Best practices to improve signup forms conversion

Need to improve the conversion of your signup forms? There are no magic recipes, but a set of best practices to break your own records.

1. Include the social login

According to a survey conducted by Blue Research, four in five (86%) people resent having to create new accounts when registering on a website and will change their behavior as a result. This represents an increase of more than 10% over the 2010 findings, demonstrating that the need to streamline this process is increasingly imperative.

You can greatly improve this metric by including the social login option in your forms to:

• Verify users. Email verification is implied in a social login process so you can be sure you're getting real users, instead of bots or spam accounts.
• Reduce friction. Speed up the registration process by authenticating users with just one click and using their existing accounts.
• Get background data. Complement your user's information with their pre-existing information coming from their social network like age, location, gender, etc.

2. Minimize the number of fields

According to research by Hubspot, as the number of form fields increases, conversion rates decrease slightly, but not abruptly. It depends on the type of field, for example, the presence of many text areas or dropdowns tends to lower the conversion rate.

In addition to taking care of the quantity and type, you can improve form fields by:

• Removing unnecessary form fields. Just ask for the data you really need from the user, those that you will not be able to obtain in any other way than by asking directly.
• Keeping them short and simple. Use a polite but direct style in both questions and the answers. The easier they are to read and answer, the more the conversion will increase.
• Displaying them logically. Organize the fields of your form in a sequence that is natural and logical, so that it resembles as much of a conversation as possible.

3. Make them easy to fill out

Do you already have user data? Either coming from a data enrichment service or from your own database, you can use it to make it easier to complete their profile by pre-populating form fields. According to research conducted by WordStream, SaaS brand IronMountain tested this approach and found it increased the number of B2B leads by 140%.

To make the form easier to fill out you can:

• Create a well organized multi-step form. If you really need to include many fields in the form, distribute them in different steps to make every step as light as possible.
• Get data from an external service. Analyze what data you can get from data enrichment services like Clearbit with the aim of not asking the user.
• Pre-fill and edit data. Display the data from the data enrichment service or your CRM or  in the form for the user to edit and validate it.

4. Use conditional logic

Another way to greatly improve forms is to include conditional logic in them. Conditional logic allows you to jump between form stepsbased on predefined conditions, user responses, the data you already have, etc. to avoid displaying unnecessary steps.

You can use conditional logic in your form to build:

• Dynamic or adaptive forms. Display different steps of the form depending on the user's responses or the data that you already have saved in your databases.
• Progressive profiling forms. Break a long form into different short forms to capture information over the course of weeks or months to fill in knowledge gaps.
• Multi-factor authentication forms. You can evaluate the risk of a user with a risk-scoring service and request a different number of authentication factors based on it.

5. Take care of the overall form UI/UX

The way the form itself is displayed and how you verify your users also has a lot to do with conversion rates. For example, and according to a study by Moz, CAPTCHAs actually have a negative impact on conversion rates, losing around 3% of total conversions, so it is more advisable to opt for other types of verifications such as magic links and OTPs.

The key points that greatly improve the overall user experience are:

• One column form. Make the form look straightforward and easy with a simple layout and format, limiting the text and instructions and placing labels on the top of the field.
• Easy-to-click buttons, even the small privacy policy checkbox. Making the CTA button stand out will also increase conversions, as this study by AdEvolver indicates.
• Clear error messages. There’s nothing more frustrating than filling out a form and being told that the birth date had to have forward slashes, not dashes.

6. Set up conversion tracking

In addition to these tips, if you want to further optimize the conversion of your forms, we recommend that you use an analytics tool to review your form in detail. This will allow you to easily find the exact improvement points of your form.

To start tracking and improving your form you will only need to:

• Choose the right analytics tool. Choosing the tool that best suits your needs is the starting point. You can check here our selection of the most helpful analytic tools.
• Run A/B tests. Once you have configured your analytics tool and have located the friction points in your form, you can start testing possible solutions with A/B testing.
• Iterate quickly. Once you've figured out which option works best for you, apply the changes as soon as possible to lose as few users as possible.
• Keep checking your metrics. Every so often, check the form and its metrics to check the results of your actions and see if there are any new areas for improvement.

Not sure where to start? Sign up free in Arengu or book a demo with us. Start creating and iterating your form in no time, and embed it any stack just by copying a line of code.