How did you hear about me?

“How did you hear about us?”

Please, please, please don’t ask this question on a form. Banish it forever.

When you ask a visitor to convert, remember that you aren’t doing them a favor. They are giving you the favor of their time and attention. Asking ‘how did you hear about us?’ puts a burden on the user to answer something that has nothing to do with their relationship with your organization or their desire to sign up with you. It’s a self serving question, and self serving questions don’t belong in your conversion process.

Plus, what are the odds that respondents even answer accurately? Many years ago we had a client who was having the debate about whether or not to include the ‘how did you hear about us?’ question on their form. To solve it once and for all, they included a wacky choice in the drop down— “billboard,” and although the client never ran a billboard ad, this ended up being the most selected choice. Question removed from form forever.

Every field on a form is a barrier between you and the conversion—so get rid of questions that are self serving and make your conversion process all about them!

(here’s the awesome landing page that led me to this post — great landing page, but it would be even better if they got rid of “How did you hear about us?”)