# Madlibs-style sign-up form vs standard form: -22% trial sign-ups

- Outcome: Lost
- Page type: Signup page (SaaS)
- Elements: Form layout
- Date shared: 2010-02
- Test run by: [Patrick McKenzie](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/patrick-mckenzie/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/02/27/lesson-from-madlibs-signup-fad-do-your-own-tests/
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/patio11-bcc-madlibs-signup-form/

A madlibs-style registration form, where the fields sit inside a sentence, converted 21.73% of visitors to a free trial against 27.55% for the standard labeled form, about 22% worse. Patrick McKenzie ran this test on Bingo Card Creator and published it on the Kalzumeus blog in 2010. Only the form style changed, and the result was significant at 95% confidence.

## Result

**-22% trial sign-ups**

- Free trial sign-ups fell from 27.55% to 21.73% with the madlibs form, a relative drop of about 22%.
- The drop was significant at 95% confidence. The source notes the direction is reliable, not the exact size.
- 736 participants, split about 50/50, over 34 hours.

## Control

A standard registration form with a label next to each field.

## Variant

A madlibs-style form, with the input fields placed inside a written sentence. The fields themselves stayed the same.

## Why it likely lost (our reading)

- A sign-up form is short and familiar, so a novel layout adds reading time without solving a real problem.
- Fields inside a sentence can be harder to scan, and it may be less clear what to type where.
- The madlibs idea spread from a lead-gen form test where about seven things changed at once, so the original lift may never have come from the sentence layout.

## Caveats

The test ran for only 34 hours, and another A/B test was running on the same page at the same time. The data is from 2010.

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we change our sign-up form to a madlibs-style sentence layout, then sign-ups will rise because the form feels more conversational, though a familiar form may be faster to fill in.
- Primary metric: Free trial sign-up rate
- Guardrail: Form error rate
- Guardrail: Time to complete the form
- Guardrail: Trial-to-paid conversion
- Who should test it: Teams that are thinking about copying a trendy form style. Test it rather than assume it works. A short sign-up form with two or three fields probably has little to gain from a new layout.

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Credit: Patrick McKenzie ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/patio11-bcc-madlibs-signup-form/).
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.