|
Deliberate Errors
Did
you bother to work it out, or did you just mindlessly click the link,
hoping I'd tell you the answers? If you were lazy, go
back and work it
out for yourself first.
For those who did have an attempt, how do your
answers compare to these answers?
-
The form has a field that is meaningless
("Type of Request"). Meaningless fields are one more way to
stop potential customers from contacting you. Why put obstacles in
their way? Many companies do this, far too often. If a field isn't required, do you really
need it?
-
Non-existant or - worse - misleading form
field validation. Far too often I see companies with
poor project management methodologies ending up building pages where
developers have a guess at validation. If you need a phone number to
be given in a particular format, provide an example
to your user. But if you don't give an example,
never fail the validation just because your customer couldn't guess at what you needed. That's just throwing
sales away!
-
A "Notes" field (or, it could also be "Further
Information", "Other Detail", "Special Request, etc). Allowing the
customer to provide you with non-specific information provides an
excellent opportunity to get unsolicited feedback. You might get
positive feedback that can be passed around staff, posted to the
intranet, or put into a company magazine. You might find constructive criticism that can
be used to help in staff training. You might
even get a sales lead. Or you might get garbage
than can be dealt with appropriately. But ask yourself - why wouldn't you allow customers to talk
to you?
-
Combined FirstName-LastName. It has
always amused me how many websites create different text boxes for
names. Unless there's an excellent (and I mean
excellent) lead generation, profiling, or customer
management tool in your business, you probably don't need to
break down the full names of your customers. So don't put an extra barrier to contacting you in
their way.
-
Don't treat your customers like they're
idiots. Why do many websites ask you to type your email address in
twice? The answer, of course, is so that you don't mis-type it,
and then they can't contact you. But why is the company making the
assumption about you that you're too stupid to get your email address
right? They don't ask you to type your phone number in
twice. And how many customers simply copy and paste the
first entry anyway? Treat your customers like they are morons, and they'll quickly show their appreciation to
your competitors.
Now, here's an example of someone who gets it
right: The UK bank, Alliance &
Leicester, have really nailed
form filling. Check out this
screenshot. They've got error messages in red, next to the
relevant box (and even used green for non-compulsory-but-still-important
fields), and a helpful red 'X' next to those required fields which have
been missed. I give them 8 marks out of 10 for this effort.
They're let down by a non-compulsory middle name field (if the Marketing or
Legal Team need this, then make it compulsory, otherwise leave it out
and don't alienate customers with no middle names), and a spurious
'Confirm Email' box, which is doubly-unnecessary since 'Email Address' itself
isn't a required field. However, a good result from Alliance & Leicester in a field marred by
poor competitors.
|