
"Mad Libs" Style Form Increases Conversion 25-40% - malyk
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1007
======
r00k
I'm not an A/B expert by any means, but it seems like there were far too many
changes made to this form to give credit to just the 'mad lib' aspect. I've
seen Patrick (patio11) mention that he's often surprised by how the tiniest
change can result in a huge conversion difference. The second form is VERY
different than the first.

I think a more accurate headline is "Redesigned form increases conversion
25-40% (who knows why?)"

~~~
btucker
I came here to say this, you beat me. Also, it's important to note the context
of this "conversion". It's sending a message to someone you don't know. No one
likes to send cold emails, so pre-writing the message takes a lot of the
burden off. I'd wager just having the "Comment" textarea pre-filled with a
message would have similar impact.

~~~
corruption
I read the following and my jaw dropped:

"While it's possible these adjustments also contributed to the increase, it's
unlikely they were solely responsible for it"

What was he smoking when he wrote that? There's absolutely no justification
for that statement that I can see.

~~~
SkipHeadJr
That's what I was gonna say. Where's the data? The article is just an opinion.
It seems the author thinks the 'mad-lib' style is cool and wants to believe
everyone else does too.

~~~
corruption
Unfortunately it made him look like a "data fool" and makes me wonder whether
we should trust all the other recommendations he presents re form design.

------
rwhitman
A lot of folks commenting sound pretty skeptical - with good reason, of course
- but I can't help look at that form and catch myself thinking 'gee, that
looks fun to fill out'. I think its really clever.

I'd also suspect seeing your full name in the paragraph would be more reason
to use accurate information. Not to mention maybe there could be spam and
security benefits in there too

Really like to hear if anyone does some tests against this

~~~
aantix
I went with a similar strategy with a site I put together, JimAsks.me (
<http://www.jimasks.me> ). I went as far as to create the account for the user
with pseudo data, and then giving them the chance to go back and update the
account data if they wish. If anyone answered a question, regardless of
whether they had created an account or not, I wanted to be able to display
that response and by tying it to a persona, I was able to do that. This signup
process was presented in a paragraph form similar to the site discussed here
(just answer a question you'll get a chance to "change your account" where
you'll see my form).

I didn't see any uptick in those who signed up. But the generation of
anonymous accounts on behalf of the user certainly did increase the
interaction with my site.

~~~
tigerthink
Suggestions for improving your form:

* "I'm given you" -> "I've given you", "I'm given", "I'm giving you", or "I'm givin' you"

* It's not clear what the field after "from" is supposed to be

* "your email is [ ] with a password of [ ]" -- what do you want my email password for? Try "your email is [ ] and your password is [ ]".

I've been reading Don't Make Me Think and Rocket Science Made Easy, both by
Steve Krug. Good stuff if you want to catch issues like these. Just a small
amount of usability testing ("a morning a month") can bring significant
benefits.

------
maxklein
You know before everybody runs off and starts using this, can we have some
independent tests? Remember that "Follow me on twitter here" thing, I don't
think it was ever proven that it actually worked apart from the original
article, but suddenly, everyone all over the web was using it.

I'd like to see some actual independent, not-the-same-dude tests before I
switch to this style.

~~~
paraschopra
Yup, this is exactly why I wrote: You should NOT follow me on Twitter
[http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/you-
sho...](http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/you-should-not-
follow-me-on-twitter/)

A/B Testing case studies are good for two reasons:

a) Help create curiosity on what the heck this A/B thing is (good for my
product) b) Gives you ideas to test on your website

But it is very dangerous to implement results without testing for your case.
Very, very dangerous.

~~~
tigerthink
_Dangerous_? How about a best practice? If you don't have time or inclination
to test, the first strategy you should use is one that worked for someone
else.

------
neilk
Interesting and obvious in retrospect. The direct mail industry has been using
these techniques for years, with lots of research backing them up.

Full disclosure: in my student days I used to work for a direct mail company,
not as a programmer but as a general layout and graphics guy. They weren't
mail spammers per se, they specialized in hospital funding drives, or did mail
followups on people who were on prescription drugs, to remind them to keep
renewing.

Anyway these letters were tested just as carefully as we do today (only an A/B
test involved actually printing and mailing stuff). The "Yes! I want to know
more about $FOO" format may seem cheesy but it was a proven winner.

You would think people might get tired of it, but they believed that their
targets were instead "trained" to respond to these sorts of appeals. That's
literally what I was told, when I suggested they try something different.

So, maybe we should be paying close attention to those crappy cards that fall
out of magazines?

~~~
sunkencity
it may look like shit but the direct marketing peoplr really know and use
every dirty trick in the book. when it comes to conversion rates they are the
best. dealing with a different target group than the average consumer might
require different visual style and somewhat ligter touch though

~~~
bodhi
Not to pick on you personally, but people keep mentioning how good direct
marketers are. Does anyone have any (scientific-ish) references for this? I'd
like to read more about it.

~~~
mcobrien
It's not that all direct marketers are good, just that it's a more mature
industry which has done more conversion testing than us web folk have had hot
dinners. When a failed conversion costs real money (in printing and postage),
every increase counts.

The idea that direct marketers have something to teach us also probably
spreads because it's counter-intuitive: you mean all those icky ads I grew up
with were _clever_?

------
mmelin
Very interesting. I would think that this could become frustrating to use with
too many fields to fill out, but it definitely looks more inviting than a
standard form.

Now I'm just waiting for patio11 to apply his godlike A/B testing powers on
this and show us the results :-)

~~~
patio11
I don't use lead generation forms so I don't see the big win here.

 _P.S._ If you're using Rails, download A/Bingo. If you're not, email me and I
will write you design documents sufficient to create an A/B testing framework
in your language of choice.

It should not take godhood to do A/B tests. I want A/B tests to be like for
loops: not only will you know them and use them automatically every single
time, you will laugh with your buddies about that one time somebody applied to
your company without ever having written an A/B test before.

~~~
kalid
I would love to see more client-side javascript A/B frameworks like genetify
(easy to embed into blogs, existing apps, etc).

Unfortunately that project doesn't look that active, but it's the best out
there now.

------
warfangle
This is one of "those things" that has me slapping my forehead saying, "Why
didn't I think of that?"

Great idea, and great to find it perform better. It probably helps alleviate
the confusion some people feel inherent in dealing with their computer - the
same kind of people who have no idea how to respond to a dialog box with
yes/no|accept/decline, but can answer the same question promptly when posed
verbally.

~~~
grayrest
The first place I saw this style of interaction is in the novella-weight Magic
Ink [1] essay.

[1] <http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/>

~~~
warfangle
Wow. This is amazing. Thanks so much for the link - bookmarking for later
reading.

------
ThomPete
In the "before" form address doesn't seem optional in the "after" form address
is "optional".

It doesn't really say whether both forms address fields where optional.

The golden rule is the less you ask about the higher conversion. So if one of
the changes they did where to make filling out address optional then it's
obvious why it converts better.

If both are optional then I would say the "before" version seems almost to be
made bad on purpose.

------
phr
The first form screams "Add me to your prospects database, so your automation
can start your sales people hounding me". The second form softens that
impression a bit. I suspect it might work better on me.

~~~
vdm
I think a reason the second form may work better is that explains implicitly
how the information you provide will be used.

------
acangiano
I'm testing this out (<http://thinkcode.tv/english>). I know my current
conversion rate, so I'll be able to see if there is a difference (I'll do the
math with next week's data, or else random subscriptions from this group will
taint it). :)

~~~
juancorbett
Your form lacks affordance - it's not clear, despite the subscribe header,
that one should complete it by tabbing/clicking and then entering data.

On the OP example at Huffduffer one clicks a "sign up" button (which has the
mouseover feedback you lack incidentally) to get to a page which is for sign
up. Hence the affordance is not so important as they're already in the "I need
to enter data"-pipeline.

Also FWIW I think messing with default button formats should be avoided unless
you're going to make sure that it's clearly a button (affordance again).

------
anigbrowl
Another thing I like about it that he doesn't mention is the button to 'join'
rather than 'submit', with its connotations of soulless bureaucracies.

------
shaunxcode
That is funny because the other night I started toying with
<http://www.promisegraph.com> \- obviously it doesn't work yet but I really
liked the idea of the form being in a sentence so I fleshed that in to see if
it was even viable. Backend should be coming along this weekend.

------
hariis
Help me understand here,

These kinds of form improvements should be done for trying out services that
the user already is familiar with, like buying a car, getting a insurance
quote, and where there are multiple choices of service providers, right?

Because, on a sign up form for a new web service, I really don't want users to
be tricked into signing up. I only want those users who understand what my
service offers (through the intro blurb, videos etc) to sign up and if you
have decided to try based on the merit, why would a form design matter? If I
lost a sign up due to a form design, my service is probably weak, no?

~~~
jasonkester
Ah, but people _really hate_ filling in forms. So much so that if you stick a
complicated form in front of something they want to do, many of them will
decide they don't want to do that thing so much anymore.

Even something as simple as asking for an email address in addition to
username/password will lose you a percentage of signups. (As a real-world
example, we tried removing _all_ the fields from the signup page on Twiddla
and saw a 1000% increase in users trying us out).

This form design seems to be a way of convincing people that they're not
looking at a form, and therefore tricking them into filling it in to go do the
thing they wanted to do in the first place.

------
jd
We've been using a similar approach for Thymer since the beginning and we've
always had a really good conversion rate (conversion between visitors and
signups):

<http://thymer.com/try/>

Using a little creativity in the design, even for forms that users fill in
only once has been a great way for us to set ourselves apart.

~~~
ABrandt
I knew I had seen this style on an app somewhere around here. Great work, I
personally find these forms to be very intuitive. The only suggestion I have
for Thymer is for the "re-type password" field. Your prompt there could
certainly confuse some users.

~~~
juancorbett
What he said. Also have you considered that people can type their password and
even if they get it wrong it doesn't matter as their browser/password manager
can still remember it. And even then they can always just reset it if they got
it wrong.

------
zach
This could be a great way to ask users for their feelings when an error
occurs, like the Wufoos suggest -- "right now I'm feeling (adjective) about
it":

[http://particletree.com/features/on-asking-users-for-
their-f...](http://particletree.com/features/on-asking-users-for-their-
feelings/)

------
979s
I see this as an incredible leap in branding in the most unexpected places
(forms) for those sites that want to go above and beyond in appearing
personal, innovative and positive. As an A/B test (as has already been pointed
out) it proves nothing but deserves further insight.

------
lunchbox
There is a significant possibility that the improved results of this format
are due to the fun and novelty of filling out such a form. If everyone starts
copying it, its novelty may wear off and it may lose its effectiveness.

------
nazgulnarsil
post hoc ergo propter hoc. just because you see A and B together doesn't mean
A caused B.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc>

~~~
hartror
Like the rest of the commenters I'd would like to see some more fine tuned
testing as to why, added it to the backlog for attempting on our signup page
so maybe I will get to post some interesting results in a couple of weeks.

------
hockeybias
I think teh 'mad libs's tyle helped (a guess), but I agree that the two forms
are different in other ways.

