Tracking and Testing Conversion Rates For Different Appointment Request Form Lengths
So we all hate long forms we have to fill out online – right? Anyone have any tracking and testing results to prove it? Well , I do . . .
Well here is a really interesting test we ran for a dentist. Basics of this test were that the original form that was online when I started working with this group was crazy long – to be exact it was 14 questions long. Now this was a dentist and this form was seen after a user clicked on a reasonably prominent “Appointment Request” button above the fold on the home page. According to my client the length of the form had been dictated by his receptionist as she “needed” this information to contact the person back quickly and know something about what she was calling them about. OK . . . . What I hear there is that if given free reign the receptionist would have the prospect’s favorite color, high school prom dates name and blood type on the form.
So without causing too much fuss I suggested we first combine and or eliminate two or three useless questions on the form and then track and testing each to see how a form half the length would perform.
So only a 19% increase in conversion rates . . . I would have bet more, but still over that period, with the same amount of traffic, the shorter form produced 5 more appointment requests. That is certainly not something to ignore, and as you can see now I have a legitimate reasons as to why the dentist should seriously consider balancing the receptionist requests for more information with cold hard statistics that smaller forms work better at lead generation.
This seems reasonably intuitive for most online marketers, but remember most small business owners have numerous competing influences contributing to why things get done on a website. In this case the reasons the form was obscenely long was not based on good marketing logic. With that in mind we worked with the receptionist to build the form in a way that asked less questions, but still got enough information to make her comfortable contacting the new prospect either by phone or email to schedule the appointment.
If the test results were to be applied to a 12 month period you could argue that this dentist had lost at least 20 or more new patients by using a from that unnecessarily long. Don’t let this happen to you.
Got any questions or comments? – Let ‘er rip . . . .
