5 Things That Your Online Forms Should Never Do

Posted on | February 1, 2014 | Comments Off on 5 Things That Your Online Forms Should Never Do

Hey Web site owner! I’m here to complete a form on your site because I want something you’re selling! Isn’t that great? Let me just get through this form and then you can have my money. Here we go…

Why Did You “Forget” What I Just Typed?

I finally get to the end of your form and hit “Submit” when I’m presented with a new page containing some very angry red text that scolds me about not entering a valid phone number. I feel mildly attacked, but it’s cool, I’ll go fix it. I click the “Re-enter my information” link and, well, what do you know, the form is blank. Awesome, let me fill all that back in and hope I get it right this time!

Why Did You Allow Me to Type the Wrong Thing?

Just had a thought as I was re-entering all my data. How about when I type the wrong thing in one of your fields, you go ahead and tell me before I get to the next field? Don’t want dashes in the phone number field? No problem, but that’s good information to have before I tab over to the next field.

Which brings up another point…

Why Are You Making Me Tab Out of Order?

When I hit the “Tab” button, and I might be crazy for expecting this, but I believe the cursor should move to the next field in the series. I couldn’t help noticing that when I hit tab it feels a bit like playing Whack-a-Mole since I never know which field I’m going to end up in next. I like surprises like anyone else, but, no, let me correct that. I DON’T LIKE SUPRISES!

Why Are You Using an Indecipherable CAPTCHA?

One last thing. Your CAPTCHA sucks. I’ve refreshed it three or for times now and it still looks like a Rorschach test. Could be a butterfly, could be the word “BlAtZ.” How about you choose a different CAPTCHA provider that actually provides human-readable text. Or maybe something cool and not sucky?

Why Did You Forget Who I Am?

OK, I somehow made it through your form, no small task. It just occurred to me that I want something else, so let me go order it. Hey, why are you asking me to sign in? We’ve just spent boatloads of quality time together and I told you all my personal information yet somehow I’m suddenly a stranger? Alright, tell you what, I’m going to just head over to Amazon. The prices are better anyway.

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