Form friction on landing pages
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A form should ask only what you need to deliver the next step. Company-before-email, silent failures, and “Book a tour” eyebrows on a free-grade promise add decisions that paid traffic will not make. Labels and errors must work at phone width; submit and success states must be honest. Walk checklist Form, then grade your URL.
What good looks like
- Minimum fields to deliver the artifact or meeting — usually email first, company later or optional. Do not force account creation when guest or email-next would do (Baymard guest-first, applied to public forms).
- Labels and errors in the layout, not only placeholder text that disappears on focus.
- Inputs ≥ 16px, full-width on a phone, usable tap targets — no pinch-to-type.
- Honest submit. Loading, success, and failure are visible; a 4xx is not a silent no-op.
- Post-submit next step is obvious: inbox, calendar, dashboard, or confirmation — not a dead thank-you with no instruction.
- Eyebrow matches the hero job. If the page sold a free grade, the form does not say “Book a product tour.”
The sample scores Form 6/10 and shows a wireframe where company name is asked before work email.
Common gotchas
- Company, phone, and “how did you hear” before email — extra decisions before micro-commitment.
- Card-on-file for a “free trial” without saying so on the button (billing anxiety).
- Multi-step quiz with no progress and no way back; feels like work, not a next step.
- CAPTCHA or chatbot as the first interaction on a paid landing — another product in front of yours.
- Disabled submit with no reason, or a button that does nothing on validation failure.
- Thank-you / 404 mismatch after a successful post; the visitor thinks it failed.
autocompleteoff, tiny fields, orfont-sizeunder 16px so iOS zooms and the CTA slips away.
How SiteRevenue scores it
New full jobs emit Form (0–10, higher = healthier) when form_checkout is scored. Engine key form_checkout still drives letter-grade math. If there is no public form, this slice may be absent — the UI does not invent a checkout. Older jobs stay omit-safe and may say Form / Checkout.
Typical findings: form too long, billing anxiety, trial card-on-file, submit/eyebrow mismatch (often also a message match issue). On a product page, Start trial / Subscribe / a checkout href is the form — a buried trial link is not “no checkout,” and Form is not 30 only because the button does not say Add to cart. Teaser = locked titles. Full report adds captures and before→after form rewrites when the job returns them.
We analyze public HTML. Authenticated checkout after login is out of scope. Screenshot capture is fail-open.
Ship this week
| Change | Effort | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Reorder: email → password (if needed) → optional company | S (~20 min) | One decision before the micro-commitment |
Set input font-size to 16px; stack fields on mobile | S | Stops iOS zoom and missed taps |
| Honest submitting / error / success copy | S | Silent fail looks like a broken page |
| Match eyebrow + submit to the hero promise | S | Form is part of message match |
| Say “card required” on the button if the trial bills | S | Anxiety named is better than a surprise |
See the sample form wireframe, ship, then re-audit.
Related guides
- Conversion leak checklist — Form items 16–19
- CTA hierarchy — submit vs hero verb
- Message match — form eyebrow
- Trust and risk reversal — privacy next to the ask
- Mobile conversion
- Copy rewrites that ship
- All guides
Start with a free grade
Paste the public page that hosts the form on the home page. Open the sample for the company-before-email pattern. Full report: Pricing.