Inquiry Form Field Design: Field Count, Field Types, and the Conversion Trade-off
The sweet spot for a B2B inquiry form is 5 to 7 required fields; past 10, conversion drops off a cliff. Keep only name, company, email, country, and a one-line description of what they need as required. Everything else goes in optional dropdowns or hidden fields filled in automatically. Counterintuitive finding: cutting the form down to 3 fields did raise conversion, but it made life harder for sales, because every junk inquiry the form no longer filtered out landed in their inbox, and the extra conversions did not make up for the added workload. On field types, dropdowns convert about 15% better than free-text entry. Change one field at a time and run an A/B test; don't change three at once.
