Does a preselected state field lift lead form conversion?
Our tax relief lead form asked every visitor to pick their state. We used the visitor's location to preselect it so they could skip that step. Conversion moved +2.7% over 17 days, which did not reach our confidence bar.
Not significant Responsive 17 days Not called
The hypothesis
By using the visitor's location to preselect their state, we will cut a step from the lead form, resulting in more visitors who finish it.
The state question is a required step, but most visitors can be placed by their location. Detecting the state and ZIP code and filling them in for the visitor removes a click and some thinking from the funnel.
Earlier tests on this client's funnels showed that shorter forms tend to finish more often, so a skipped step was the next thing to try.
What we changed
We preselected the state from the visitor's location to skip a step.
In the control, every visitor chose their state on its own step. In the variation, we detected the visitor's state from their location and preselected it, so the funnel could skip that step. The other questions, the copy and the design stayed the same.
- State detected from the visitor's location
- State step skipped in the funnel
- Other questions unchanged
The result
Conversion moved +2.7% over 17 days, short of our confidence bar.
The variation ran on all traffic for 17 days. It trended slightly positive the whole time, but the gap was too small to reach our confidence bar, and it did not look like more time would change that. We paused the test and moved to the next round.
What we would do next
Skipping the state step did not move enough visitors to matter.
Removing the state step did not raise the share of visitors who finished the form by enough to change the funnel. The state question is quick to answer, so taking it away saved visitors little effort. We kept the state step and moved on to the next round of tests on this funnel.