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Your Forms, Your Way
Discover how to create electronic forms which work
The sole purpose of creating a form is to collect data. If the form is hard to fill out and really annoys the user then there is more chance the form will not be filled out correctly or worst just not filled out at all.
The layout is very important to the usability of the form.
Alignment
It’s imperative that the form layout is lined up. The human eye can notice even subtle changes. The human brain likes to make quick assumptions, when the screen is not lined up it cannot scan down the screen and see the alignment, it has to work harder. The hard the brain works the more fatigued it gets. Make it easy on you users and line up your forms.
Label Placement and Format
A quick survey of the internet and you will see many forms which have the labels on the left and the field on the right of the label. Conventional wisdom suggests this is the best place to put it, however research conducted by Matteo Penzo in 2006 suggests that labels above the field work better. the research also suggested that the labels be bold.
Chunk it.
The human brain likes to work in small chunks. If you form is particularly large then break the form up into groups. Put similar related questions in to the same group. The brain is able to handle the process easier. For example asking for a Phone number then the Mobile Phone number is natural rather than asking for the Home Phone Number then Postal Address then Mobile Phone number. Users expect to enter all the phone numbers together.
Keeping it real
Keep the labels real, rather than asking your questions like a robot ask like a human. For example a prompt for “Your Home Address” or “Where do we send this to” rather than just “Address”.
Provide Hints
When you fill out the form provide visual hints. Mark the required fields with a *. It’s common practice to denote required entries with an asterisk. Also provide hints for example make sure you display the format for dates “day/month/year” rather than “dd/mm/yyyy” (or some other combination, depending on your locale)
Show progress
When you ask for a lot of information, make sure it’s obvious your progression through the questions. People like to feel a sense of completion. Even if it’s only 5 questions. When the user has to fill in Pages after Pages if questions they will abandon half way if they have no indication how much further they have to go.
Keep it simple
Keep the design of the form simple and consistent. To many visual elements can distract from the entry of the information. Years ago a client once asked me why all our forms (this was the windows 95 days) had a grey background? The reason is simple, grey is easy to look at for long periods of time and therefore doesn’t fatigue the user’s eyes. Compare this to a client that insisted the screen have a fluoro green section at the top on a white background. It made your eyes bleed and my inner designer died a little inside. For the users the fluoro green attracted the focus and made the form hard to read (even though nothing in the form changed except the colors) The eye kept getting drawn up to the green.
Hope fully this will help you to create great electronic forms which work. We are experts in the creation of online electronic forms and can help you if you get stuck. Please feel free to contact us if you need help with your electronic forms.
Any questions? Please leave a comment.