If you’re not following form design best practices, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.

While forms aren’t the sexiest part of conversion optimization, they tend to be the closest to the money—the macro-conversions. Spending a little time optimizing forms can be some of the most important optimization work you can do.

Of course, best practices don’t work the same on all sites. It’s contextual. But generally, implementing form design tactics that work more often than not is a good way to get started.

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Luckily there’s no shortage of data, case studies, research, and examples on form design best practices. It comes from all over the place: business case studies, blog posts, A/B test examples, usability research, eye-tracking studies, and more.

This post outlines some of the most common form design best practices. If you’re just starting with optimization, use them as a baseline.

If you’re working on your forms, these guidelines should help you get some quick wins.

Table of contents

• 13 Form Design Principles & Best Practices
  • 1\. Less is more (i.e. remove form fields).
  • 2\. Single-column beats multi-column forms.
  • 3\. Communicate errors clearly.
  • 4\. Use inline form-field validation.
  • 5\. Order fields from easiest to hardest to fill out.
  • 6\. Make typing easy.
  • 7\. Indicate if each field is required or optional (unless they’re all required).
  • 8\. Name and phone number fields should be one field.
  • 9\. Offer radio buttons instead of drop-down boxes.
  • 10\. Don’t make coupon code fields prominent.
  • 11\. Avoid the “clear fields” button.
  • 12\. Offer field focus.
  • 13\. Don’t mask passwords.
• Caveat: Run your own experiments.
• Conclusion

13 Form Design Principles & Best Practices

1\. Less is more (i.e. remove form fields).

Every field you ask users to fill out increases friction. The best thing you can do to improve form completions is to get rid of as many fields as possible.

In one case study, an 11-field contact form was replaced with a 4-field version, and form completions increased by 160%. (The quality of submissions stayed the same.)

In another test, a 5-field form outperformed a 9-field form by 34%. In this one, too, there was no drop in data or lead quality.

Most forms are too long. It’s “greedy marketer syndrome”—we think we need all the data.

Baymard Institute found that the average checkout contains 14.88 form fields. But their checkout usability testing also showed that most sites can achieve a 20–60% reduction in the number of form fields displayed by default.

Essentially, the average checkout displays twice as many form fields as needed.

So form-field reduction is ground zero for bottom-of-funnel conversion optimization. It’s where you can get some of your quickest wins. The effort and resources required are super low, and the potential gains are tremendous, especially at scale: