How reducing form field friction and anxiety affects conversion rate
Dallas Theological Seminary
The DTS mission is, “to glorify God by equipping godly servant-leaders for the proclamation of His Word and the building up of the body of Christ worldwide.” They strive to help men and women fulfill the Great Commission and the Great Commandment, or more simply: Teach Truth. Love Well.
Experiment Summary
Timeframe: 11/14/2016 - 12/23/2016
Dallas Theological Seminary launched a new free course studying the book of Revelation. Traditionally, they had always asked for name, email address, and full home address in the registration process so they could send prospects direct mail if needed. However, the data had shown that these prospects did not respond well to direct mail unless they made an online gift during the course. Since DTS got all the home address data when they made a gift, they didn’t need to collect it at the beginning.
They were curious how this might affect course registrations, so they launched a test between a full signup form and one that just asked for name, email, and password. They split the traffic to determine the effect of removing the home address fields.
Research Question
How does reducing form field friction and anxiety affects conversion rate?
Design
Results
| Treatment Name | Conv. Rate | Relative Difference | Confidence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C: | Long form with Home Address | 33.7% | ||
| T1: | Shorter form | 36.7% | 8.9% | 99.7% |
This experiment has a required sample size of 1,934 in order to be valid. Since the experiment had a total sample size of 8,949, 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
× 8.9% increase in conversion rate
× 0% increase in average gift
Key Learnings
The shortened registration form produced a 8.9% increase in conversions on the page, which showed that there was a segment of the audience that either felt anxious about giving away that information or felt like it was too much work to fill out a longer form. The form is now reduced to the bare essentials of what data must be collected for the course registration, so more value proposition testing is prompted.