Form Design 101

They’re not very sexy, and users invariably hate filling them out. That said, online forms can be one of the most important parts of your website. In particular, they are where money and data change hands. Users complete them to enroll, purchase, register, apply, self-service, and give feedback. They can also have a major impact on how your user views your website and your company.

Unfortunately, though forms are ubiquitous, there are plenty of poorly designed ones out there. This webinar exposes you to some common pitfalls and shares some best practices, along with providing some conceptual models about how forms actually work, some tip and tricks for testing them, and some additional resources.

Topics Covered

• The importance of forms
• General approaches to forms
  • Avoiding them
  • Incentivizing users
  • Forms as conversation
  • Forms and personas
• Basic elements
  • Fields & labels
  • Field labels, headers, and button labels
  • Buttons
  • Standard controls – text fields, radio buttons, checkboxes, dropdowns
  • Font
  • Layout
• More specialized topics
  • Screen navigation
  • Asking for user data
  • Instructions
  • Help
  • Error messages
  • Mobile
  • Multi-screen forms
  • Testing
• Further resources