Make Mundane Tasks Fun Online for Conversions

Quite a while ago 37signals/Basecamp did a survey on their products. Now I normally fill out surveys of products I use because I’d like them to improve in ways I think are good but this survey from 37signals was actually fun to fill out.

The Questions

While many of the question were totally normal and I don’t remember what they were a few took me totally by surprise. They asked me how my day was going. I know they didn’t really care but it made me smile and want to continue working on the form to see what other jokes they had in store for me.

Later they ask me if I’d date Basecamp if I was single and Basecamp was interested. Of course this is even funnier so I continue working on the form.

Then we get to the end of the survey and we have three totally irrelevant but interesting questions.

Sure I know that those were silly but they brightened up my day. I wonder if they found conversions increased with funny questions like that? I’m willing to bet that they did.

The Conclusion

So why do so many sites/surveys/forms have to be so bland and boring? Something a bit out of the ordinary makes you memorable. Sure there are probably some haters out there but does the humour act as a good filter for people who are just going to be difficult anyway? I think it does.

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Tags: 37signals, basecamp, conversion, form design, forms, fun, humour, survey, website design

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 5:00 am and is filed under Business, Design, Usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.