Drop downs vs radio buttons
Posted on: December 12, 2008
We found that drop downs help bounce rates in forms with 6 to 10 questions. I think the reasoning behind this is that a form looks smaller if you use drop down boxes instead of radio buttons.
2 Responses to "Drop downs vs radio buttons"
January 6, 2009 at 10:28 am
I agree. Drop downs probably warrant over 3 answer choices. I agree minimal numbers of answer choices are better as horizontal radio buttons.
There is another factor to consider which is Google’s Quality Score based on the content of the landing page. Having your content as radio buttons means that Google’s Quality Score spider will see that content and it may be contextually similar to the ad text and search term so thus help weight the landing page quality score higher, but I believe the improvement of conversion rates will outweigh the uplift in quality score.
I have not tried radio buttons vs drop downs on smaller number of questions forms. Would be very interested in hearing from anyone had any experience of this?
Cheers
Titus
Landing Page Magic 
December 22, 2008 at 10:42 pm
This is a really interesting result. I think you are correct: a large part of an immediate bounce is about the appearance of the form. If it looks daunting, people will be out of there.
I’m intrigued about the narrow band of 6 to 10 questions. What about forms with fewer or more questions?
I’d also caution that there’s a balance between the immediate effect of a shorter form, visually, being less daunting and a possibel slightly worse effect if the dropdowns are being used inappropriately. For example, people don’t much like being presented with a series of dropdowns that reveal ‘yes/no’ answers.
There’s also a longer-term effect (I’m only talking moments, here) of asking silly questions. This will definitely undermine the slight visual improvment of a shorter form.
Best
Caroline Jarrett