Designing Web Sites That Sell: Components of Commerce
Forms
Commerce sites rely on forms for many critical interactions in the experience: searching, sign-up, log-in, shopping cart, and checkout.
But as interaction design specialist Adam Baker reminds us, people don’t like filling out forms in the real world. Although viewed as a nuisance (i.e., taxes, registration, banking) they are a necessity of doing business. Customers especially don’t like filling out forms online. When designed poorly, Web forms are distracting, time consuming, and take control away from the user.
Your team’s interaction, presentation, and usability specialists must work together to carefully create simple, clear, and logical forms that lead customers to a rewarding experience. Baker has devised an insightful set of guidelines for form design:
- Forms are mechanical by nature, but humans are not. Simplify the form until it has the fewest number of options, all of which are essential to each task.
- Use controls, such as radio buttons and pull-down menus, for the same purpose that they are used in a customer’s operating system. The behavior of these controls will already be familiar. Remember: radio buttons are used to select a single choice among a set of options; check boxes are used when multiple choices are allowed.
- Collect information in bits and pieces at times that a customer will find appropriate. Asking for too much information up front appears confrontational. For example, don’t make customers give a mailing address to create a new account or become a member. Collect that information during the checkout process.
- Determine the minimum amount of information necessary for each task, so customers don’t become frustrated or overwhelmed. Do not ask for information that isn’t pertinent, such as “How did you find out about our Web site?” while on the cart or checkout page. This question is best left for after the checkout has been completed.
- Ensure that the customer will never have to provide the same information twice. This rule is equally applicable to a unique visit as a repeat visit. For example, if the customer has stated a shipping address in previous purchases, just ask them to verify their preferences upon return.
- Don’t make them fill out the form again.
- Test the form with the target profile to make sure it’s relevant to the task at hand. Eliminate anything that isn’t practical. Resist the temptation to add lengthy instructions to patch a usability problem. Shoppers rarely read instructional text. If a form requires a lot of explanation, then it needs further simplification.
Excerpted from “Designing Web Sites That Sell” (Peachpit Press).
Peachpit Press is offering this book at a discount to creativepro.com readers. Follow this link.
This article was last modified on January 8, 2023
This article was first published on September 18, 2002
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