James Titcumb

This kind of lazy form creation really annoys me. This company is trying to make users jump through hoops just so their form developers don’t have to bother reformatting the data into an acceptable format to them.

It is absolutely critical when developing a form that must convert well to accept pretty much anything in the form. For example if I want to write “15,000″ or even “£15,000″ in the amount box for my insurance, then let me! Don’t tell me it’s wrong, because it isn’t. The developers here have made a big mistake, and although I was just testing out their form and wasn’t going to buy a product, this sort of thing really does affect form conversion.

So here’s a big hint to form developers on business-critical forms that must convert well: don’t be lazy – let the customer enter whatever they like, and try and interpret the data the best you can. Even better – if you can’t truly determine what the user has entered, provide some feedback.

Take for example an amount field for loans, insurance and so on. Valid entries could be:

• £15000
• £15,000
• 15,000
• 15.000
• 15.000,00
• 15000.00
• 15,000.-

You might think “well my form is only for UK customers, so the European format isn’t used” – wrong. Many UK customers use the European 15.000,00 format. The problem here is trying to determine where decimal places really are.

My preferred solution is to use Javascript to convert the input into what we think the customer is trying to enter, for example converting these numbers:

• £15,000 > 15000
• 15,000.- > 15000
• 15,000.00 -> 1500000
• 15.000,00 – 1500000

The conversion here could be some Javascript that removes all non-numeric characters and replaces what is in the input box when the focus blurs away. With any luck the user will notice the change, and notice that in the last two instances, the number is 1.5 million, not the 15.000,00 they thought they’d entered. The customer will then tend to go back to the box, and simply delete the extra zeros.

Enhancements to this idea could be to highlight the box and display a subtle hint that the number the customer entered was changed, e.g. “Is this number right?”, or if the number seems too high for the expected range of the input box. Say for example, the likelihood of an insurance quote above 1,000,000 is pretty slim, why not display this “Is this number right?” message if the value is 500,000 or above.

There are many tips and tricks that you can use to make filling in your form so much easier – and I highly recommend doing them. Displaying a big red warning message at the top stating that my postcode was invalid is a huge drop-off point, and you will see users dropping off from the form at this point. You have to help the user, not make them jump through hoops. Encourage them to fill in the form, not tell them they’re doing it all wrong.