The user experience (UX) of a website is generally, a collection of multiple aspects like site pages loading duration, Website navigation, and quick access to the items. Generally, people prefer to visit websites with good UX over any other website which lacks in terms of UX. Good UX means a better understanding of user requirements, user preferences, and their limitations. It is applicable to every part of a website. Web forms are an important part of websites.
UX is also applied to web forms. The UX of form is considered in terms of accessibility, ease of use and convenience. In the case of a web form, the user experience is the matter of considering the method of user interaction with each aspect of your form. A web form with good UX should be easy for visitors to work on, feel understandable and professional. If these three factors are combined in a web form, It would result in an increased number of conversions. That’s why you should have a form with the right UX. It could be critical for your business. A successful UX of web form helps you boost conversations with the help of ecommerce experts.
Importance of Web Form UX:
The main purpose of a web form is to attain some personal information from the users. This information could be an email address, a contact number, shipping, or payment details. If a web form is hard to understand, difficult to use or visually unattractive, the users won’t be convinced. After observing this kind of form, many visitors may don’t want to convert and conduct any form of business with you.
There are multiple factors which need to be considered in creating good UX and effort to achieve a stunning and fabulous form design. The Ux of a web form is critical if you want to leave a better and lasting impression on your visitors. This would make a positive experience for them on your website and increase the number of conversions. The impact of UX of a form is reflected on accessibility, usability. If your form doesn’t possess a good UX, you may have poor usability and accessibility of form. This poor usability and accessibility might result in a poor rate of conversions.
UX Guidelines:
We have gathered some useful tips to be considered while creating a web form. You can apply these guidelines to make a web form with great UX. Examples are also given with each guideline to enhance understanding about form UX. The tips are enlisted below:
Enabling Autofill and Autocorrect:
Autofill and autocorrect are applied to reduce the effort of users. The autofill feature would try to complete input on the basis of previous input history and data provided which would help the users to actually type lesser than they are supposed. This feature tries to complete some form fields based on common attributes like name and email address.
The autocorrect feature tries to rectify wrong input provided by users accidentally, for example, rectification of wrong zip code, the form can predict this on the basis of previous information like city and state names. UX is enhanced by autofill and autocorrect because of process simplification. It enables you to make sure that the information being entered is correct. It also helps to save visitor’s time and making form completion happen swiftly.
Simple Labels:
You should try to make your web form straight forward. While creating titles for different input fields, try to make their labels short with no extra words. Short labels should be meaningful and to the point to avoid any confusion. Eliminate all the extra words and try to make it as easy as possible to understand. Keeping it short while naming field labels would enhance UX as it would remove any confusion and it would be easy for customers to understand.
One Column Form:
A simple form layout organized in one column would be better as compared to multiple fields in a row. It would be easy for users to see all fields and would have the comfort of tab down the next open field. This layout would also be useful for people who will see the form through a mobile display. It would provide visitors with the ease of use to which is one of the aspects of good UX. One column layout would enable your visitors to flow through the column easily.
Mobile-Friendly Design:
Use of mobile phones is increasing rapidly. Many people visit websites through their smartphones. According to statistics, in 2018, 52.2% of all worldwide online traffic was generated through mobile phones, up from 50.3% in the previous year (Statista, 2018). People browse websites and fill up various forms online using their smartphones. For better user experience, the web form should be designed in such a way that it should support mobile phones. If your form isn’t mobile-friendly, it would malfunction on some of the devices which would mean a bad user experience. Good UX means a quality experience on every device. Not having a mobile-friendly form on the website would be critical for your business and may affect number of conversions.
Input Constraints:
Many fields in a form require the answer in a text paragraph. To prevent users to input long text in the field, you should make input constraints. These input constraints would limit the input and avoid useless lengthy input. This will also guide people to input information as per requirements. This will enhance the UX because people would have a guideline to keep them efficient. This will also make them know what exactly you need.
Clear Action Buttons:
The visitors click action buttons to submit or perform any action with a web form. These action buttons are a critical part of a web form. The action of these buttons should be clearly described, so the visitors don’t get worried or confused about the result, while clicking these buttons. The understandability is another aspect of good UX. Clear buttons would enhance UX of visitors.
Inline Field Labels
Try to place form field labels inside the fields of the form. This would provide your form with a sleek and civic look. This would enhance the overall appearance of your web form. It is also the most responsive way to title the fields of a form. This would improve the ease of use and ultimately the user experience because there would be no confusion about any label of any field.
Error Messages:
You should design your web form in such a way that it displays the error message as soon as the visitors input wrong data in the field instead of notifying about the certain error at the end of completion of the form. The form should highlight the field with wrong input and provide the description of required data and possible mistake in the input. This would create ease for your visitors to make sure their input is right straight away instead of coming back from the end of the form to rectify the error. This would enhance understandability and ease of use which are important aspects of great UX.
Differentiate Required and Optional Fields:
You should always mention the required and optional fields in your form. This could be done by writing required or optional in parenthesis with the small font or placing an asterisk mark over label so there would be no question about any field. This would eradicate any confusion in the mind of users about which field should be completed. This would provide ease of use to the users and enhance user experience.