7. Cumbersome Forms

People complained about numerous form-related problems. The basic issue? Forms are used too often on the web and tend to be too big, featuring too many unnecessary questions and options. In the long run, we need more of an applications metaphor for Internet interaction design. For now, users are confronted by numerous forms and we must make each encounter as smooth as possible. There are five basic guidelines to this end:

• Cut questions that are not needed. For example, do you really need a salutation (Mr/Ms/Mrs/Miss/etc.)?

• Don’t make fields mandatory unless they truly are.

• Support autofill to the max by avoiding unusual field labels (just use Name, Address, etc.).

• Set the keyboard focus to the first field when the form is displayed. This saves a click.

• Allow flexible input of phone numbers, credit card numbers, and the like. It’s easy to have the computer eliminate characters like parentheses and extra spaces. This is particularly important for elderly users, who tend to suffer when sites require data entry in unfamiliar formats. Why lose orders because a user prefers to enter a credit card number in nicely chunked, four-digit groups rather than an undifferentiated, error-prone blob of 16 digits?

Forms that violate guidelines for internationalization got dinged by many overseas users. If entering a Canadian postal code generates an error message, you shouldn’t be surprised if you get very little business from Canada.