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Sign Up Forms Must Die

Posted by TimSlavin at April 21, 2008

"I'll just come out and say this: sign-up forms must die. In the introduction to this book I described the process of stumbling upon or being recommended to a web service. You arrive eager to dive in and start engaging and what's the first thing that greets you? A form.

We can do better. In fact, I believe we can get people engaged with digital services in a way that tells them how such services work and why they should care enough to use them. I also believe we can do this without explicitly making them fill out a sign-up form as a first step."

From A List Apart.

This is a classic debate within web design: how do you make forms as short as possible? Even to the point, as this article argues, that forms disappear.

With forms, what is the minimum data set needed to complete the job the form does? With a Contact Us form, you want enough data to follow up, at the minimum, but you also don't want to waste time calling or emailing tirekickers who will never buy. And you don't want qualified prospects to click away because they're intimidated by too many questions on a form. Where do you strike a balance with these conflicting interests?

A Contact Us form ideally should have at least one or two elements that help pre-qualify the lead. A real estate site might ask if the person is a homeowner (or renter) and when they plan to buy (possible responses might be "Just looking, within 3 months, within 6 months, within a year").

However, the temptation is to dump everything on a form, to make the user answer all sorts of questions. The best approach, in this case, is to design the form so pre-qualify questions are visually separate from the key information needed. Marketing questions might be in their own form CSS fieldset with a friendly headline and short explanatory text. Users can then skip down the form to find the Submit button if they want to do so.

I personally don't think forms should disappear. I do think every element on a form has to have ironclad reasons to be on the form. Otherwise, you should never burden the user. It also helps to put a short note near the Submit button that says, in effect, "We will never sell, trade, or otherwise share your information without your permission" with perhaps a link to your privacy policy. Every form also should have a confirmation page and an automatic email response to let the user know their data was received. Both should include the full list of contact information in the event the user wants to contact you more quickly.

Finally, forms really lend themselves to analysis over time. You should keep track to see if a short version of a Contact Us form results in more leads or if a slightly longer form results in more qualified leads. What you or your client decide works best should be based on actual experience.

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