Take a quick tour around
some blogs,
and it won't be long before you find one venting
frustrations about the problems faced when
trying to
do something as seemingly simple as make an
order
or fill in a request form online. On one
online help
forum, for example, José is advised to add
00000 as
his postal code because he is not allowed to
register
his hardware unless he has one. On a blog, Tim,
whose credit card was stolen while he was on
holiday,
has had to lie to his credit card company and
make up
a postal code for the place he is staying,
because his
card company won't take his details without it.
Everywhere we look on the Internet, there are
forms
which seem determined not only not to let the
correct
information through, but also to prevent a
prospect
from becoming your customer.
The anecdotes are everywhere, and so are the
figures
which show what a huge problem badly designed
web
forms are. A survey from 2008, commissioned by
Tealeaf and carried out by Harris Interactive
, found
that a hugely significant 87% of adults
attempting to
carry out an online transaction in the
previous year had
encountered problems with that process; and that
41% of those would give up on the transaction or
move to a competitor as a result of these
problems.
84% of those who faced problems would share
their
experiences with others, on- and offline.
The costs of lost customs to the companies
concerned
is enormous.
Yet judging by the forms we are faced with
online daily, it would seem that few of those
responsible for designing or programming
forms have ever come across one of these
anecdotes, or have ever had problems filling
in a form themselves.
Or, more likely, they are in a state of
denial or simply complacent.
It is a privilege for your company when a
customer chooses to provide you with his or
her information through your web form.
You should be bending over backwards to make
your forms as quick and painless to complete
as possible. In reality, most web forms make
customers jump through hoops to fill them in,
constantly placing hurdles for them to cross,
especially where forms have been designed to
fulfill the demands of the back-office
processes with little reference to the customer.
It should be seen as a common courtesy to
make a web form as usable as possible,
coaxing your customer through the process of
disgorging his or her information in as
frictionless a manner as possible. It never
does a company any harm to have happy
customers and it is always negative to have
unhappy ones. But apart from this, there are
very good business reasons for making forms
usable. Fewer of your customers will give up
on the process before completion, and the
more usable a form is, the better the quality
of the data that is collected through it will
be.
More on earning the privilege of your customers' information online...
