Helping That Form

Aug 272008
 

Site performance is often directly related to the quality of your forms. There are lots of things that will stop a visitor from filling them out completely, and one of the big killers is when the visitor does not understand what to do.

A Simple Example

youtubeform

I was reviewing the site Ripzor today. They rip videos from online so that you can save them to your hard drive. Ever try saving a YouTube video to your hard drive? You will need a service like this to do it. Taking a look at their form, download videos from YouTube, you will see that it is about as simple as you can get. One text box to enter url, and the “Get Video button. How hard is that?

Well without that example text below, I bet the form would be very hard to fill out. In fact I know for a fact, because I have a site of my own that allows visitors to create polls using YouTube videos. Visitors didn’t really start taking advantage of the service until I showed the example of how to find the ID number of the video. Most people are not tech savvy, and this changed my confusing form to an easy form.

More Form Tips

A few more for tips to help improve your sites performance are easy ones as well. The first is the best, and makes it easier for the webmaster as well. Only get information that you absolutely need, and keep your form as simple as possible. Let users add additional information later if they feel so compelled. The second tip is to group like form elements. An example is to put all the drop down boxes in one spot, and all the text boxes in another. Don’t make the visitors go back and forth between the keyboard and mouse. My third tip to improve the forms performance is to make it clear to the user why they are filling it out. It sound basic, but asking for an email to subscribe is not enough. It might work,  but give your visitors a little more beef. When asking them to subscribe for example, make sure they see the benefits of subscribing. Oh, and if you need to, use an example:)

Getting Forms Completed

Mar 202008
 

Most website owners know that getting a form completed on a website is usually a good thing. It can be a sale, a new member joining a newsletter, or a lead. There is really an endless supply of reasons to have forms, but almost all of them face one common problem. Only a small percentage of visitors fill them out. So how do you get them completed?

Speed Things Up

The reason I am writing this post is because I did an analysis on a site yesterday, that I kid you not, had over 200 form questions just to consult an attorney. Visitors are typically hooked when interaction begins. Once they hit that submit button, they will often wait for a response, and will give some dedication to your company. Putting a visitor over the coals as an introduction will most likely result in no interaction, and no form submission. This same form, could have been reduced to just a few items, like name, phone, and reason for contact. Two minutes to fill out a form, or half hour? What do you think will get submitted more? Fill in the blanks after you have captured the visitor.

Consistency in Form Element

Another method to speed things up is by being consistent in method of questioning. Imagine your form is long, and has to be, because it’s for a credit application. To speed this form up try to use consistent form elements, or at least try to group them together. To better explain, avoiding having a form that follows a path like this: Text box, drop down, text box, drop down, check box. When a visitor fills out a form like that, they have to keep switching from keyboard to mouse, and back. Try to keep them at one spot as long as possible without switching between devices. The ideal form element is a text box, and if possible I would suggest using it.

Jakob’s Bonus

Feb 202008
 

Yesterday, Jakob Nielson released his Top-10 Application Design Mistakes. His Bonus Mistake was the first issue I noticed today while reviewing sites. The use of a reset button on web forms.

What is Reset Button For?

Too often I find the reset button on forms, and I believe it is because most new webmasters just don’t know what it is for other than resetting the form. Well they are right. It resets the form, and clears all the data entered. Why would you want to do this though? Imagine you were signing up for a new service on a website, and the form requires you to enter all your contact information. Would you hit the reset button because you made a typo when entering your address? You might accidentally if the reset button was there, but otherwise no. There is no reason for it in this case. That would be a classic example of when not to include the reset button.

So when do you use it? An good example would be if the form was for repeated use by one visitor, such as entering contact information of all their friends. Even then, if done correctly, can be avoided. By simply having a link back to the form on the completed submission page should bring the visitor back to the form with cleared data. It is much faster to click a link than hit the back button.

Is there a reset button on your site?

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