Increase conversions in sign-up forms

Business Benefits

Grow your mailing list and generate more leads by building sign-up forms that convert.


Ask for as little information as possible and remove unnecessary, and optional fields to reduce friction.

Only ask for what’s relevant. For example, Expedia removed the Company field from their booking form and saw a $12 million annual increase in profit.

Give users a reason to fill out the form and tell them what happens next.

Include your value proposition to help sell the sign-up. Test your lead magnet, what you offer in return for their email. The offer itself usually makes the biggest difference in your conversion rate. Make the submit button say what’s going to happen next. For example, use Create my account instead of Submit.

Show social proof to build trust and encourage users to sign-up.

Show them tons of people have done it. For example, Basecamp makes it loud and clear that over 100,000 companies use the tool to make their business better.

Use a professional, simple, and streamlined design.

Make your CTA button as wide as the input fields. For example, Hotjar uses a simple, streamlined form page to encourage signups.

Use single column forms, auto-fill fields, avoid using clear fields buttons, and don’t use CAPTCHAs to reduce the time it takes for users to complete your form.

Use double opt-ins instead of CAPTCHAs if it’s an email list sign-up form. Use the Honeypot CAPTCHA technique if it’s a quote request or another type of form.

Test using Mad Libs-style forms.

For example, Vast.com A/B tested a conventional form design with a narrative Mad Libs format, and found that the Mad Libs-style form increased conversions by 25-40% across the board.

Highlight and clearly explain any errors or missed mandatory fields, to minimize frustration.

Make sure fields are populated with the data users entered if they fill in the form incorrectly, and you need to show an error message. For example, Meetup does this well by auto-populating fields users already filled in, and clearly explaining what went wrong:

Avoid requiring information in a specific format, and make it clear if you need users to stick to a specific format.

Don’t require users to enter spaces, brackets, or anything else when they input their information. Clearly specify any date formats you require, or have users choose it from a calendar. For example, this GEICO form avoids any potential slash-vs-dash issues by clearly specifying the MM/DD/YYYY format.

Offer users the option to see what they typed instead of asking for their password twice.

For example, a check your password checkbox, to show the password instead of a string of asterisks, is a much better way to verify whether there are any typos.

Last edited by @hesh_fekry 2023-11-14T11:50:28Z