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Flirting With Forms  

:: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 ::

I'm not sure what's wrong me but once again I'm seeing my old dating days flash before me, since they seem to produce the best ways to describe pathetic usability tactics.

First there was the article I wrote for Successful-Sites.com's newsletter that came out last week called That Don't Impress Me Much: Even Pretty Web Sites Have Abandonment Issues

"There is a certain similarity between human relationship breakups and web site abandonment:

"Why do they always leave me?"

"What am I doing wrong?"

"It wasn't what I thought it was supposed to be."

"I tried so hard to make it work!"

"I just never found what I was looking for."

"Boy, was I ever taken for a ride! I was so fooled by what I was told."

The good news is that making a good first impression with your web site visitors is much easier than preparing for a blind date. For starters, you can be surfing in your pajamas, no makeup or with "bed-head" and the web site won't laugh its head off at you."

This is followed by something else written by Caroline Jarrett called Registration Forms - what to do if you can’t avoid Them

In her article she lists general rules of advice, which once again, are gems I've thought of while sitting on a bar stool. Only she's applying them to dreaded registration forms, whereas I have in mind some drunk guy figuring out how to talk for the first time.

For example, she offers rules to consider such as:

RULE: EXPLAIN WHY YOU’RE ASKING

RULE: MAKE SURE YOU OFFER SOMETHING THAT USERS WANT

RULE: LESS INVASIVE QUESTIONS = BETTER

(and the one that never happened during my dating life,)

RULE: ASK ONCE ONLY

I mean really. How different is a night out on the prowl from user centered design when you consider things like:

"Be honest about what they’ll get access to – and what they won’t get access to."

I love my job.

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 8/31/2005 05:54:00 PM

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