MAF

How Do Required Form Fields Impact Sign-Ups and Donor Behavior?

Experiment ID: #202895

MAF

Experiment Summary

Ended On: 03/23/2026

Mission Aviation Fellowship is testing how the level of form friction on a content offer landing page impacts both sign-up rates and downstream donor conversion.

The “Notes of Encouragement” offer invites supporters to submit messages that will be shared with missionaries, creating a low-barrier entry point for engagement. Traffic to this page is driven by paid social advertising, primarily on Facebook, so many visitors are new or relatively unfamiliar with the organization.

The team has identified a potential barrier in the current sign-up form. The control version requires three fields—first name, last name, and email—all marked as required. This may introduce unnecessary friction, particularly for new audiences who have not yet developed trust or a strong connection with the organization.

To better understand how much information is truly necessary at this stage, the team is running an A/B/C split test with three variations:

Control: First name, last name, and email are all required
Treatment 1: First name and email required; last name optional
Treatment 2: Email only required; no name fields required

All visitors to the landing page are evenly distributed across these three versions.

This experiment aims to answer a core donor motivation question: How does perceived effort and trust affect a person’s willingness to take an initial action? Specifically, the team wants to determine whether reducing required fields increases sign-up volume, and whether that increase comes at the cost of lower-quality leads or reduced downstream donation conversion.

Ultimately, the goal is to find the right balance between minimizing friction to maximize participation and collecting enough information to support meaningful follow-up and long-term donor value.

Note: The highlights in the Design section below are meant to show the change in the Treatments, it is not a reflection of the live experiment.

Research Question

We believe that reducing required form fields for new subscribers from paid social traffic will increase sign-up rates without significantly lowering downstream donations because lower effort and fewer information requests build trust and make it easier to take an initial action.

Design

C: Control

T1: Treatment 1

T2: Treatment 2

Results

	Treatment Name	Conv. Rate	Relative Difference	Confidence
C:	Control	15.7%
T1:	Treatment 1	13.4%	-14.7%	95.6%
T2:	Treatment 2	15.5%	-1.0%	10.4%

This experiment has a required sample size of 2,731 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 5,666, and the level of confidence is above 95% the experiment results are valid.

Flux Metrics Affected

The Flux Metrics analyze the three primary metrics that affect revenue (traffic, conversion rate, and average gift). This experiment produced the following results:

0% increase in traffic
× 14.7% decrease in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift

Key Learnings

Reducing form fields did not meaningfully improve sign-up conversion rates, and in one case, significantly decreased performance.

The Control (all fields required) achieved a 15.7% conversion rate, outperforming both treatments. Treatment 1 (first name + email required) saw a 13.4% conversion rate, representing a 14.7% decrease compared to the control, with 95.5% statistical confidence, indicating a reliable negative impact. Treatment 2 (email only) performed similarly to the control at 15.5%, but the difference was not statistically significant and is therefore inconclusive.

This suggests that removing the last name field alone may introduce friction or uncertainty rather than reduce it, potentially signaling a less complete or less trustworthy form of experience. At the same time, fully minimizing the form to email-only did not produce a meaningful lift, indicating that form length may not be the primary barrier for this audience.

In addition, downstream donation activity was minimal across all variants (2 gifts from the control, none from treatments), making it difficult to draw conclusions about lead quality or long-term value.

Through this experiment, we learned that reducing the number of form fields does not automatically increase conversions. In this case, the existing form performed best, and partial simplification may have unintentionally reduced clarity or trust. This means, at least for paid social traffic, that form friction may be less of a barrier than expected, or other factors (such as offer clarity, emotional resonance, or perceived value) may play a larger role in conversion.

Future tests should explore message framing, emotional appeal, or value proposition clarity rather than focusing solely on form optimization. Additionally, testing more distinct shifts (rather than incremental field removal) may yield clearer insights.

Next Steps

Maintain the current form structure with all fields required, as it performed as well as or better than simplified versions and did not introduce unnecessary friction.
Test strengthening the value proposition of the landing page experience.

Experiment Documented by NextAfter

Question about experiment #202895

If you have any questions about this experiment or would like additional details not discussed above, please feel free to contact them directly.