What a Webinar Tells You
Per person, not per webinar.
What It Is
A webinar does not just tell you how many people came. For every registrant it records how far through they got and what they did on the way.
That is the difference between a webinar as an event and a webinar as a source of information about individual people.
Why It Matters
An attendance count is almost useless on its own. Forty attendees could be forty people who stayed to the end, or forty who left after ninety seconds.
What makes a webinar worth running twice is knowing which. Watch percentage tells you whether the content held; where people left tells you which part lost them; and the behaviour flags tell you who is worth a phone call.
How It Works
Each registrant carries:
Their status — registered, attended, partial or no-show.
How much they watched — both the time and the furthest point they reached, which are different numbers for anyone who rejoined.
What they did — whether they saw the offer, clicked it, answered a poll, downloaded a handout, left feedback or used the chat. Each is recorded separately.
Their replay activity — how many times they went back to it and when they last did.
Which slot they chose, for a Just-in-Time webinar, in their own timezone. Useful for working out when your audience actually wants to watch.
Examples
Watched 95%, clicked the offer
The clearest buying signal a webinar produces. This person should not be left to an automated follow-up.
Watched 60%, answered a poll, no offer click
Engaged but not convinced, and the offer came after they left or did not land. Worth a different approach rather than the same one again.
Attended, watched 4%
Technically an attendee. Treating this as attendance is how webinar reporting flatters itself — they saw almost nothing.
No-show, then three replay views
More interested than most of the people who turned up. Replay activity is easy to miss and often the most honest signal in the set.
