Part Three: The details · Asking and deciding
Each extra field might be useful to someone in the company one day. Each one also loses some of the people filling in the form.
A form starts short. Then marketing would like to know the company size. Sales wants a phone number. Someone asks for "How did you hear about us?" because it would be interesting. Legal adds a date of birth. Each request is reasonable, and nobody removes a field once it is there.
The person filling it in sees the whole pile at once. They came to book a table, start a trial, or pay a bill. Each question costs them effort and a little suspicion. Why does a note-taking app want my phone number? What will they do with my job title? Some type nonsense to get through. Some leave. The ones who stay have learned that this company takes more than it needs.
The people who asked for the fields never see this. They see a column in a spreadsheet, mostly full, and assume it was free. The cost falls on the people who gave up halfway, and nobody is counting them.
Much of what forms ask can be worked out, asked later when there is a reason, or never used at all. The one question worth keeping at the door is the one that changes what the person gets: asking a newcomer what they came to do, and starting them there.
A gym's trial sign-up has eleven fields, including home address and emergency contact. A person needs neither to try one class. Both could wait until they join.
Full name
Phone
Date of birth
Home address
City
Postcode
Emergency contact
Emergency phone
Fitness goals
How did you hear about us?
Full name
Which class?
Therefore:
For every field, name who will use the answer and what they will do with it. If nobody can, remove it. Ask the rest at the moment it is needed.
In practice. Print your longest form. Beside each field write the name of the person who uses the answer. Cross out every field with no name, and move the ones that could wait. Where a field is someone else's to keep, count how many people abandon the form at it and show them the number.
Goes with. Every field began as a request, so SAY NO BY DEFAULT (23) applies. What you can guess, fill in, as in GOOD DEFAULTS (36), and what you do collect you must look after: TRUSTED WITH THEIR DATA (58).