Primary research
How rarely contractor websites use a multi-step form
A multi-step form splits the questions across a few screens with a progress bar, so the first thing somebody sees is one easy question instead of a wall of fourteen boxes. We counted a business if any form on its site works that way.
Pair this number with the field-count number and the picture gets bleak. A large share of these brands ship long forms, and almost none of them break those forms up. So the customer meets the full wall at once. The fix is not shortening the form, necessarily. It is asking the easy question first and letting the commitment build.
The number by trade
| Trade | Multi-step forms | Brands | Scope |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roofing | 3.1% | 130 | all captured brands |
| Remodeling | 6.4% | 146 | all captured brands |
| HVAC | 1% | 104 | all captured brands |
So the spread runs from remodeling at 6.4% to HVAC at 1%. Which trade you work in changes what "normal" looks like, so read your own trade's page rather than the combined number.
Roofing
Roofing adoption is low, which is a strange pairing with roofing also having the longest forms of any trade. The trade that most needs progressive disclosure is close to the trade least likely to use it.
Full roofing breakdown for this metric
Remodeling
Remodeling leads the three trades on multi-step adoption, and it is still a small minority of brands. Remodeling projects carry the longest consideration window and the highest ticket, so a staged form fits the buying behaviour better here than anywhere else. A few operators have worked that out.
Full remodeling breakdown for this metric
HVAC
HVAC adoption is the lowest measured in the study, close to nonexistent. Given HVAC also runs the shortest forms, this is the one trade where skipping multi-step is a defensible call rather than an oversight. If the form is four fields, staging it adds friction instead of removing it.
Check your own site in ten minutes
You do not need new software for this. If your form builder supports pages or sections, move the contact fields to step one and everything the office wants to step two. Then watch whether step-two completion is the number that drops, because that tells you what the office was really costing you.
- What was measured
- Share of brands using a multi-step (progressive) form anywhere on the site, out of the full trade cohort.
- How we measured it
- We checked whether any form on the site splits its questions across more than one screen instead of showing them all at once.
- The technical version, for anyone checking our work
- multi-step / progressive-disclosure form signal detected in DOM (step indicators, wizard markup, or paginated field reveal)
- Sample
- 380 contractor brands. Roofing 130, remodeling 146, HVAC 104.
- Collection window
- 2026-05-10 to 2026-05-16
- Combined aggregation
- weighted (sum of per-trade brand counts over sum of trade sample sizes)
- Who ran it
- Fervor Studio, first-party capture. Nobody paid to be included or excluded.
How the sites were picked, captured and scored: the methodology. Every metric we publish: the research index.
The full reports this measurement came out of: State of Roofing, State of Remodeling, and State of HVAC.