Let Them Know

Tell the users why they need to scroll to the bottom of the page. Put offers and buttons at the bottom that are useful to your clientele but don’t expect them to find these on their own. Announce what they will find at the bottom of the page above the fold so they are more likely to continue down to see what is below. On the way you can fill the page with useful, important information because you have a captive audience.

Photos

Images are a great way to get people to scroll downwards. Make sure the top of the image is visible above the fold and people will not be able to resist scrolling down to see the rest of the image. If you then fill the images down the page so that each teases into the next section like a path to the bottom of the page, you will find more people going all the way down and fully understanding your website.

Give People Short Cuts

Your page does not always have to link to another page. Often if you have extensive information “below the fold” it is because you are trying to keep the costs down of running multiple pages. Because of this, it might behoove you to put links to other portions of the page. This means teasing the information at the top of the page and giving people a button that will then instantly take them to the headline they are interested in. While it only takes them down the same page, it gives you the opportunity to tease other information and gets them below the fold.

Keep a Blog

Run your website with new information such as “tips” or a blog that warrants users coming back daily. For this reason, they are likely to continue to scroll down in case they have missed anything you have posted. By keeping your website evolving with new articles you are not only increasing traffic but also increasing the amount of time each of these people spends on your page which ultimately translates into more customers or subscribers. Getting people to see your site as a destination adds value to your site as well as your company.

Those are 4 of the most effective tips for getting users to scroll below the fold on your page. It is not always easy to get this done, but with useful information and the tips mentioned above, it will be very possible. Users will always show interest in any page when they discover that the entire website has always given them good information on the things they want to know.

This is a guest post by Sam Mauzy. Sam is an Internet marketer and enjoys blogging about industry related subjects. When not working for an seo company, he can be found learning and reading about conversion rates optimization.

1. Customer Needs – The #1 way to improve your business website is to have a clear understanding of your customer and potential customer needs.  Why do they visit your website? What type of information are they looking for? The reasons customers may visit your site may be different than the reasons potential customers may visit. Try to make the site usable for both.  Remember that retaining customers is much easier (and profitable) than acquiring new ones (although both certainly are important).
2. Usability – Once you understand what information and functionality your website audiences are looking for, try to make it as easy as possible for them to find the information they want and perform any actions they want to do. It may be helpful to map out all the various actions that someone may want to do on your website (from the needs above) and take a look at how many steps each takes and whether the next step is clear (good analytics can also help with this).
3. Branding – Branding is important both offline and online so that people recognize your company (which is why it’s also important to protect your logos through trademarking). Good branding on a company website makes it clear that this site is one of your official customer touchpoints. Using branding consistently across your online presence will help provide recognition when you create a profile in a new place.
4. Obvious Contact Information – If someone wants to contact you, can they easily find out how? Ideally, having a phone number (and possibly email) on every page can make it much easier for people to contact you when they want to (from any page on your site!).
5. Clear Call to Action – When someone comes to your site on a page other than your home page (or even on your home page), is it clear what step they should take next if they’re interested? If someone wants to buy from you, are you relying on them to figure out that they should fill out the form on your contact page?
6. Design – Does your website look like every other website out there? Does it look professional? Does it look like it was built in 1997? The design and look of your website say a lot about your company to visitors. In some ways a good business website is more important than a business card. And first impressions do matter online too.
7. Consistent Messaging – Is what you do obvious to a visitor? Is what makes you stand out from your competitors clear? Do you have consistent marketing across your online presences and throughout your website?
8. Search Engine Optimized – Being optimized for search engines is still important for business websites, since many of your potential customers will find you through searches (even if it’s just for your company name). While I believe that websites should be designed for people, not computers (search engines), I still think it’s important to take into account SEO best practices so that you can be found by people using search engines.
9. Searchable – Sometimes people who visit your site are interested in more information on a certain topic. Do they have a way to easily find all the content that they want on your site? Having a search feature can make it easier for visitors and increase the time people spend on your site. (Although, don’t make having a search an excuse for poor site usability.)
10. Regularly Updated – Even if you don’t redesign your site very often, there still should be new information or some sort of updates regularly. Otherwise, why would anyone visit more than once?
11. Listen & Improve – Listen to what your customers and visitors say about your website. Consider their questions and problems and figure out what you can do to improve their experience.

What else can be done to improve a business website?

(photo by arturodonate, on Flickr)

Improving Products

Once you’ve found your customers and potential customers online, you can listen to what they’re saying about your products and your competitors products. You can listen to what they complain about what they’d like to have, where their pain points are, and what their needs are so you can design and create products to meet their needs. The better match there is between your product and your customer’s needs, the more successful they’re likely to be.

Improving Marketing

Customers are pretty good about tuning out advertisements, but they are more likely to take action on marketing and advertising that talks specifically to them about a need or problem they have. Social media allows you to understand the needs of your customers so your marketing can specifically speak to those needs and how your product solves them. Social media also allows you to more narrowly target and engage with people who are more likely to be interested in your product to begin with.

Improving Content

When people are first starting the purchasing process, they often are looking for information. Social media can help you understand what information people are looking for so that you can provide it when they’re ready to receive it. Social media also allows you to provide information before the sale to establish your reputation as an expert. By listening to the questions people have, you’ll be better able to create content that meets the needs of your audience.

Improving Sales

Sales are more effective when the process is about the customer and their needs. With the research you’ve done on social media, you can not only understand the needs of your customers as a group, but often the needs of specific customers. That way, when you go into a sales call, you are armed with information specific to their needs and will be more likely to give them the information they want to hear.

Improving Customer Service

Customers will have problems or questions after the sale. Many times it’s easier or faster to turn to your own social network than to ask the company. People are asking questions and talking about problems all the time on social media — possibly about your own products or those of your competitors. By being engaged on social media, you can help solve those problems and answer those questions so that your customers have a better overall experience. Then they’ll be more likely to purchase from you again and recommend you to their network.

How do you use social media to understand your customers?

(image by Lali Masriera)

Same as Everyone Else

A lot of websites, especially those for small companies all look the same.  Logo across the top, menu down the left, some content in the middle – boring primary colors which supposedly look “professional.” If all your competition’s websites look exactly like yours, how do you stand out?

Dated

If your website was designed in the late 90s or early 00′s, it looks like it. What does that say about your company? Are you dated? Do you know what’s currently going on?  Do you have a message of keeping up on the latest trends or technology? Your website doesn’t give that message.

Design Doesn’t Match Your Message

You probably have some main idea you’d like to get across in any marketing material — how you’re trying to stand out from the competition. How does that translate to what you depict on your website? For example, if you say that you offer great customer service or personalized service, are there any pictures of you and your employees on the website? Or do you look like just another big company because you have a picture of a huge skyscraper? Just as you make first impressions in person, your website makes a first impression for your company online.

Matching Message

If you’re using social media to help you connect and converse with people — awesome! How does your website impact that image that you’re trying to build? Are you friendly and personably on social media but your website comes off as impersonal and cold?

More Impact Than You Think

Where ever you have a presence online, people are making decisions and judgements about your company — about whether or not they want to do business with you. Just as you prepare for an important meeting or networking event, prepare your website to put your best face forward.

Thoughts?

(photo by Tim Pearce, Los Gatos)

The Wrong Message

Your website visitor came to your site for some reason… to read your blog, to find your phone number, to find out where you’re located. A splash page puts a barrier in front of where they’re trying to go.  You’re telling your visitor that your message is more important than they came.

Confusing

Depending on the design of the splash page, and whether it has a way to skip it or redirects automatically, many visitors may be confused.  They expected to see your home page and instead found a page that isn’t what they were looking for.

Bad for SEO

Many search engines have a difficult time getting past splash pages, depending on how they’re coded and designed. If search engines only see your splash page (which often doesn’t have any “readable” content), you’re missing out on opportunities to reach potential customers through search.

An Edge for Competitors

Most of us have competitors that potential customers can go to instead.  Using a splash page may give them a reason to visit a competitor’s website instead (where they can more easily find the information they’re looking for).  Why give them that opportunity?

Results Speak

Removing splash pages from client sites has undeniably increased traffic and engagement. Clients score better on search engine rankings and have improved conversations and response from their customers and potential customers. While there are ways to do this with a splash page in place, why put a barrier on in front of your customers?

A Good Use?

I have seen splash pages used well, but these tend to be very well designed and coded, and only show up for new visitors.  The pages also are really another home page, giving visitors a quick overview of the site and some suggestions as to the most likely destination they’re looking for.

Site overlays (which essentially are splash pages) have been effective for short promotions or when asking people to fill out a survey.  But they’re most useful when they’re not always there and when they have a very specific call to action (hopefully with a benefit to the visitor).  Site overlays also tend to work better and be better received by visitors.

What do you think?

(photo by nathalielaure)

The design and overall layout of a company’s website is of utmost importance when it comes to attracting customers and encouraging them to use that company’s services. One of the very first things many people notice about a company’s website is the aesthetic appeal and whether or not it is pleasing to the eyes. The customer will note whether or not the website is easy to use, navigate, and search. If a company’s website is completely disorganized, has clashing colors, or content that is generally just out of place with other aspects of the website, the customer may be turned off from the company.

Professional Design

A company’s website that is professionally designed will entice the most customers. An ideal web design would have a smooth and professional interface composed of a color scheme that does not clash. A model web design would also consist of organized content on every page detailing exactly the message that the company wishes to convey without any extra wordage or unnecessary content.

Preparing a self designed website

A web design represents details about your business and contributes to its development. A good web design enhances the growth of your business; a bad one can even become a reason for its ruin. One can add a professional factor by taking guidance from following points:

Using templates

Use of template always aids the website design by guiding in its composition. These templates are available from many website hosts. Whether your business is small or big, these templates offer different options such as color schemes, patterns, experimentation with various color combos etc. Using these templates can even enable you to design your web page on your own with little help.

Getting help from tutorial sites

There are various tutorial websites providing knowledge about how to design on your own website. They also can help with how to put in content to the templates.

Help from a professional

Even with the help from templates and tutorial sites, nothing compares to a site designed by a professional. Hiring a professional designer will take your website design to the next level, especially if you want something completely custom.

(photo by Armando Maynez)

Even the simplest of interfaces, Twitter, has begun to add more complexity with new retweet features, lists, trending topics, and more. Aesthetically, “good design” means design that is appealing to the eye, and is easily navigated visually. With this idea, it is important that complex interfaces are well designed so that the users who prefer simplicity do not feel overwhelmed. – Finding the Balance of Design and Functionality (ReadWriteStart)

I believe good design is not separated from good functionality.  In order for a website to be well designed it needs to incorporate the functionality that is needed in a way that makes it easy to use and understand.  There are plenty of pretty websites which I would not classify as “good designs” because they do not make it easy for website visitors to use the site – or even worse, they miss some features that are required in order for the visitor to do what they want.

Good design is important because visitors have so many choices of websites they can use and visit online.  If your site is not both visually appealing and easy to use, people are just going to go elsewhere.  And good design does not mean cluttering your site with links and ads – white space does count too as it allows the eye to visually take in everything your site has to offer.

What do you think good design means?

Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our free email updates or following us on Twitter.

Technorati tags: design, usability, business, navigation

You’re afraid of spam email or solicitor phone calls, so you don’t put either your email or your phone number on your website, just a contact form.  While this probably does cut down on spam, how many potential customers are you turning away as well?  Is it worth it to turn away even one potential customer?

Most email programs are pretty good at filtering out spam.  And while you should answer the phone as much as possible, voicemail also does a pretty good job (most people are understanding on that front).  But, if someone can’t use either method and has to fill out a contact form (most of which tend to ask for a bunch of unrelated information), there’s a possibility that they won’t bother.

Contact forms do their have their place and use.  Sometimes you have a specific type of contact (for media or advertising or whatever) that you do need additional information for.  Or you’re using a contact form on a landing page for your marketing or advertising.  There are many good uses for contact forms, but they should never be the only way someone can get ahold of you.  Even in the cases mentioned here, there still should be a way to contact you directly.

How do your customers contact you?

(photo by ellievanhoutte @ Flickr CC)

Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our free email updates or following us on Twitter.

Technorati tags: customer service, brand, customer experience, business, marketing strategy, marketing

Discussions about navigation on a website usually revolve around where to put them and what items should be in them.  But without navigation on a website, there is no website, just the one page where a visitor entered your site.

Two Ways to Navigate

There are really only two ways to navigate a website: search and menus.  People will usually try one or the other, but they may also try one and then the other.  Usually people are either a searcher or a browser.  Either way, both search and a menu system should be easy to find and easy to understand.

Easy to Use

Whatever navigation people use, it needs to be extremely easy to use.  The less interaction (pull downs, drop downs, extra buttons), the better.  Searches should be clearly marked as Search.  People expect the button to be on the right side and to say something like “Go” or “Search”.  It’s better if you do the hard work of figuring out what they want (instead of having a drop down with different types of searches).  It’s often obvious what they want by what they type into the search field.  For example, “248-555-5555″ is clearly a phone number. Menus should be either on the top or sides (multiple places can be ok).  Whatever you choose, be consistent throughout the site and use titles that are clear and easy to read.

Find it Fast

You have about 5-10 seconds to engage a visitor and let them know that you have what they’re looking for.  If they don’t find it on the page where they entered your site, they may look around for a search or menu to see if they can find it somewhere else on your site.  If they can’t find your search or menu or some other type of navigation, they’re quickly going to leave.

Proper Use of Technology

Be wary of using technologies (such as Flash) that make pretty navigation or menus (animation, for example).  If someone doesn’t have access to that particular technology, they don’t have access to your site (and many search engines won’t access it either).  Even if some technology has widespread use, make sure you have backup methods of allowing people to access your site. And just because you think having pretty menus is nice, doesn’t mean that everyone who comes to your site likes them (animations can get very annoying after several pages).

No Navigation = No Website

Without a way to navigate throughout your site, people are stuck where ever they landed and they’re not likely to stay there for long.  Navigation gives visitors (and search engines) access to the rest of your site, making it easier for them to stay longer (and for you to get your point/sale across).

Thoughts?

(photo by psd @ Flickr CC)

Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our free email updates or following us on Twitter.

Technorati tags: design, usability, business, navigation

When none of the links look promising and they can’t find the information on the page they’re on, many visitors will automatically turn to search.  If you don’t have one, they’re likely just to leave.  Search is an important function on any website and on the Internet in general.  Many people think of the Internet as their search engine of choice and will type in full domain names, ex. www.sazbean.com, into the search engine instead of into the browser.  There are some people who only use search on websites instead of browsing at all.

Without search on a website, you’re missing an opportunity to give a visitor the information they’re looking for before they leave to find it elsewhere.  Many blog platforms and content management systems (CMS) will have a search functionality built-in that you can install on your site.  Google offers SiteSearch which lets you put their search box on any website and have the results only return pages from that site.

Can Your Visitors Search For What They’re Looking For?

(photo by (le)doo.(jachere triennale.soon) @ Flickr CC)

Technorati tags: design, content, usability, search, business, strategy

Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our monthly newsletter.

Business cards are still pretty important for face-to-face networking.  People are usually horrible about remembering names or company names and a small paper card lets them connect the conversation they had with the person they spoke to. (And gives them a point of contact if they want to continue the conversation).

Business websites are your online business card, yet so many businesses neglect to have the same important information in a quick & easy to understand as a paper business card provides. Most business websites are just a boring brochure of some marketing-blabber about what the company does  (that usually isn’t clear to anyone other than the author of the marketing-blabber), but don’t provide any real information to the visitor.

The nice thing about a website, as opposed to a small business card, is that you have the opportunity to offer so much more information.  But this can also be a crunch – businesses get caught up in the technology and create flashy websites, but forget about the basics.  It’s ok to offer lots of information to visitors – matter of fact, it’s a great way to get people to come back to your website over and over, but remember to keep the basics in mind: contact information, benefits to the customer, what it is you do – all visible and understandable in 5-10 seconds.

Take a look at your website.  Can you get the same type of information that’s on your business card?  Does your business website offer valuable information to your customers?  Is what you do clear in terms of benefits and value to the customers?

Make your business website a valuable business tool.

Technorati tags: design, usability, content, marketing, strategy, business

Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our monthly newsletter.

What do visitors see during those 5 seconds?  Try The 5 Second Glimpse Test:

1. Open your website in it’s own browser window, and then minimize it.
2. Ready?
3. Un-Minimize the window and start counting slowly to 5 (1 mississippi, 2 mississippi….)
4. Look at your website during those 5 seconds.
5. Re-minimize the browser window.
6. What did you see?

When I did The 5 Second Glimpse Test for this site, this is what I saw:

First my logo on the upper right… Then the flower below and to the left. Next the title of the top post.  Then the site title and tagline in the upper left.  Lastly, the little icons in the right column…. then it was time to close the window.

The great thing is you can use this test on others to see what they see in the 5 seconds.  Just explain that you’re going to give them 5 seconds to look at your homepage and you want to know what they see during that time.  It’ll give you pretty good insight into what people see when they first come to your site – and whether it’s what you want them to see.

Since you only have 5-10 seconds to catch someone’s attention, it’s important that you get the right message to them during that time.

What did you see during your 5 Second Glimpse Test?

Technorati tags: design, usability, marketing, strategy, business

Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our monthly newsletter.

A good tagline should:

• Be clear & informative
• Be short & concise (six to eight words)
• Differentiate your business
• Offer at least one clear benefit
• Be personable and catchy (hopefully a bit clever)
• Be unique
• Stand on its own

This may seem like a lot of weight on just a short phrase, but good taglines are invaluable for differentiating yourself and quickly describing what it is you do.  Once you have a good one you’ll be able to use it on all your marketing materials and advertising.  If you don’t know how well your tagline works, try showing someone (or telling) your tagline and see what it is they think you do.

How do you use your tagline?

(photo by Delphine – Very very busy :/ @ Flickr CC)

Technorati tags: tagline, design, marketing, uability, business

Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our monthly newsletter.

You’re about to go into an important meeting – a sales call, a presentation, a negotiating session, or a job interview. Whatever it may be, there will be people in this meeting who will affect your future. People that you need to impress, because they will make decisions based on YOU, and your words and your demeanor and your appearance. People who will judge whether they want to do business with you – to hire you, to accept your proposal, to buy your products or services, to contribute to your cause. – The Mustard Stain on Your Website – Tom Harris – Insights Group

So, if you wouldn’t walk into an important meeting with mustard on your shirt, why do you put up with a website that doesn’t do your company justice?  A meeting usually only has ten people or so.  Your website is seen by thousands of people!

What does your website say about your company?

I think all of us – designers, programmers, marketers, businesspeople, consumers… get caught up in complexity.  In making our products, our businesses, our websites, our lives complex.  Often I think we believe that people won’t pay for simple.  We need to add lots of features, lots of value-adds, lots of freebees.

If we take a few minutes to look at some of the most successful products, we see that they are inherently simple.  The Apple iPod.  The Sony Walkman. In their design.  In their features.  In how easy they are to use.

Simple is not easy.  It can be very difficult to make these as simple as possible.  But simple is a delight to use, too look at, to be apart of.

How can you be simple?

(photo by Sarah Jane)

Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our free email updates.

They’re cool

I hate using anything because it’s cool.  If you have a business reason for using something, that’s one thing, but using something because it’s cool, just isn’t.  Most things that are used for this reason are annoying and quickly become yesterday’s fad.  Besides, you’re running a business, not trying to join a high school clique.

They don’t work well

While this problem has improved, many sites still don’t implement drop down menus very well.  They’re hard to use and clicking on just the right link is very difficult.

They don’t show up on mobile devices

This has been improved as well.  But even if they do work on mobile devices, they’re even more difficult to use than when you have a mouse.

What about people without a mouse

There are people out there using computers without mice – text readers and other devices for people with disabilities, and other devices.  Some drop-down menus will have accessibility for people with keyboards or other devices, but often this is forgotten.

They’re a crutch

In order to properly (if there is such a thing) use drop down menus, information needs to be organized in a way that makes sense.  There needs to be some sort of hierarchy.  Most sites that use drop down menus don’t have a true information hierarchy, they just use cute titles that only make sense to the designer or marketing guy.  And there’s almost always a bunch of pages that don’t fit anywhere and are thrown under a Misc. heading – not very helpful.

It’s hard to find things

People are much faster at scanning a page than mousing over menu items to see what’s in them.  While your drop downs may seem like they’re saving time, they really are causing seconds of time for every use – that really adds up.

They’re annoying

I don’t know how many times I’ll go to a site with drop down menus and my mouse will happen to be over one of them.  All of a sudden a menu pops up when all I’m trying to do is read an article.  Now I have to take the time to move my mouse so I can do what I came to the site to do.  Or, I’ll be trying to navigate through a site but I can’t seem to get my mouse in the right place to keep the menu open long enough to click on the text – it can be pretty trying to click on a small word just to go to another page.

They’re a fad

For the most part, large sites have started to go away from drop-down menus (yay!).  They’ve found that people can scan through a long list of links much faster than they can hunt through different drop-down menus.  Having all the major links on a page means that it’ll be easier for people to find other reasons to stay on your site, instead of leaving or clicking off.

(photo by puroticorico)

Technorati tags: drop-down menu, usability, design, business, marketing strategy, marketing

Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our monthly newsletter.

However, I want to insist that splash pages need to be used for one purpose – and one purpose only – collecting information from site visitors – getting them to sign up for your service, newsletter, whatever.  They should NOT be used for a pretty flash movie or some other annoyance that serves no real purpose other than to annoy everyone.  I don’t care if you spent a lot of money on that supposedly cool introduction.  If you’re not using it for a real purpose, don’t do it.  If you’re going to annoy your visitors, at least do it for an actual purpose – collecting information for a specific reason.

I also have to agree with Todd regarding the implementation of a splash page:

If you are going to deploy a splash page, please, please, please set it up so that a user only sees the page periodically. We usually set it up so that users who do not sign up see the page every two weeks or so. Also, make sure to set it up so that if users have already signed up for your email list they never see the splash page again. These steps will minimize the disruption to users who visit your site frequently.

(photo by sergio tudela)

Technorati tags: splash page, usability, design, business, marketing strategy, marketing

Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our monthly newsletter.

For example, we try to cover social media, marketing, strategy and technology links through our Twitter feed.  Many of these tweets do not use any of those keywords, but they do cover that subject area.  If you were to just look at the words we tweet, you’d come up with a keyword cloud that looks similar to this:

From this keyword cloud, it looks like all our feed is about is thanking people, being happy and retweeting. Secondarily, about marketing, social media and the web.  While our tweets certainly to include those words, it’s not the entirety of what we’re about.  It doesn’t show context or association.

These types of keyword clouds also encourage people to game the system by always including certain words in their tweets and websites (what people often think of as keywords).  This makes conversations dull, repetitive and largely useless.  When you start writing and tweeting for search engines or computers, you’re missing the conversations you need to be having with customers and people.

(photo by kevindooley)

Technorati tags: content, business, usability, design

Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our weekly newsletter.

Still, truly professional website usability testing can be prohibitively expensive for many business owners.  But hopefully you all have a few friends who haven’t really used or seen your site.  Sit down with them and watch them try to use it – just make sure you watch and listen, don’t give them any pre-instructions or help.  Once your friend is done, ask them their thoughts and what they thought could be improved.  Watching someone else try to use your site can give you some very useful feedback on what needs improvement.  While a friend will (hopefully) be more forgiving than a customer, any feedback is good and most customers won’t bother telling you when something doesn’t work – they’ll just go somewhere else.

(photo by Look Into My Eyes)

Technorati tags: customer experience, customer-centric, experience centric, business, usability, design

Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our weekly newsletter.

How many more leads and sales could you be generating from your website if your forms were designed properly? When forms annoy people, or things aren’t where they expect them or don’t work properly, they’ll just leave.  I don’t know about you, but I end up filling out quite a few forms on websites – when I’m researching products, looking for information for clients, signing up for services, and purchasing products or services.  It annoys me to no end when web forms aren’t designed properly, especially since it’s not that difficult.  Good usability and design principles for web forms have really been around for longer than the Internet, even if they’ve been updated somewhat.

Here are some ways to improve the forms on your website:

• Next or Submit buttons on the right – think about turning a page in a book.
• Clear or Cancel buttons on the left.
• Fields with enough space – Make sure people can give you all the information you need and see it without having to scroll the field.
• Be flexible – If you want a phone number, let people enter it however they want.  Use background processing to format it the way you want for your database or CRM.  For example, 2485556758 can easily be turned into 248-555-6758 or 248.555.6758 or however you want to see it.
• Be clear – If you absolutely need something in a certain format, make sure it’s clear and obvious right next to the field.  The same goes for any maximum field lengths.
• Keep it simple – Only collect the minimum amount of information you need.  While it’s nice to collect information for statistics and marketing purposes, you risk not gathering any information.
• Required fields clearly marked – Need particular fields filled out no matter what?  Fine, just make sure it’s obvious which fields those are.  Making them a different color will help them stand out.
• Quick feedback – If a field was missed or wasn’t filled out properly, try to let people know before they click the submit or next button.  This is pretty easy to do with javascript.
• Clear feedback – However you give feedback, make sure its obvious what field you’re specifically talking about and what needs to be fixed.  Putting messages at the top of the page and marking the field in question are best.
• Do the heavy lifting – Need information in more than one place?  Pre-fill it in if the person has already typed it once.  Need some calculations made?  Do them with backend processing and present them to the person to be confirmed.
• Allow people to edit – People make mistakes.  Let them go back to change what they’ve entered.  This means your forms need to be able to handle the back button on the browser and still have all the information that was already entered available.
• Test in multiple browsers – It may be hard to believe, but not everyone has a PC running Windows with Internet Explorer.  Make sure your form works for the major platforms, operating systems and web browsers.  If you accept file uploads, make sure they work across platforms.  Soon you’ll also need to worry about mobile platforms.
• Confirmation – Let people know you’ve properly received their information.  On your website is best.  Following up with an email if they’ve provided an address is also nice.
• Thank them! – People are busy.  Thank them for the information they’ve provided or the purchase they’ve made.

What did I miss?

One of the easiest ways to design forms properly is to try to use them yourself.  Then ask a few friends to try them and give you feedback.

(photo by kaatjevervoort)

Technorati tags: customer experience, customer-centric, experience centric, business, usability, design

Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our weekly newsletter.