# Deal form cut to 3 required fields, rest hidden: +26% conversions

- Outcome: Won
- Page type: Lead form (Lead-gen)
- Elements: Form fields, Optional fields
- Date shared: 2019-04
- Test run by: [InsightWhale](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/insightwhale/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://www.convert.com/case-studies/insight-whale/
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/insightwhale-travel-deal-form-3-required-fields/

Cutting a travel deal enquiry form from eight required fields to three, and hiding the other five behind a dropdown, raised form conversions by 26%. InsightWhale ran this test for a destination travel company, and it was published as a Convert case study. A second version that showed the optional fields openly did no better than the original.

## Result

**+26% conversions**

- Deal page form conversions: +26% for the version with optional fields hidden.
- The other challenger (three required fields, with all five optional fields visible below them) converted about the same as the original.
- Bounce rate did not change across any version, so the gain came from people already on the page finishing the form.
- Convert reported a 100% confidence score after 45 days and 54,697 visitors split three ways.

## Control

The deal page form had eight fields, all mandatory, laid out in several columns.

## Variant

The winning version used a single-column layout with three required fields. The five optional fields were hidden under a dropdown the visitor could open if they wanted.

## Why it likely won (our reading)

- Fewer visible fields made the form look quick to finish, especially on a phone. About 72% of the traffic was mobile.
- Marking fields optional was not enough. When all eight were still on screen, the form looked just as long as before.
- A single-column layout is easier to scan and fill in on small screens than a multi-column one.

## Caveats

The test ran for 45 days with 54,697 visitors across a three-way split, mostly on mobile. The winner also changed the layout to one column, so the lift comes from the field count and layout together.

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we show only the required fields and hide optional ones behind a toggle, then more visitors will submit the form because it looks shorter and quicker to finish.
- Primary metric: Form submission rate on the page
- Guardrail: Lead quality or enquiry-to-booking rate
- Guardrail: Share of leads with optional fields filled
- Guardrail: Bounce rate
- Who should test it: Lead-gen businesses with long enquiry or quote forms, especially with heavy mobile traffic. It may not help if your sales team truly needs every field to qualify a lead.

---

Credit: InsightWhale ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/insightwhale-travel-deal-form-3-required-fields/).
Usage: Free to use, quote and build on, with credit and a link: name the practitioner or organization that ran the test and link to its LiftArchive page. The results belong to the practitioners who ran and shared them; the summaries and commentary are LiftArchive's.