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I'm designing a checkout flow, and it needs to ask the user for registration fields at 3 different times (this is necessary by the rule of the third party we are using). I know that this many fields is bad for the experience, so I thought of hiding the last field section at first, so that it is displayed only after the user selects the offer that will be available to him. The question is whether this is good practice or should I show the fields as soon as the screen loads.

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Whether it is good or bad will depend exclusively on your specific scenario and user testing. However, this is a very common pattern, it's called Progressive Disclosure.

In general, Progressive Disclosure is a great tool to IMPROVE conversions. However, if users find a "surprise", they will probably abandon the flow.

IN short: go for it. But as with everything UX: test, test, test.

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    Nice. Good rule of thumb is still show a progress bar or collapsed tab indicator or something to warn the user that more will be revealed. (Consider the now-common checkout pattern of showing 3 or 4 collapsed tabs: "confirm order; enter shipping choice; enter payment and billing address; confirm". Each one opens as you get to it, but you can see the whole process from the start.)
    – Luke Sawczak
    Commented Jun 11, 2021 at 3:21
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    Yes Luke, you're correct. However, this is also used as a semi dark pattern: many companies use this to at least get your info. So, if you abandon, they have your name and email. We can argue about the ethics of this, but it's very common (honestly, we had to do it several times because clients insist), and the "trick" is to lety the user thnk there's only one step: give me your mail and name
    – Devin
    Commented Jun 11, 2021 at 16:24
  • Indeed, one of the darkest patterns unfortunately made invisible by how browsers & networking is implemented is that "submit" buttons can be easily made redundant. Just send data to the server onchange (or on focus lose to reduce server usage, etc.), and the user is totally unaware while thinking that they've still got their privacy...
    – Luke Sawczak
    Commented Jun 11, 2021 at 16:59

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