“Hey Matteo, can I have another Oreo, please?” Asked one of the 8-year-old kids.

“Ha! No way! Get out of here!”

Okay, okay, it didn’t quite go down like that…

A few years back, I was a summer camp tennis coach for little kids between the ages of 5-8. *Those little humans were hilarious by the way!* Anyway, one week there was this one kid named Shay who was able to pull off a very persuasive psychological effect that is very very similar to a super high-converting tactic called the Multi-step form… more on that soon, however…
This tennis camp was structured so after an hour or two of playing tennis each day, the other coach and I would bring the 15-ish kids inside for a 20-minute snack break. And during this snack break, we would provide snacks such as a bag of goldfish, a bag of chips, a three Oreos/Chips Ahoy… all that great-tasting stuff.😋

I’d ask each kid, “Goldfish or Oreos?” …They’d all say, “Oreos!”

“Hey Stella, goldfish or Oreos?” Her response, “uh… Oreos please!”

And everybody’s favorite snack, just like mine, were Oreos!🍪 On the days we brought out the cookies, each kid could get three Oreos or Chips Ahoy because we didn’t have enough in the family size pack to give each kid four. After each kid finished their three cookies, there were always always always about 4-5 kids who would give me those damn puppy eyes and ask…“Hi Matteo, can I have another Oreo?”

Now, I’ve made this mistake in the past that I was never ever going to make it again… if I give one kid and extra Oreo, then all of them would want an extra Oreo! One day however, after everyone got their cookies, this one witty ol’ kid named Shay came to me and didn’t ask me for an Oreo (as I thought he would)…

“Matteo, what do you like better? Chips Ahoy or Oreos?”

…Wow, what a tough question he had asked, ha!🙂

After a couple seconds, I answered, “y’know, they’re both really good but I’d definitely pick Oreos at the end of the day.” Then he asked me why and I told him. I thought he was going to ask me for an Oreo after… but instead, he unexpectedly didn’t.
Hmm, he instead asked a few more questions that were related to Oreos that, in all honesty, I wanted to answer! Shay asked me something like, “do ya eat them with milk?” He quickly got very passionate about his love for Chips Ahoy over Oreos until I happily got pretty invested in the conversation too. After a few minutes of talking further, he started to conclude his point and said something asked.

“Matteo, I’ll prove to you that Chips Ahoy has a better aftertaste because of the chocolate chips… Here, let’s both try one of each.”

He sounded like he almost didn’t even want to eat a cookie too either.

And I’ll be honest, I kind of knew what he was doing here but I let him “win” anyway. Yes, I gave him two more cookies, one Oreo and one Chips Ahoy… The idea here is that Shay was able to get me very invested in a way that was very subtle and non-invasive at the beginning.
He didn’t interrupt me with something I didn’t want to do/answer. He approached me with a question that made it easy for me to “convert”. Before I knew it, I was so invested to the point where it would have been almost strange for me to NOT take the next step. And this exact methodology can be used with your website visitors to skyrocket your conversion rates!

Anyway, here’s how a multi-step form can skyrocket conversion rates…

So what is a multi-step form?📝

^ Ahh, the ‘not-so-famous’ question…

Multi-step Form: a form that’s split up in two or more sections where you first ask easy-to-answer, non-threatening questions and then ask the more “threatening”, personal questions later… once you have enough compliance.

Yeah! Kinda like this…

Put simply, you approach your traffic in the way they want to be approached…
This is Compliance Psychology 101. 

You know when you’re at a convention and someone just comes up to you and starts asking for your contact info out of nowhere? …Yikes!

Soo many websites do this exact thing but online… Here, take a look at this website:

Do you want to give all of that personal info right off the bat?

Odds are pretty damn low…

It’s because they’re asking for way too much way too early!😬

Let’s look at the inverse. Here’s another form…

How likely are you going to answer those?

Very likely because it’s SUPER easy to answer (it’s a question I actually want to answer). And that’s exactly why more people will click on that and continue on!

And this works tremendously well for cold traffic too! The main idea is that a Multi-step form recognizes this pitfall and is a format to solve this low-conversion form problem.

Just how Shay used compliance psychology to get me to give him more cookies NOT by invasively asking for one, BUT by first approaching me in a less invasive manner… And how much can this increase conversions by?📈

Ha! How about a 381% increase in conversions for Mention (95% confidence):

Or AutoBuyers’s 152% increase in conversions (95% confidence):

Yea, pretty gnarly and powerful stuff. I mean, hey, even The University of Pheonix uses Multi-step Forms… and they’re the biggest PPC spender!

See the power of this?

Now, let’s go into how to create one of these neat forms…

🤫The Multi-step Form Blueprint📋

Remember that this is all just compliance psychology at it’s best (we even wrote a gnarly post about it right here).

Here’s one of the biggest keys: only ask for what you have enough compliance for.

Honestly, that’s really “how” this works…

Yeah, you can pretty much walk away from this post now, ha!
(Keep reading anyway 😛)

If someone isn’t invested, then don’t ask them for anything big. And even then, you can only “ask” when you’ve already given in some way.

The best, sure-shot way to match their compliance threshold and convert is through the
two components that make up the Multi-step form:

• First, the initial easy-to-answer question(s), then,
• The closing questions afterward

And if you’d like, you can even add a step in between. More on that later though.

So that brings us to the first component…

#1 – The initial question(s)📝:

Your first mini-goal for the form is to get them to convert to the smallest possible ask.

Make it easy for them to convert!

“But how?” you might ask…

After looking at all the landing pages that have benefitted from the Multi-step Form, we’ve found three commonalities of the highest converting initial questions…

Here are the characteristics of those perfect initial questions:

• They’re Easy-to-answer (it doesn’t take effort to answer)
• They’re benefitting in some way and or pique interest
• They relate to your final ask/goal for the page

Now, the best “easy-to-answer” questions are dropdowns, radio boxes, checkboxes, multiple choice question, etc. You can have one-word questions too but again, make sure that it’s something NOT too personal or requires a lot of time to answer.

But it doesn’t stop right then…

Ya gotta benefit them or pique interest too…

Hopefully, it’s not new to know that we love talking and learning about ourselves… so ask an initial, easy-to-answer question that feeds people’s hunger for this!🤤

Don’t ask website visitors about a random subject, ask them about… THEM!

Now, as much as I want to say that you want your initial question(s) need to be super related to your end goal… in all honesty, you can actually get away with asking some almost pretty irrelevant questions compared to the info that you actually need.

So I’ll put it this way: the more related the initial question is, the better. Just make sure the question isn’t stupidly irrelevant.

If you do all of these correctly, then your initial question(s) will “approach” your website visitor in the way they want to be approached. Soo essentially, it won’t be perceived as invasive.

“Cool beans, Matteo, got any good initial question examples?”

Ha, I sure do! 🙂

Here are some great non-threatening initial questions:

• What industry are you in?
• What’s your company size?
• What’s your ZIP? (so we can check if we service your area)
• Make and Model of your car?
• See if– okay STOP!!🛑

…This list could go on forever!

Seriously, the actual initial question itself doesn’t matter very much… as long as it meets those three criteria. Just look at any of the real-world image examples…

(Click on image to expand)🖱

As for how many of these initial question you need… I recommend asking between one to three. It’s up to you. I feel that having two initial questions is a happy medium although it’ll depend on your conversion goal… and hell, just experiment!

#2 – Your Closing questions🔒:

Ah, well this part is much easier.

These are the questions that you were probably wanting to ask all along… 🙂

• Name
• Phone number
• Email
• Company
• Etc…

And when you do ask for this info, DON’T frame it in a way where you win and they lose. No no no! Frame it in a way where you, the company, just need your contact info in order to present you with more great value.

In other words, you only need that info as a means to an end, not as an end.

If you’ve done everything before leading up to this, the chance that they’ll be excited to give you their contact info increases tenfold!

This is what you ultimately want to aim for.

People are smart and can see through your BS, so be genuine!

Final thoughts…

The whole idea of the Multi-step form is to bridge the gap between low compliance to high compliance. You need enough compliance to ask more personal, high-threat questions… lest you’re dealing with very warm traffic of course.

Just how Shay was able to get me to give him more cookies not by invasively asking for one when he knew I was going to say “no”, but by FIRST approaching me in a much less invasive manner….

…In a manner, I wanted to be approached in.

Remember that this is compliance psychology.

Only ask for what you have enough compliance for. There’s a good chance you’re asking for too much when you’ve given too little.

You want that higher conversion rate?

Ha! Great, we all do! 😉 So either drop a bomb of value (aka GIVE a lot) to balance out the big ask OR start with a low-compliance, easy-to-answer, non-threatening initial question.

OR…

The third option is to do both which often times, helps to the most – experiment, however! Because trying once, not seeing a result and then claiming this is BS… is simply BS 😛

Experiment!

Anywho, I really hope you see a great boost in conversions from this. Contact us of your results, we’d love to hear about it! 🙂