jeff adams

Recently I was working on an online registration form for a recruitment agency website. I started wondering why they were asking to collect so many pieces of information like age, gender and even the registrant’s address. It got to the point where there were at least 3 pages of forms.

With that in mind, here are a few home-truths about forms and a sort of “mental checklist” when designing forms.

Only Collect Relevant Data

Who cares if they are male or female, and why do you need their address anyway? i can understand these items are a marketing departments dream but I would bet my house that the more fields you have to fill in, the less likely any casual surfer is will fill it in.

Don’t Make Me Sign Up

Sure, you might have a kickass application or service, but don’t make me sign up to your website to see a demo otherwise when I do register and don’t like it, I’m likely to get bugged by sales calls/e-mails even when I DON’T want your project.

If your website has a demonstration or benefits of registering then make it as easy as possible for customers to see the benefits of signing up rather than forcing their hands.

The folks over at A List Apart have an excellent article on why signup forms must die.

Use Fieldsets and Labels

Imagine someone is on your site and has a bundle of information they have to fill out? Breaking categories up with fieldsets is a good way of making it easier to fill out not to mention it’s a huge help for those using text-readers. Being considerate on the destails like this will make your users more likely to take the time to fill out your form or survey.

Here is an example of a fieldset in action:

<form>
  <fieldset>
  <legend>Subscription info</legend>

    <label for="name">Username:</label>
    <input type="text" name="name" id="name" />
    <label for="mail">E-mail:</label>
    <input type="text" name="mail" id="mail" />
    <label for="address">Address:</label>
    <input type="text" name="address" id="address" size="40" />
  </fieldset>
</form>

What’s in it for me?

Why should the customer fill out your survey? Why should they spend 5 mins on your survey?

If the user is passing on personal information then you need to give them an incentive to do so, maybe an entry into a prize draw or access to site features or in some cases maybe a free gift. If your company is an e-commerce site, why not offer a discount for a fixed period of time?

We Need Help

Some sites have some form fields that are so generic or vague that we have no idea what to put in there - for example telephone numbers. What users need to know is what format do I put it in, do I have to put a space in or do I just type it in. What do I do once I am finished?

Ideally, give each field a one-line description or example as to what goes into the field. If you are a designer, there are some really good JavaScript/JQuery examples tat you can Google to use in your forms.

Save Me (My Form)

These days, with desktop software such as Word, Excel or really anything that people work on day to day there is usually a save facility so why not have a save facility on your form or survey?

Granted, if you are just collecting up to 4-5 fields then this isn’t viable but if you are a car insurance company, it makes sense to allow the user to save their information for next time they visit. Confused.com is a great example of offering saved searches, and not only that they make it super-easy to re-validate your details before running the search again.

Progress Indicators

Dude, how long IS this survey? If you have pages and pages of data collection then at least give some feedback on which page the user on e.g. Page 3 of 5 or a progress bar. This is particularly helpful for e-commerce sites like www.amazon.co.uk where the user is taken from signing up to a processed order with seamless ease, and all the way is made aware of where they are in the process.

Do Not Spam

If you don’t need the information, then don’t ask for it.

Think about this for a second, would you give personal details to a new site that you found via Google? You don’t know these people so why would you tell them where you live, your home phone number and why are you even asking them for these details.

You should only need to ask for a persons address once they have registered, or if they wish to buy something from your site.