Periodically I get asked about mandatory forms - people are often surprised that we don't use them in front of things like our videos, podcasts, and other downloads. Which is ok, because I'm surprised that anyone thinks they would help :)

Here's the thing - there's a nearly infinite amount of information available on the net, about lots and lots of products and services. let's say someone comes to our site looking for information on Seaside or Web Velocity - and they are immediately confronted with a form before they can see anything.

The standard marketing answer is that a form guarantees that interested parties will leave valuable contact information that can be followed up on. To which I respond: "Oh, really? What do you do when you are confronted with a required form?"

That usually leads to an awkward silence. So the question is, if you won't fill in a form, what makes you think other people will? Let me return to my hypothetical person interested in Seaside. After finding out that he's got to fill in a form to get information, what is he more likely to do?

• Fill in the form
• Bail out to a Squeak site on Seaside
• Bail out to some other language (like Ruby)
• Bail out to parts unknown

Here's a clue: it's not the first option :)

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