Want good customer data? Ask nicely

[admin]

Ever feel that desperate urge to fill in yet another web form? Strangely enough, not many people do - because so many web forms are so very painful - and they're not collecting much in the way of valid information.

There's an amusing reddit discussion entitled 93% of world's population born on January 1st - some highlights ...

• Plenty of super-centarians kicking around online (born in 1900)
• Lots of non-US citizens reside in 90210 zip code
• Afghanistan is well over represented
• Verne "Mini-Me" Troyer was actually born on Jan 1

So if you need to collect real data from customers, how about doing it respectfully? You know, they way you would approach it face to face ...

• Accept that not everyone is a potential lead to be chased down and converted
• Require only the bare minimum of information up front - that you will actually use
• Make sure the value exchange is reasonable - a form to download your price list is not reasonable
• If a field is optional, make it really obvious
• Do you really need to force me to enter my email address twice - really?
• Make use of subsequent pages - to ask for more information
• Investigate the using social connectors to prefill your forms (Janrain specialises in this)

A recent test documented in Which Test Won showed that showing respect for customers - by making fields optional - actually resulted in significantly more (31%) and better quality leads.

Here's another example - Axure asks for valuable information politely. I like that they mention how often I can expect to hear from them, then they make it clear that the rest of the form is optional but much appreciated. I was happy to fill it in with real data - I normally have fun with overbearing form fields.


Lastly, a simple yet valuable addition to Sydney Festival was the wait-list functionality - no registration, just name and email address. Come to think of it, we probably don't need to collect the name since we either already have it or soon will once they buy tickets. This now obvious innovation has already sold thousands of tickets to very happy people who might have otherwise missed out.

A good place to start is looking at your web analytics for people who see the form vs those who complete it. Hopefully the hard numbers motivate your organisation to create a better expereience. Let me know if you do implement changes and how they panned out.
-Ian


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