Universal Principles of UX

35

Minimize form input.

Filling out any type of form is annoying. I don’t think any of us have ever been handed a bunch of forms and thought, “Yay, can’t wait to fill these out!” Unfortunately, since we can’t verbally explain things to a computer (not yet anyway), the only way to buy something, return something, contact a company, or create an account online is to fill out a form. And if we don’t enter all the fields or don’t do it correctly, we’re not allowed to proceed.

Over the course of my career, I have designed many, many, many forms. And on almost every project, I have had to explain to clients that every little field added to a form negatively affects its conversion rate. The more mandatory fields there are, fewer people will complete ...