Bard College at Simon's Rock: the Early College
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Inquiry Address

Based on testing, Address is optional on the Inquiry Form.

BACKGROUND ISSUE

The Request for Information (RFI) form on the new website (July 2015) does not require submitters to include an address. The digital strategy was developed to generate the most inquiries possible, thus the address field was left optional as per industry best practices. However, there are several business reasons that make inquiries with an address more useful to the Admission Department than inquiries with only email addresses.

Test Solution

Require user to include an address on the RFI form.

FORM VARIATIONS

Here are examples of the two variations of the form. The modified form has a visible address instead of hiding it until someone selects “Mail”. It also makes the address fields required.

 

Initial

Form with no address visibile

Modified (Address Required)

Form with visible address

TESTING SOLUTION

We ran an A/B split test where users were randomly served either the Initial or Modified Version. This test was set to run until a variation had proven a better conversion rate with 95% statistical accuracy.

PREDICTION

The general belief is that adding fields and requirements to a form reduces the conversion rate. But making a field required and visible would increase the use of that particular field. The predicate belief is that the Modified Version would result in fewer inquiries yet more inquiries with an address.

The benefits of the solution will depend on the magnitude of those shifts as well as the added value we assign an Address Inquiry. Anticipating this tension, we also added the ability to track the Initial Form’s rate of Address Inquiries vs Non Address Inquiries. So that we can compare not only conversion rate but Address Inquiry conversion rate.

We can imagine results that would point to either solution. Perhaps there is a minor drop in conversions but a significant increase in addresses. Or conversely, a significant drop in conversions, but only a small increase in addresses. It is also possible that we would have results outside our prediction indicating a more fundamental error.

Result

We had a significant decrease in inquiries, but only a minor increase in addresses. We decided it is better to keep address optional and seek addresses in other ways.