Welcome to the latest edition of our new weekly blog series, What to Test. Each week, we will introduce a new test idea. We’ll explain why it’s important to test it, what you might learn, how to carry out the test, and what to measure in order to determine a winner. Last week we tested Button Color.

The Test = Form Fields

Why?

If you have a form on your site, the goal is get people to fill them out. Otherwise why would you have them?

Maybe they are lead generation forms, contact forms, email subscription forms, or actual checkout forms. Whatever they are, you want people to fill them out. For every person that views the form, some percentage of them will actually fill it out and submit it. Let’s call this your conversion rate.

So our goal in testing the form fields is to increase the conversion rate.

How?

In many cases, the sheer size of a form will affect the conversion rate. So one test you can run would be to eliminate any unnecessary form fields and see how that impacts conversion rate. Fewer fields should mean more people filling it out.

In addition, the nature of information you are asking for will affect whether or not people fill out the form. People are hesitant to put a lot of personal information into an online form. They are afraid of people stealing their information, or using it for something “spammy”. Again, limiting the amount of personal information you ask for should increase your conversion rate.

You can test this by creating two different versions of the page, one with the original form, and one with the trimmed down form. Send half of the people to one, and half to the other. And measure the percentage of people on each that submit the form.

Anything to add? As always, use the comments below or Twitter #whattotest to keep the conversation going!