Every form field is a tiny toll booth
Each field you add is one more reason to quit. Ask only for what you need right now.
Your signup form asks for first name, last name, work email, password, company, role, team size, phone and how they heard about you. Your sales team loves it. Your visitors see a tax return.
Baymard Institute has researched checkout usability for more than ten years, and it found that the number of form fields affects checkout performance more than the number of steps. Its benchmark says most e-commerce sites need only 8 form fields for the entire checkout, yet the average in 2024 was 11.3. Baymard’s fixes are wonderfully boring: one full-name field instead of two, optional fields like company name tucked behind a link, and account creation offered at the end instead of demanded up front.
A SaaS signup isn’t a checkout, but the principle carries over: every field is one more small decision standing between a visitor and your product. Ask only for what you need to deliver the first moment of value. Everything else can wait for onboarding, when people already care.
The example
- Instead of
- “Sign up: first name, last name, work email, company, role, team size, phone, password”
- Try
- “Sign up: email and password. (Ask about team size later, inside the app.)”
Before you flush
List every field on your signup form, mark the ones you truly need before first login, and delete or postpone the rest.