CogBlog

I've always wondered whether hosting contact forms on a secure page would actually boost conversion rates. Do people just feel more comfortable completing a form if the page hosting the form shows the little lock in the corner. I'm sure it is true for a commerce checkout process, but what about a simple form that only asks for name/phone/email and the like?

I actually saw a message recently that said "I can't believe this form isn't secure?", so obviously there is a certain group of people who would be influenced. This doesn't completely make sense to me, everyone routinely sends much more sensitive information than names and phone numbers unprotected via email without thinking twice about it. And, the page hosting the form doesn't need to be secure as long as the form posts to a secure url. So, this is really all about a person's perception of security.

To answer this question we set up a split test of 4 versions of the same simple form on a client site. We also tested whether the inclusion of a privacy policy makes a difference. So our options were non-secure/no privacy, secure/no privacy, non-secure/privacy, and secure with a privacy policy.

After about 3,000 visits to the split options the results are:

neither - 14.7% conversion rate
secure only - 12.8% conversion
privacy only - 16.4% conversion
privacy and secure - 16.2% conversion

So running things through a secure page, independent of other factors, actually reduced our conversion rate. Maybe that little message about entering a secure page actually scares a few people away. The privacy policy did positively influence conversion, but the secure form at best didn't help and may actually hurt conversion. In the presence of the privacy policy the secure page did not show a statistically significant influence on conversion.