In an attempt to be hardcore in 2008, I decided, at Christine's insistence, to sign up for the New Balance Half Iron Man in Victoria, BC. Christine, Manstery Guest, and I are going to swim, bike, and run until we puke. Fun times! I went to the sign up page, filled out the information, and submitted my form. Upon looking at my form results, I noticed some errors that I made, but I didn't catch any of them until after I had submitted everything.
The first errors I made are highlighted below:
I automatically assumed that the fields were first name THEN last name, not last name/first name; thus, I registered as "Kelley Rebecca." I got this lovely confirmation email stating as such:
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And then someone emailed me with this:
Wow, I sure do look like an idiot. Nevertheless, I intuitively thought that the form would go "First/Last," so I hastily filled it out that way and it ended up being wrong.
Second issue with the form:
It auto-filled "BC" and "Canada" for the Province and Country information, even though I'm from Seattle, WA. I actually correctly typed in both the city and state, but I overlooked the Country field, so I registered as Kelley Rebecca from Seattle, WA Canada. Grrrrr...
Next issue:
I have absolutely no idea what my estimated swim time would be for 1.2 miles. I haven't swum further than six laps in a most-likely non-regulation size swimming pool my freshman year of high school (so, ten years ago). I turned to Jane, Ms. Fancy Pants Collegiate Swimmer, for a ballpark figure. She was of no help whatsoever:
jane.copland: for an hour?
Rebecca: no, for 1.9 km
jane.copland: like, how far can you swim in an hour? oh
Rebecca: distance
jane.copland: um
Rebecca: I'm signing up for that half iron man and they need an estimate of how long it'll take me to swim that far
jane.copland: well... hmm 2km. So the fastest i could swim that at my best would be about 25 minutes...so
Rebecca: well eff you!
Moving onto the next one:
Okay, is this 1 to 10 in order of importance, meaning that each answer only has one number assigned to it, or can I score multiple answers with a 10? This wasn't made clear to me, so I just randomly scored my responses and didn't put any of them in order.
Next:
Upon reviewing my completed form and the answers, I saw that my responses for the Medical Questionnaire section were cut off once I typed past the little text box. I wrote something along the lines of "Seasonal allergies; currently on medication (Flonase, Allegra) and allergy injections," and the form, in a somewhat comical manner, only caught "Seasonal allergies; currently on medication" (WHAT MEDICATION?!! NOOOOOOOO!).
Next up is this section:
Where are these training clinics held? There is absolutely no further information about the clinics other than "Would you like to join--if so, $95, please." I'm assuming that the clinics are held somewhere in Victoria, so no, I don't want to sign up for them. If there were local ones in Seattle, perhaps I would, but introducing completely new information halfway down the form without any sort of clarification is confusing.
I went back to the form and tried to intentionally break it--I first hit "Submit" without filling out any of the information. I received a notification to "Please Enter your last name. Use Your browser's back button to return to the form page" (weird capitalization kept intact). I hit the back browser, entered only my last name, and resubmitted the form. The next error message I got was, you guessed it, "Please Enter your first name..." You're kidding me--each error is brought up only one at a time? What a frustrating, slow procedure for the user. Something more standard would be to take the user back to the form, highlight the missing or incorrect information in red, and display a message that says "Please fill out the information highlighted below," or something to that effect.
Not to toot my own horn, but I'd say that I'm an above-average user, so for me to get tripped up on some of the triathlon signup form elements is pretty bad. Now, you could argue that I just flew through it and didn't notice the subtle changes here and there and the non-standard format, but I'd argue that so will plenty of other users, too. This is where I highlight the title of this post: your users aren't intuitive, which is why your form needs to be. Keep things standard--don't put information out of order, don't auto fill fields unless they're fields that users had already filled in at a previous stage, and don't make assumptions about your user. I usually see forms list your first name first. I am not from Canada. I have no clue how fast I swim. I'm not sure how to order my power bar preferences. I have allergies, and it would be beneficial for you to know what medication I'm taking for said allergies. I am confused about your cryptic coaching clinics. And I don't want to keep hitting the back button to fix my errors one at a time until they're all correct.
Anyway, this post was full of a lot of "Don'ts" and not as many "Do's," and I'll be happy to author a separate post on how to make as user-friendly a form as possible, but for now this has gotten a bit lengthy so I'll drop a few links on how to create great web forms, tips for boosting web form conversions, and a checklist of what makes a good form. In the meantime, I'll leave you with a mental image of Kelley Rebecca from Seattle, WA Canada, floundering in a lake and cursing Jane for her built-in gills and webbed toes. Man, that'd make for a good cartoon...
I am Ironman
I am swimmer
I am runner
I am biker
buuh, but - snif - the form is to tough!
I ca - an -nt make it.
What?
Hit "back"?
Again?
Why am doing this to myself. I need to stop.
head. spinning. I will just rest here for a moment before the next "back" click.
Hope I do good in the event :)
Hahaha, eff you.
yes Ironwoman.
Oh, Pat. Water all over the keyboard again.
If you didn't live in the US, you'd be used to changing your 'country' option on every form you ever filled in online...
amen to that
Having lived in the U.S. since 2002, this might be an outdated story, but I remember filling out forms when I lived in New Zealand and being asked for zip codes. We don't - or at least, didn't - use zip codes and very few people have any idea what their zip code is. I'd always come across forms that required a zip code if they were to be submitted.
So you'd try and make one up (1000 or whatever) and the form would scold you for not have entered a valid zip code. This would happen on forms that were perfectly valid in New Zealand. Absolutely ridiculous.
One form once wouldn't let me pass Go without a state. So my address was in Napier, Alabama, New Zealand.
Same problem from the UK. Doesn't everyone use 90210? That's the only zip code I know...!
Use 98105; it's my favourite :)
Good Forms should actually either show/hide fields based on a pre-determined list of geographical constraints (just like you talked about with having no zip codes in new zealand). Either that, or correct form validation.
I always use 90210 when filling out US forms that don't allow for Canadian 6-digit postal codes :)
Great post! Though I do have a quick question, shouldn't the 'Manstery Guest' actually be the Mister-y Guest?
Just curious
Scott suggested Mr. E. Guest.
This is spooky Rebecca - I have to say that time and time again you guys post something that is exactly what I'm currently working on!
<picks up the phone to Fox Mulder>
Anyway, I was going through the analytics on our forms yesterday and saw we had just over 1% completion for one in particular - so I toddled off and had a go myself - no wonder people are dropping off at this form, it's actually 3 independent forms that someone thought would be a good idea to stick next to each other with no separators. Since then I've got one of our designers to fix it, and he's not allowed to eat or sleep until it makes sense :)
Forms often get the least amount of love from designers... they're unsexy, and fiddly to name the elements and post to a script. Often they're just dropped into a page template with a quick check to make sure they're working. But I'm starting to come around to the idea now that they are one of the most rewarding site elements you can put time into, in terms of conversion and even ROI.
Your forms should have a consistant style that is easy on the eye, and intuitive fields without being intrusive (I remember one that wouldn't allow me to enter one of my .info domains because it wasn't on it's list of real domains).
On a completely different note, I've got family in Toronto, Ajax and Gananoque. 'tis a small world :)
On this same topic (sorta).... another element of forms which annoys me is when you sign up, but the site emails you a password instead of letting you pick your own, and it is even MORE annoying when they say they just emailed it and it took 3 hours to get to me (that actually happened)... 3 hours from now I'm not going to be interested in this...
Kudos on the post, Ms. Kelley Rebecca. It raises a lot of important points that we all need to keep in mind when setting up forms - most importantly that there is going to be a human being on the other end trying to make sense of things, so usability testing is a must.
Kudos as well on being bad-ass enough to sign up for the Half Iron Man.
ps I've only worn New Balance sneakers for the last 5 years - I bought one pair and never looked back. They're awesome.
pps Anyone else think Robert Downey, Jr. is going to kick ass in Iron Man? He's pretty much the last person I pictured playing a super hero, but somehow I think it's going to work.
I like how your post is on target, your P.S. a little less so, and your P.P.S. ends up just being about Iron Man. It's like I'm watching a flow chart of your attention span. ;)
Attentiwhat? https://imagesource5d.allposters.com/watermarker/21-2197-TO8AD00Z.jpg
Haha, I was still half-asleep at my desk when I wrote that. At least that's the excuse I'm going with...
hey rebecca, what's wrong with canada ? ;)
Nothing at all--in fact, I'm from one of the few places in the U.S. where you have to drive south to get to Canada--Toronto was a hop, skip, and a jump away when I was a girl. :)
Nothing! Seattle probably has more in common with Vancouver than it does with a lot of the U.S. And up until I was 13, I thought that Seattle was in Canada. Disclaimer: I'm not from the U.S. and I have a totally valid story why this was an obvious thing to think. I promise.
I have to wonder how many people include multivariate testing on their forms. It strikes me that you could have a terrific landing page then lose half your conversions on a poorly designed form.In particular, obstacles to conversion may include;Poor form validation resulting in unusable data from a prospect.Good validation routines but poor handling in user presentation wiping out even the valid fields.Good validation but failure to flag the user exactly what the problem is, where and how to fix it. (Even after 10 years on the internet, this one gets me quite often especially buying from eCommerce sites. There have been times it was less effort to take my business elsewhere, what a shame!)Confusing/cluttered forms overwhelming the user (info overload)Takes too much time to complete the formsLack of visible privacy policy spooks prospects awayNo handling of back button causing duplicate submissions or wipes out the form fieldsAnd all of these issues are on top of Rebecca's usability issues. So, how many conversions might we be losing when numerous small issues add up?Mike
I filled out a form today that told me the captcha was wrong... because it was case sensitive and didn't mention it. And then it would randomly reset some of the variables I had set correctly on the first attempt like city, coutry, etc causing the stupid thing to spit out a new error message and then rest yet another random variable. And I had to reenter my password on each attempt - twice. It took me 6 times to get it all *perfect*!
Now this time happened to be on someone else's dime. But if it had been my own I would have been major pissed instead of somewhat frustrated.
I'm a software developer and consider myself good with computers. I filled out one very long form that took about 15 minutes to complete. I made some mistakes. They wiped out all of my responses when I tried submitting! I tried going back to see if they browser would help me but that didn't work. It took me 3 attempts and most of an hour to finally get it submitted. I felt like a complete idiot and I'm a software developer.
What is very important about web forms is testing. You never find a good decision only by studying theory. By hiring multiple people who see a website for the first time and studying their behavior, you can learn things about your web form that you would have never thought before. I've had similar experience when users were stuck at "Display Name" field trying to figure out if it is going to be unique or this is just their real name and what is it for...
Great post, Kelley, um..., Rebecca, um..., Seattle? Wait, why is my database so messed up?
It's a shame designers don't pay more attention to forms. They may not be the sexiest part of the site, but they are more critical than any other aspect - bad forms make or break a site and a business.
There's a great design variation on Maslow's Hierarcy of Needs; the design hierarchy of needs (from bottom of the pyramid to top, most to least important):
FunctionalityReliabilityUsabilityProficiencyCreativity
Forms are about functionality. Miss this, and your site is screwed. Web design is not like graphic design - creativity is the last thing a web designer needs to worry about.
I can't think of anything more important to the end-user than filling out the Power Bar questionairre. Where's "Tastes like shoe rubber" on that list?
Being a usability guy and former event-industry techie, I'm amazed how poor some of the forms are from organizations whose primary job is to produce forms. I run some 5Ks, and the sign-up forms (I won't name the companies) can be shockingly bad.
Oh, and kudos for signing up. My wife's a marathoner and has done some short (Olympic?) triathlons; I'm contemplating a half-marathon one of these days, but there's no way I'd survive the swimming.
I've done a half and a full marathon, but no triathlons, so this will be my first. The swimming part definitely makes me nervous. I have no swimming stamina, so time to start training...
one word: floaties.
In 2006 I did a 1-mile swim in the Chesapeake Bay and it took me about 45 minutes.
I was not trying to be at all competitive in it - at one point I stopped and treaded water so I could chat up one of the female kayakers monitoring the race (her with her cute hat and sunglasses, me floating in the water with my black wet suit looking very much like a manatee - I often wonder why she never called).
And I'm not anywhere close to being any kind of athlete - so figure you should do way better than me.
I only trained about 3 or 4 days a week in the pool, but I will say this:
Training for an open water swim by doing laps in a pool is like training to climb a mountain by walking on a treadmill set at an incline.
There is hardly any way - except for actual open water - to simulate for waves, or current, or what they call the cuisinart start with all of the other swimmers legs and arms chopping at you as they swim by.
Plus - figure there will be absolutely zero visibility so you go off course a lot, unless you pop your head up above the water every 10 strokes or so to see where you're going and/or you have a built in gyroscope.
So good luck to you ;-)
Luckily for me some of the area we were swimming in was only about 3 or 4 feet deep so it was actually easier to walk it than to swim it - at least as far as staying on course goes.
And yet I still finished close to last.
Everything you've said about pool versus open water training is true. I preferred the wall-to-wall, black line down the middle, lane rope on each side variety of swimming :)
Off topic? Me? Never.
"Manatee? More like a Sea Cow" - Jim Gaffigan
j/k Vin I'm sure you looked nothing like a manatee.
You live in the ocean cuz you ain't got no job!
Haha..."I have a layer of blubber to keep me warm, I don't need a job!"
Probably live off HotPockets too!
I got talked into a 'sprint' triathlon back at the end of university by a basketball training buddy. Turns out that basketball and weights aren't exactly the right form of training for swimming and running (I used to mountain bike a fair bit so the cycling was ok). I could hardly lift myself out of the water at the end of the swimming.
The only thing that cheered me up as I hauled myself around was the joy of having grown up in Yorkshire (where the triathlon was) and seeing the reactions of southerners to the fact the triathlon was on the side of a hill near Ilkley ;)
I'm sure you'll be fine, though, Rebecca!
PS when I say 'sprint' triathlon, that was their terminology, not mine. It took me well over an hour.
Like the post, very informative. A form can completely ruin any sort of "conversion process" through requiring way too much information ("what, I need to give you the name of my favorite cartoon when I was little?! That's REQUIRED?!"), having weird usability issues like you highlighted in the post & otherwise.
For instance, I have a client where, for their online newsletter sign-up form, they required address, phone number & city & state. After changing it up and not having those fields as being required, they had a lot more people signing up. I mean, I understand if it's a form to sign-up for a print publication or something but having to input your address for an online newsletter? Say what!
I think it's super, super, super important for whoever designs the form (or if you're an SEO and doing an SEO evaluation & recommendation for a site) to take an extra look at how well their form is designed and what fields are "required" and which aren't.
Nice post!
Thanks for the information Rebeca, I don't usually read you to be honest, I usually read Rand, his English is more international for us who have English as a second language. Some times you use too many slangs, I understand much of your audience are native English speakers, for some reason Rand manage to do it in a different way.
The resources you include in the article are great, thanks, I saved them in my favorites for tomorrow's reading. Is it possible to link for you guys so the link opens in a new window? It's for USABILITY purpose if you know what I mean, just try to be one of us reading the articles and moving back and forth from one article to the other. Thanks seomozers your articles are very much appreciated.
Have you tried right-clicking on links and opening them in new windows or tabs?
Thank you for the feedback. I admit that my blogging style is more conversational and casual, whereas Rand is more informative and a bit more academic at times. I do appreciate you reading this post, though--I'll try to scale back on the slang from time to time. :)
Thanks Rebeca for replying to my comments, I tried the right click tip, now I know how it works.
Hi Rebecca - Great post. I've fallen for that first name/last name thing before too.
And I hate the autofill - it sucks. We had an autofill on our old system that automatically put in todays date and time - so if you forgot to change it, the customer wasn't booked in properly. It caused so many problems.
Good luck with the challenge. I hope it's a bit more straightforward than the form was.
I generally hate web forms. Most are designed by people who never tested the form, nor asked anyone else to test it... epscially people located in some other country.
For addresses, I especially hate scrolling through hundreds of countries to get to "UK". Extra points if I can go "over the top of the list" and can then scroll up from the bottom.
By all means list EVERY country in alphabetical order, but put the top half a dozen most popular choices at the very top of the list, before "A".
Once the country is selected, ONLY present a list of states and regions that exist in that country. Make sure the Post Code/ZIP Code box is big enough to take all the characters used by the system in that country. Do the same for telephone numbers. Not all the world uses the 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx format.
If you need a univeral format for dates, see RFC 3339.
100% good points. The only problem is that New Zealand will never be one of the half-dozen most popular choices. Unless the sheep have an interest in said form, of course.
I remember having trouble with the phone number field when my number was 04-499-28-something-something. American forms didn't like my "04" and they didn't think it was okay that the number contained nine, not eleven, numbers.
I actually like Google suggest type auto-fill feature in various form fields.
By all means list EVERY country in alphabetical order, but put the top half a dozen most popular choices at the very top of the list, before "A".
I personally hate when this is done, because it's usually only done with the US, and then the rest of the countries are alphabetical. If a form is for a North American or international site, why do only Americans get the special treatment? (I'm Canadian, BTW)
I'd much rather see every country listed alphabetically, but have the list jump to the appropriate letter if typed on the keyboard.
As much as I can appreciate your sentiment, it sounds like you want it that way out of spite for americans...I don't think something as trivial as an alphabetical list should be turned into a topic of principle.
All the most popular countries should be at the top, including both United States and canada, I don't even mind if Canada is first :)
My comment wasn't meant to be spiteful towards Americans at all, I just find it frustrating when a form is targeted at a broad audience and some countries are given a priority level that mine isnt. I just find it usually occurs with the US being the only country listed at the top.
So maybe the question is really what the criteria is for "most popular country"? And does that mean that if you're not from one of those top countries, your user experience should be different and/or more difficult?
Edited for grammer
I think it's legitimate when your site has a defined target market. I have a client who does limited international business, but the vast majority in North Amarica; we put both "United States" and "Canada" at the top because it makes sense for our users.
For a truly international site, though, with a diverse clientele, I tend to agree; either make everyone equal or try to use localization to help assist people. That's what I'd rather see ultimately; an alphabetical pulldown that auto-jumps to the most likely country based on localization preferences.
Edited for Double-Comment Screwup.
No, but you can come to a conclusion based on data. There's a point at which the list would become unreasonable and then it would only make sense to go alphabetically from there, but you would have to come up with a median judgement.
Sorry to break it to you, but Canada is very far on the list of countries by population, and even further on the list of countries whos people use the internet(thought admittedly has a high percentage of internet users according to it's population), it's ranked i'm guessing somewhere in the bottom 50% of that list. Africa has twice as many users as canada. But you would want to factor in the target audience, obviously Africa would be of no interest to an english book publisher. Like I said, Canada is definitely on the list, but you can't pretend it's an internet powerhouse.
Also, before I get thumbed down, this is all based on fact...Please understand I have nothing against canada, I've been to vancouver myself and I loved it.
Doh, I just lost my reply cuz I wasnt logged in! :(
I agree that Canada certainly isnt an internet powerhouse. I think Dr. Pete summarized my point alot more eloquently than I did: consider using it when you have a defined audience, and not when you have an international reach.
Form designers should take the time to consider their market, and not make assumptions that just because its a triathalon taking place in Victoria that all -- or even a majority of -- registrants will be Canadian.
It's rather similar to being forced to install a program in "English (USA)" :)
There's an amusing part to UK Govt IT departments who lock the settings on PC's in English (USA)....
Not the smartest bunch at times lol.
Nice post. Usability is always something to keep in mind. You might be bringing tonnes of visitors to your site, but if they can't successfully sign up or log in, you've just lost a sale/click/conversion/etc.
found this the other day:
livevalidation.com
it's not perfect though, for example, when completing your email it will take '[email protected]', which is a valid TLD, but since most people have '.com' suffixes, the manner in which this validation can accept an unfinished email entry is confusing to the user.
Try applying for grad school online. Then we'll talk about shitty online forms.
I had to fill out 15 fields of information to verify my Florida residency for UCF, whereas FSU barely mentioned it. UCF told me to fill out my employment history in Florida if I wanted my residency to "be reviewed." I wasn't sure if I wanted it reviewed or not. I was pretty sure I was a resident... why invite additional scrutiny?
Rebecca,
<ShamelessPlug>I'm a triathlon coach</ShamelessPlug>. Do you need a training program, or even just a touch of guidance? Drop me a line to let me know.
Thanks and good luck!
I'm definitely planning on showing up at her swim practices and yelling at her :)
I'd be so shocked that I was witnessing Jane yelling that I'd probably drown. Jane never yells!
Excellent post Rebecca,
I was just looking at a client's website thinking about how I could improve our conversion and that was something that was floating around on the outskirts of my thoughts.
I will definately being going over his checkout form as well as his e-mail mailing list page.
Thanks!
It's not just online forms either. I filled one out today for an insurance company that was full of ambiguous questions, and had one place that gave two lines for you to write 1/2 page of response in.
I wonder how much of that information ever gets used.
Reminds me of a survey I took where the possible answers did not match the questions:
Don't these seem like answers to different questions? Especially the second and last ones. And this on:
The first for should be multiple select but they used radio buttons.
What was also odd was most of the questions put the best answer at the top but a few put the best answer at the bottom. I don't know if that was random or deliberate to see if poeple are just BSing their way through.
The form was not properly designed. Although most of their questions are "required" as a safety measure to the event, but it could be further improve in terms of the way questions are asked and the options given. Lets take Country for an instance : If they want to auto fill the Country input field, they should use ip address to match according to the country. Eg. 72.3.253.1 belongs to US and the Country input field will appear to be US.
Think of the user when designing such forms because ultimately it is the users whom will be using it to submit information that are required by the company. If information is incorrect, the company will be wasting resources tracking back.
You are way too complimentary to me. Besides, I haven't gone swimming since before Pubcon and haven't competed since 2006. I'd be lucky to complete 2km in 35 minutes now, let alone 25.
Oh, whatever. I'd be lucky to stay afloat for this damn race.
I still can't get past the fact that they limited the swim time options to hours and minutes. 1.2 miles...WTF?
Haha, did you want them to add days, too?
See. That's why they need to hire peoplle like you to develop forms!
Just don't forget your water wings! :-)
Do you know what? No one - absolutely none of you - have ever seen me swim. I could have been making the whole thing up. That would have been a good trick.
hmmm, this is true. If so its been a very successful marketing campaign. :-D Had me fooled. ;-)
I'm better at viral marketing than any of you know :)
That's true. When I finally met you in person, I was shocked to find that you were 3'1" and Vietnamese.
I should probably add a :) to that.
that could be bad too ;]
Core issue that I have experienced with the forms is webmaster/business person feels that they should collect as much information as they can, just in case they can't get the customer back.
There needs to be a goal for each form and list of items they MUST have to meet the goal. Order of each of the items should be prioritized.
And at the end of day, if you care about sign ups - There are higher chances to get one if you lower the barrier.
What do you all think?
Good Post. It pays to pay attention to details on the request forms. I myself have backed out of online registration when I am not able to 1) properly submit my info 2) don't understand what I am asked for.
Also, thanks for the resources on online form conversions!