Shorter checkout form converts better? Or can it be harmful?

[bluekite77]

I've frequently read that the shorter the checkout form the better. My checkout form has the following fields:

• First name

• Last name

• Email

• Username

• Password

• Retype password

• Card number

• Card expiration date

• CVV code

• Billing street

• Billing city

• Billing state

• Billing zip

Here's the thing. Since it's a web-app, I don't need the "billing address" as I'm not physically shipping them anything. Should I remove it? The no-brainer answer seems to be "yes", but I'm wondering if folks don't see any billing address fields, it may look suspicious. Conversions for having it and not don't seem to make much difference, so I suppose I'm looking for some tie-breaker opinions.

The "password" and "retype password" fields could be eliminated by emailing the user's a system-generated password. But once again, could a user see this as odd or suspicious and then abandon? Even if I tell them I'll be emailing them a password? They could be sensitive thinking we'd email the wrong email address due to system error or their own typo.

I could also eliminate the CVV and not validate against that. But once again, could a user seeing the CVV gone become wary?

As much as I'd like to have "guest checkout' it's not feasible. The app is tied to a logged in account, which would also make eliminating the "username" impossible.

Based on all the above, I could trim down the form considerably, but would I be doing more harm than good? I could A/B test it, but I don't believe I have a sufficient number of users to test against.

Everything I buy, physical or online app, has an address field, so perhaps folks are accustomed to filling out this stuff and I should just keep it to align with user expectations?

Thanks.

[danatanseo]

Again my gut instinct is to have them select a password. But, that may not be the best for our customers. Case in point, I don't think that's the way SEOMoz Pro works. I think they email a password, and I still joined. Go figure.

[SEO5Team]

Yep, would still look a little shady to me but then again that's my opinion based on how i shop on the net. Test it out and see what happens.

[bluekite77]

Thanks. What do you think about eliminating the password and retype password fields and just emailing the user a password? Looks suspicious also? Goes against user expectations?

[danatanseo]

Hi bluekite! Welcome to SEOMoz. This is an awesome community. I would strongly suggest that the only way to find out the answer to your question is to test it. You can test it simply and inexpensively with tools like http://www,optimizely.com

What works for someone else may not work for you at all. Just because someone says "best practices" doesn't mean those "best practices" apply to your customers.

Also, listen to your customers and your instinct. If you know your customers really well, and your hypothesis is that a checkout form without a shipping address would perform better, set up one page with the form and one without in optimizely (which you can try free for 30 days)  and find out which one wins.

Don't trust what everyone else does. Trust your testing and your gut.

Hope that helps! Happy Holidays!

Dana

[SEO5Team]

I'd keep the billing address. Without it,  the form would look a little suspicious. If your brand has a strong awareness and the visitors are quite familiar with your site then you might get away with it.

I would still recommend A/B testing to prove what works better for your app conversions. You did mention that you don't have a sufficient # of users however that just means that it would take longer to determine a winner when you do the A/B test. At least this way you know for sure which method worked.