Make your Forms Fool-Proof
Forms need to be fool-proof. How do we do that? Below are some tips that will improve the user experience of your website:
1. Less is Better
Less fields are better. User gets annoyed when they fill out a lot of information. Collect information that you need. For instance, you do not have to put an age field if you already have a birthdate field since age can be computed.
2. Select / Checkbox / Radio Buttons
Some fields would either require a select (drop-down box), a set of checkboxes, and a set of radio buttons. For instance, the field Country would make you select options from a drop-down box. Another example would be, in polls, a set of radio buttons are commonly used. Lastly, if the user may select multiple options, you may either use a set of checkboxes and or a multi-select box. If you have too many choices, you may opt for the latter.
3. Know what is Required
The user must know what fields are required by just looking at the form. For instance, in registration forms in most websites, they’d usually require for the email address, username and password. All other fields such as the user’s address are just optional.
4. Validate your Forms
This is important most especially to item #3. There are a lot of techniques in validating forms. The commonly used technique is Javascript form validation.