6 ms·

CAPTCHAs' Effect on Conversion Rates

43 points by epi0Bauqu 17y ago

maurycy 17y ago
Finally someone figured it out.
prateekdayal 17y ago
It would be interesting to see the effect of captcha on signups (and not just comments). Also it would be good to know if re-captcha works out to be better (since it has audio support).
- geoka 17y ago
  > It would be interesting to see the effect of captcha on signups (and not just comments). Yes, I think that author fails to take into account that on certain sites a lot of spam would cause potential users to shun from even trying to signup.
zaidf 17y ago
After 3 months the CAPTCHA was switched to the other CAPTCHA setting. I recorded the amount of successful, failed, and SPAM conversions for each of the 50 web forms. Wouldn't it be a better study if instead of doing the switch once after 3 months, captcha went on and off randomly throughout the 6 months?
zaidf 17y ago
After 3 months the CAPTCHA was switched to the other CAPTCHA setting. Wouldn't it be a better study if instead of doing the switch once after 3 months, captcha went on and off randomly per visitor throughout the 6 months? This would take away unintended effects on the study due to changes in traffic pattern over time.
dryicerx 17y ago
Interesting read up, but graphs are seriously misleading. The first one being from 0-900 scale, and the next one a zoomed in 600-820. This really throws your off... took me a while to realize that the failures are actually a VERY SMALL fraction... (even after reading the percentages explained in text).
- I_got_fifty 17y ago
  Exactly what I thought! Talk about statistical manipulation...
- cdr 17y ago
  Yeah, the guy was obviously looking to do nothing more than confirm (and push) his bias. The quality of his captcha is also questionable, since it was apparently not recaptcha.
onreact-com 17y ago
I guess it's even worse depending on he kind of captcha you use. Some captchas are so awful that they probably make more people abandon the form.
bendtheblock 17y ago
I saw a comment form recently where there was a field labeled 'Are you human?', if you enter 'yes' your comment is not marked as spam. I wonder how well silly but obvious questions, to humans at least, can stop spam? From a UX perspective it's slightly less effort than deciphering a CAPTCHA box. It's not as thorough a solution as CAPTCHA but is super quick to implement.

43 points by epi0Bauqu 17y ago

Finally someone figured it out.

It would be interesting to see the effect of captcha on signups (and not just comments). Also it would be good to know if re-captcha works out to be better (since it has audio support).

geoka 17y ago
> It would be interesting to see the effect of captcha on signups (and not just comments). Yes, I think that author fails to take into account that on certain sites a lot of spam would cause potential users to shun from even trying to signup.

zaidf 17y ago

After 3 months the CAPTCHA was switched to the other CAPTCHA setting. I recorded the amount of successful, failed, and SPAM conversions for each of the 50 web forms. Wouldn't it be a better study if instead of doing the switch once after 3 months, captcha went on and off randomly throughout the 6 months?

zaidf 17y ago

After 3 months the CAPTCHA was switched to the other CAPTCHA setting. Wouldn't it be a better study if instead of doing the switch once after 3 months, captcha went on and off randomly per visitor throughout the 6 months? This would take away unintended effects on the study due to changes in traffic pattern over time.

dryicerx 17y ago

Interesting read up, but graphs are seriously misleading. The first one being from 0-900 scale, and the next one a zoomed in 600-820. This really throws your off... took me a while to realize that the failures are actually a VERY SMALL fraction... (even after reading the percentages explained in text).

I_got_fifty 17y ago
Exactly what I thought! Talk about statistical manipulation...
cdr 17y ago
Yeah, the guy was obviously looking to do nothing more than confirm (and push) his bias. The quality of his captcha is also questionable, since it was apparently not recaptcha.

onreact-com 17y ago

I guess it's even worse depending on he kind of captcha you use. Some captchas are so awful that they probably make more people abandon the form.

bendtheblock 17y ago

I saw a comment form recently where there was a field labeled 'Are you human?', if you enter 'yes' your comment is not marked as spam. I wonder how well silly but obvious questions, to humans at least, can stop spam? From a UX perspective it's slightly less effort than deciphering a CAPTCHA box. It's not as thorough a solution as CAPTCHA but is super quick to implement.