by Jamila Vaughan

Created on: October 19, 2008

Small business owners have a lot to say. They have special pricing, special features, new features, services, policies, background information, legal information, and the list goes on. But when do you launch these bits of info on your customers? You have surely developed an organized and appropriate method for disseminating information in printed forms and advertising pieces. But have you carefully planned out the forms on your website?

I will discuss just three common places where just-in-time web design should be applied in your online forms. What is just-in-time design? Take for example the envelope I found yesterday. I opened this piece of mail today to pay a bill. And right where I stuck my thumb in to rip it open, I read "Wouldn't it be nice to open less mail?" My eyebrows went up, and I almost said "Yes!" out loud. That was the only statement that grabbed my attention on the entire mail item (including my Amount Due). The key was: Timing and Placement. Let's apply this design principle to the web.

But before we do that, please take about fifteen minutes going through the main contact forms or e-commerce forms on your company's website. Have you ever done this? I am surprised by how many business owners have never sat down and gone through the basic steps taken by their website users every day. Make a note of pieces of information that are just perfect, helpful, missing, out of place, or not useful. Go back a page and then forward a page in your browser. Is the information still there? Do you need to input it all over again? Type in the wrong information or skip a required field. What happens? Are you frustrated yet? So are your website visitors. And frustrated customers will quickly abandon your site and surf elsewhere.

Just-In-Time Website Design in Online Forms:

1. Handling Form Errors. Many forms on the web are extremely long with many required fields and special formatting requested. When these demands are not met, users get errors and become frustrated. If a field is required, let the user know at that point in the form, on the same line as the form field (not at the beginning or the end of the form). Don't use color coding or asterisks. Who has time to read the fine print to figure it all out? It's better to permit the user to enter less information (only what is actually necessary to process their request) and to allow for spaces, no spaces, and parentheses in account or phone numbers. But if that's not possible, tell the person right where it's relevant.

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>