigate the Webinar Test Room
   The test room controls found at the top of the page let you test two different types of sessions and jump around the video as needed. If the test controls get in the way, you can drag and drop them to a new spot on your screen using the handle on the left side.
   
   Use the drop-down to choose the type of session you wish to test: Scheduled or Replay.
   
   
   Here is how testing works for each session type:
   
   • Scheduled sessions 
     For scheduled sessions, you’ll see two buttons in the test controls that allow you to jump to the Start or End of the webinar. When you decide to go to the Start of the webinar, you will be prompted to join the Webinar waiting room, and it will take you back to a couple of seconds before the beginning of the webinar, so you can experience the waiting room. If you click End, you will be taken to a couple of seconds before the webinar ends, this way you can experience your webinar’s exit room.
     
     Additionally, you can skip forward or backward in the video by using the right (>>) and left (<<) arrows respectively. The number in between the arrows is the number of minutes you want to skip ahead or back by. It is set by default at 15 minutes, but you can change it to whatever you want. You will be prompted to Join Now every time you jump to a new place in the video. 
     
     TIP: If you want to test what happens after the exit room ends, i.e. the Post Exit Room, go  to the End of the webinar and then skip forward to the end of the Exit Room. 
     
     NOTE: If you have added no scheduled sessions to your webinar nor enabled just-in-time sessions, if you try to test scheduled sessions, you will be taken directly to the post-exit room, as there are no sessions to test. 
   • Replays
     If you choose the Replay option, you can play or pause the webinar, or scroll through the video just like attendees can, as these are expected behaviors in this session type. The top bar will display a Reset button to take you back to the beginning of the replay. The skip forward or rewind options in the same bar are grayed out and disabled in the replay session, as you can use the bottom bar to scroll through the video. Also note that Replays do not have Waiting, Exit or Post Exit Rooms. 
6. Test your interactions
   If you are looking to test the interactions on our platform, you can simply do so by participating in the questions, polls, quizzes, or clicking on specific links. In case you've already completed an interaction and want to retest it, just click on Start (for a scheduled session) or Reset (for a replay session). This will clear all previous interactions and their answers, allowing you to experiment with various answers. 
7. Test your chat
   To test the chat feature, simply send a message in the Chat box as the test attendee. Then, head over to the Chat admin to respond and see how the attendee perceives your answer. Additionally, you can see what the private welcome messages look like, test if you're receiving the notifications of new chat messages (including if you are integrated with Slack), and how the auto responder you set up works.

How to test your email notifications

As you build your webinar, you can customize your email notifications for registrants on the Notifications tab. This includes registration confirmation emails, reminders before the webinar, and follow-up messages after the webinar. Once you've finished editing your emails, you can send yourself a preview to ensure it meets your standards by hitting the Send preview button.

Please note that the preview email will be sent to the user who is currently logged in and not the person who is set to appear as the sender of the email notifications. 

How to test your registration pages

To test your registration pages, go to the Registration tab and customize the registration page, form, and thank you page. Once you have finalized editing, you can enable a preview within the edit mode to see how a potential registrant would encounter these pages.

NOTE: You can also preview how your list of sessions will appear on the registration page. To do this, navigate to the Schedule tab in edit mode, and on the left-hand side, you'll see the Sessions Preview. The sessions displayed in this section correspond to the exact moment in time you're viewing them, and you can also specify and test in different time zones.

How to reset your analytics before launch

After you have finished testing, you may want to reset the Analytics of your webinar before you launch it. There are two ways to do this:

• Delete all of your registrants
• Change the date your Analytics are counted from

To learn the details of how to do this, check out this article on the topic:

How do I reset the Analytics of a webinar?

How to promote your webinar before launch

Before you promote your webinar in advance of its premiere session, be sure to first set the Start date of your Schedule to be your (future) launch date and disable both just-in-time sessions and the ability for your audience to register to watch a replay.

Otherwise, people will be able to register for your webinar before you launch!

If the video for your webinar isn't done yet, don't worry! You can still do it.

Go the Schedule tab of the webinar in question and:

1. Set the Start date to be the (future) launch date of your webinar

2. Add at least one Start time.  Your first session will be your earliest Start time on your Start date.

3. Disable on-demand and just-in-time sessions and the ability to watch a replay

 

NOTE: If you want your audience to be able to register for replays, on-demand, and just-in-time sessions after launch, be sure to re-enable these options after your premiere session.

Once you do these three things and publish your changes, you can share your Registration link with your audience and allow them to register for a session before your official launch date, without having to worry about them being able to access your webinar before then.

How to A/B test your webinar over time — ADVANCED

To A/B test your webinar — in order to see which version of your presentation is more effective in converting attendees — you will need to create two versions of the same webinar and then use your own A/B testing infrastructure to surface the registration links accordingly to different test groups, whether that is done by way of an email campaign or landing page.

Be sure to define all of the custom properties in your interactions, setup your registration form and properties, edit your notification emails and get things just right.  Then clone it to create a second version of the webinar.  This way, everything will be copied over to the new version.  Interaction and registration form properties will be tracked in exactly the same way both in eWebinar and your CRM via the same integration triggers already setup.  And you can compare the results of your webinars as ‘apples to apples’.

To duplicate the webinar go to the More menu of the webinar in question and click Duplicate.