"How did you find out about us" accuracy research?

[Melonmedia]

This is more of a conversion and usability question than an SEO question.

Does anyone know if there's any comprehensive research about the accuracy of the well-known "How did you find out about us" question in web forms?

I need to convince a customer that they shouldn't put the question in their form, at least not the way they do now.

I hope someone can refer me to a credible online source / article about this subject?

[Melonmedia]

Hi Keri,

Thanks for getting back on this.

I was able to make my case, but without the scientific evidence I was looking for.

It turned out that the manual referral system used by the hiring managers of the company has major flaws and is not properly used by most of the managers. That resulted in faulty referral reports to the HQ.

In short they had a bigger problem than the referral question :).

[KeriMorgret]

Whatever happened here? Were you able to make your case to them at all, or are you stuck with the question?

[KeriMorgret]

Here's a study of 40,000 landing pages that has some data about conversions and number of fields in general. Unbounce might also be a place to look for case studies. Best of luck.

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/6746/Which-Types-of-Form-Fields-Lower-Landing-Page-Conversions.aspx

[Melonmedia]

Thanks for your input Keri. Yes I found that page too and it is quite useful to illustrate the case. Too bad it doesn't have any references to research or trusted sources (except one link in the comments to an official Google blog). So my quest for a scientific backup on the claim that referral questions in web forms are unreliable continues...:) C'mon! Who helps me out here?

[KeriMorgret]

You may be able to more easily find convincing proof that the more fields you add to a form the more you hurt conversion on a general level, then tell the client that it would apply to the "how did you find out about us" as well.

I have never heard of this site before, so I don't know how to judge the accuracy of what they write, but this article looks like what you're looking for to back you up about the "how did you find us" question: http://www.goodusability.co.uk/2010/01/how-did-you-hear-about-us/

There are 36 comments on this post, which can also be helpful for giving your client anecdotal information about how people say they don't fill out those forms, etc.

For me personally, I often find that the choices don't match what really happened for me. Someone mentioned company x on twitter but didn't include a link, so I went to Google to search for company x. Did I hear about them from Google or Twitter? What if I had also heard about company x from people in a group of my friends first, but was never at a computer to investigate company x and it wasn't until the Twitter mention that I remembered I wanted to look at them?

[Melonmedia]

Thanks for your reply Andre, but this doesn't really get me there.

First of all I'm afraid the client has total control here, so I can't measure for them.

They DO need to ask it, since they also need to track offline sources. But instead of making it a required field before submitting, they could ask it on the 'thank you' page.

So what I really need is convincing proof that asking for sources this way is unreliable and hurts conversion.

[AndreVanKets]

Just tell them you will find out were they came from using Google analytic's. You don't need to ask them at all.

GREG