Aussie Web Analyst

There was a very good article in ClickZ today by Heidi Cohen on Optimizing Online Data Collection.  The article goes into detail on the major trade-off that is always encountered when designing an online form along with other form design considerations and some of the key metrics to use when evaluating the performance of a form.

The most important factor to considering when putting an online form together is to balance your own desires for information against whether requesting this information will stop the visitor from submitting the form.  Marketers/sales people want more information as it provides them with more details about visitors and analysts want more information as it allows them to segment data in more ways.  However, and I am sure there must be a study on this somewhere, there is an inverse relationship between the number of fields on a form and the likelihood of a visitor to complete the form.

This can be approached from two angles.  The first is to consider whether you really really need the information or not.  Is it something which it might be nice to know one day or can you immediately use it to impact your business.  The other angle is to consider just how off-putting requesting that piece of information will be to the visitor.  Will the visitor consider it reasonable to provide you with that piece of information given the nature of the form?

Keep in mind at all times how lengthy the form is and how long it will take to be filled in.  People are time poor and everyone is going to weigh up whether it is worth their valuable time to fill in a form given what they are likely to receive in return.

In terms of web analytics, it should be key to measure the conversion rate of visitors who complete the form compared to the number of visitors to the page containing the form.  Taking this a step further, if you can track form abandonment i.e. which field was in focus when a form was abandoned, this will provide valuable insights into the reason visitors are not completing forms.  Ideally all new forms or changes to forms should be tested using A/B or multivariate testing to ensure that the design used is the best option for your business.

My recommendation is to put as few barriers in the way of the visitor completing a form as possible.  Request all the information that you need and can use but if the information is just a nice to have that may come in useful one day, take it off the form.  If your business objective is to maximise the number of people who submit a form containing useful information, asking for the least information possible is a good step towards getting there.

Tags: ClickZ, Form Abandonment, Form Design, Online Forms