Form design: the questions we get asked most

This is one of those topics that looks small until it costs you something. The questions about form design that come up most often on our calls.

Consistency is the quiet half of design work: it rarely gets complimented, and its absence is noticed immediately. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

Do we need to care about this?

Every field you remove increases completion. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

Can it wait until after launch?

Occasionally. More often the post-launch version costs several times the pre-launch one. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge.

How do we know it is working?

Explain why you need anything that feels personal. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

The short version

The measurable part of design is whether people can find what they came for and act on it without hesitating. Three things worth confirming about form design before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Every field you remove increases completion — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.