Somehow it got to be Wednesday again, and that means new poll day. Instead of coming up with a new poll though I have decided to bring back an old one because I feel it’s an important question. Have you ever watched at least five people complete a task on your website? One of the reasons brick and mortar stores work so well is because the store managers or owners see their customers using it on a daily basis, and if they stay in business long they see a lot more than five people.

Online though, it’s a different story. Store owners or managers don’t have the opportunity to see their customers shopping or browsing. It’s basically a “Hope you like my site” kind of scenario. There are several services out their that track your visitors actions so you can at least get a general idea what they are doing. Ideally though, running it’s always nice to get some verbal feedback as well.

The reason for the poll? It’s to see what kind of research most of you are doing, and it’s also a wake up call to those that just assume their site is well designed based solely on analytics.

Here is the poll: Have you ever watched at least five people complete a task on your website?

Archive of Web Usability and Design Polls

 

mri1

A little more than a week ago, I wrote a post about forms, and how a moving company could improve their conversions by asking less questions. I found another site today, Vancouver MRI Clinic, that is trying to accomplish a similar task for their visitors. This post is just a little comparison of the two.

Comparing the Forms

If you compare what the moving site is trying to accomplish, and what this MRI Clinic is trying to accomplish you will find their are very similar. They both want to get the visitor to schedule an appointment, and both will have to get more specific details afterwards.

The MRI Clinic site knows they will need more specifics, and have focused their form to only ask the essential items. Forget first and last name, forget address, they don’t even want a city. They don’t ask why you want one or anything. All of that can be figured out with a phone call or email, and that is all they ask for.

Comparing it to the movers form, you can easily see which form will most likely be filled out. The first reason is that the clinics form it is simply cleaner. There are no drop down menus, tricky questions to answer, no mandatory fields specified (they all are), and even the phone number field is easier to fill out. It’s three fields vs. twelve, and on the net with its finicky users that’s huge. Do you think the moving site could still book the reservation using the clinics form? I do.

movers 150x150

Small Form Equals More Space

The final advantage I wanted to point out about the Vancouver MRI Clinic’s site is that because their form is small, it doesn’t take up the entire home page like it does on the moving site. It allows room for an introduction message, selling points, contact information, and more.

Keep those forms small if you can, and make sure you only ask for what is essential. If you need them to give you more informaiton, ask them later, and you could even ask them right after they hit submit.