36 bulletproof tactics to optimise forms for more conversion
Registration forms are sometimes real conversion killer even though so many best practices are already established. As I worked with registration forms a lot lately, I summarised some of the biggest learnings and items to consider in this article. For anyone working on forms, you can find inspiration here.
Before diving deeper into the most important recommendations and things you need to keep in mind when building any kind of submission or registration form, I want to give a short overview of the elements that are used in a form. Especially as a Product Manager involved in design discussions, it is important to use the right terminology when addressing an element of the form.
Form/Input Fields: Are the fields in which you have to enter information.
Labels: The labels tell us what kind of information belong into a form field. Usually they are outside of the form fields.
Placeholders: The placeholders are usually already entered inside the form field and give additional description or an example of the information that needs to be entered into a form field.
Help Texts: The help text supports the user to enter the right data. Different triggers can be used to show the help text to the user.
Error Messages: The error message is a form of a help text that appears when the user enters information that cannot be validated. The error message often has the same function as the help text.
The hints that I offer here are recommendations that are based on my experiences when working with forms. It does not necessarily mean that they are always right. Actually, in many cases it is even important to try out different things and variate the options. I try to make this clear during this article but keep in mind that your product is unique and some of the things might not be valid for the product you are working on or rather: You have to experiment with them yourself.
1. Do not interrogate your customers but accommodate them
When trying to increase the conversion of your submission form, it is important to understand that you want your users to do something and to share information with you. No one is willing to provide any personal data without a reason. Thus, it is important to make the user understand why giving you this information is important and will bring value and it is not just about asking questions like in an interrogation.
2. Understand where you should place your form
The major decision you have to make is if you place your form above or below the fold. Above the fold is usually the better option for high-intent products or low-friction products. However, when you are offering a product that is difficult to understand and you need to give the user a lot of information or if the product is very expensive then the better option is probably to put the form below the fold.
3. Try to not show the entire form in the beginning
You can save space and only provide a button or a part of a form for the user in the beginning. This could lead to only getting users with high intent into the form conversion funnel and reduce their cognitive load in the beginning.
4. Directional cues can increase the conversion
Since birth we learned to follow the arrows pointing to something or follow other humans line of sight. This is human behaviour that we can exploit when creating forms. Adding arrows that point to the first form field or adding a person looking at the first form field increased the conversion to form submissions for many different products.
5. Ask only exactly what you need
Always keep in mind that every single input field is a potential drop off for your user. Questions that are rather confusing and not really core for your product distract the user from the actual goal to just filling out the form with essential data. So, try to really only ask for the most important data in your form fields and maybe ask for other things later.
6. Throw out some of your input fields
I know it is tempting to ask your users as much as possible in the beginning with all kinds of personalisation already in mind. However, especially for the sign up form only ask users the most basic information. Most of the things are easy to derive anyway. If a user is signing up for your app and is only looking at one particular section then he is obviously interested in it. But you do not have to ask in the beginning, you just can derive it from the users behaviour.
7. Ask for more information later
Use the time that you have with your user to get data on different points in the user journey. When you want to ship something to the user it is not necessary to ask the user for the shipping address right away. Rather ask this piece of information later when the user also fully understands why exactly this information is needed now.
8. Make clear what is optional and what is required
There are so many things we have got used to in the online registration form space. Many people will understand that an asterisks (*) means required and that if there is no asterisks the field is optional. But not everyone understands this or even sees this. It is easy to overlook and when the user submits the form and realises they overlooked it, it is frustrating for them. So just clearly state that a field is optional by adding it to the label to avoid confusion.
9. Group together what belongs together
It is such an easy win to put information into semantic groups and separate it from other semantic groups. Only for the payment details you could easily separate basic payment information (e.g. credit card, etc.) and the billing address in separate groups. This makes it easier for the user to digest and also makes the user feel like completing one step after the other. This will ultimately also increase conversion.
10. Ask sensitive information at the end
The question order for your form is very important especially for multi step forms. Also here, you gradually need to establish trust and only if you build some initial trust you should approach the user with requests that require some more intimate data from the user. Put sensitive questions to the end and your user will stay longer in your form funnel for you to experiment with them.
11. Add Dummy Questions to make the start more convenient
Play around with some provoking or very easy questions to make the start more convenient. You could ask something that makes sense in context of your product. Your first questions could ask the user “What do you prefer? A: Running, B: Gym”. People will find this interesting because they want to know what will happen after they gave the answer.
12. Justify why you need sensitive information
If you are asking the user for sensitive information then you should at least explain the user why. A classic example is the birthday. You could explain that you have a special campaign and want to congratulate every user or that you want to give users the best experience and this depends on their birthday or that you need this because of regulatory reasons. All of this is fair, but this is something that will help your users to convert.
13. Include a multi step form for longer forms
Multi step forms are a sure way to improve your conversion and many articles describe the things you can implement once you are working with them (see for example here). Especially, if you need your user a long and complex form to fill out a multi step form that starts with just one or two questions seems to be less overwhelming and reduces the friction to start filling it out.
14. Add a Progress Bar to your forms
A progress bar is a nice element to increase the transparency of your sign up or registration process. Users will immediately understand how far they are and will also feel the need to complete the form. You can also give them a sense of achievement by already letting the progress bar start at a certain percentage even though the users did not fill out anything, yet.
15. Experiment with the label alignment
Label alignment is actually a huge topic when it comes to form optimisation. You can right-align, left-align or top-align your labels. Top-aligned labels are considered to give the best conversion, however, take up a lot of vertical space. Sometimes it can make sense to use the placeholder in your input fields as labels but they could also increase the cognitive load for your users. A new way of solving the alignment question could be the so-called floating labels. But also they are heavily debated. The idea is that they seem like a placeholder but become top-aligned as soon as the user clicks into the input field. Alignment does not seem too important at first but can have a significant impact on your conversion, thus it is important to try out different ways to solve this for your users (as with most things).
16. Make sure that your labels are understandable
Especially when it comes to payment input fields I see it so many times that the label copy is “cardholders’s name”. I really wonder why you would do that and not just say something like “Name (as it appears on the credit card)”. Describing it like this, it is absolutely clear what you mean and you make it easier for the user to find exactly what you need. This is an easy win and you can solve it by just adjusting the copy.
17. Understand that your labels are different from help text
Do not try to anticipate possible questions of the users with your labels. The labels should be short, concise and super easy to understand. Do not try to make a sentence that a user has to complete but just give your user a key word for what you want to put into the input field.
18. Add help text to clarify what information you need
Help texts can actually help users a lot and in many different ways. The most obvious case is when users do not know which kind of information they need. A classic help text exists for the security code of your credit card. It is hard for users to understand what is the security code but if you show visually where the security code is located on your credit card or mention that this is a three-digit code, most users will know what is needed.
19. Add help text to explain why you need sensitive information
In some businesses you have to ask the user for sensitive information. It is important that you explain the user why exactly this kind of information is needed now to make it clear that it is only for the users benefit that you are asking for this information.
20. Add help text to anticipate concerns of the user
It often happens that users are not willing to give their phone number also because they are afraid of being called by shady companies that want to sell them something. You can simply tell the customer in the help text that you only will use this number for a limited time and that you will never share this number with anyone.
21. Differentiate between automated in-line help and user-activated help
You also have to figure out if you need to show the user your help text immediately when filling out the form or if you can actually just show an icon that can be clicked on in order to activate the help text. So it can either be automatically triggered or activated by the user.
22. Do not show your error messages clustered and after submit
Just to make it very clear. Error messages are not the same as help texts because error messages only appear when you actually did something wrong and entered wrong data into an input field. When you create a form do not show the user what went wrong after submitting the form . This is frustrating. Rather do an inline validation and immediately after the user entered something, you give feedback on what might be wrong about the data entered. Ideally, do this for every single input field and confirm that the data the user entered is right.
23. Do not punish users with keystroke validation
Yes, I said inline validation is important, but you should be careful. Do not try to immediately check after every keystroke if the data entered is right. This is frustrating because the user gets an error message even though the user is not even done entering the data. Instead wait a bit until the user goes to the next input field and then show the errors that were made before.
24. Be nice and very specific with your error messages
You need to help your users when they did something wrong. Do not only tell them that they did something wrong but also show them what might be the reason why the data entered is wrong and ideally even show them how they can do this better when they enter data again.
25. Accept what the users give you as data point
Sometimes you also have to be careful when asking users about giving data in a specific format. You can also easily validate a phone number “behind the scenes”. This means it does not matter if the user used the country code or not, you just accept it and explain that the entered data is fine. This is very user-friendly and convenient.
26. Specify what data you need via placeholders
Placeholders can help you to make it clear to the users what kind of data you would expect for one particular form field. You can literally use it to provide examples for data to be entered. However, you need to be very careful when you use this because often this is not clearly visible on mobile phones and are often mistaken for already entered values.
27. Do not use drop-down lists if possible
I have really seen a form where you necessarily need more than 5 different options for one input field. Try to cut the choices down to only the most important once and use radio buttons instead of a drop-down list. A drop-down list is long and hard to access for the user. At the same time, it also increases the cognitive load for the user when entering data.
28. For only limited data possible try to use special input fields
When you have to ask the user for something and the user can only proceed if the answer is “yes” then do not show the user the possibilities “yes” or “no” but rather show a checkbox that is necessary for the completion of the form. This will also often allow you to avoid drop-down lists or ratio buttons at all.
29. For many options in a list try to load a list after typing
If you really have to use a long list at least do not leave the user completely alone. After the user typed some letters, use these letters to dynamically show what is available in your list and give out the remaining options. This is especially important for geographic locations.
30. For a long diverse list predict the most common ones and show them
Sometimes your list is very diverse and has many choices. Here you should also not show an alphabetically sorted list but rather the most frequent options that your users chose so far to make it easier for the user to find the most likely option as well.
31. Use images along with your options
It is a really nice user experience to include pictures along with texts in your form field. Especially for input fields asking for “small”, “medium” and “large” it is highly illustrative to show show pictures for simplicity.
32. Display the right keyboard for the users on mobile
It is important that you are trying to reduce the friction of users interacting with your forms on mobile. The fewer the input the better for your conversion. Thus, try to always load the right keyboard that the user will need for this input field (for example: If it is a number input field, it should open the number pad).
33. Avoid password masking and retyping
Do not ask the user to type in the password twice. We do not need this anymore and it does harm your conversion. Instead offer the user to mask and unmask the password after and while entering it. This will make it easier for the user to create a password.
34. Avoid Re-Captures
I know that re-captures seem to be the right choice for some businesses because they filter out “the real leads”. However, it is very likely that when you are using re-capture you will actually also use real leads because they do not want to interact with this kind of mechanism on your form.
35. Animate your sign up form
Nice animations can be the cherry on top of your sign up form. Especially if your product is intended for the design community or users that emphasise the design aspects of a product this can be a really important asset.
36. Measure and track the biggest drop offs
Actually one of the most important quick win: You have to measure how your forms work. Where are the biggest drop offs of your fields? Only if you know where you loose your users, you can work against it and try some of the tactics that improve the conversion rate mentioned here.
Forms are an important element of most web pages and web apps nowadays. They can lift up your conversion by a lot if they are used in the right way. This article provided some inspiration on how to experiment with the elements of a form. Please do not take anything for granted in your forms and always experiment with new ideas.
