A recent study conducted by Omniture for Marketing Sherpa shows that a single-column opt-in form outperforms a double-column form on email subscription landing pages.

Using multivariate tests, Omniture examined a number of variables on landing pages to see which ones improved performance. They discovered that one is better than two when it comes to how you lay out a group of fields on a sign-up form.

The one-column layout featured the following fields running down the landing page as follows:

Title
First name
Last name
Address
Apt/Suite/Business
City
State/Province
Zip/Postal Code
Home Phone
E-mail Address
Confirm E-mail Address

The two-column layout featured the same fields side-by-side as follows:

Title
First name || Last name
Address || Apt/Suite/Business
City || State/Province
Zip/Postal Code || Home Phone
E-mail Address || Confirm E-mail Address

This finding that a single-column opt-in form outperforms a double-column form is good news for email marketing executives who need to improve their landing page conversion rates. According to Marketing Sherpa, a few simple design tweaks (made after testing) can easily boost your opt-in conversions by up to 40%.

These findings are published in the Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007. Known as the "Email Stats Encyclopedia," MarketingSherpa's Guide brings you exclusive results data from 3,637 real-life marketers' campaigns, plus design advice, filtering info and list growth help into one handy Guide for you.

Discover what tests worked best, what's not working, list growth, and how email budgets are changing for 2007. 324 pages. 233 charts and tables. 21 images. 8 new eyetracking heatmaps.

Visit and click on the Benchmark Guides link in the left column.