Re: Forms: Asking for email first during registration?

[jennifer wolfgang]

Hi again all -

Thanks for all the great angles to consider. To address at least a
few comments:

1. The form I'm working on is a registration form used for sales
lead generation, and comprise - I'd estimate - about 90%   of the
forms on our site. Our Field Marketing team owns all such forms and
wishes all instances of them to be the same.

2. What users "get" in return is one of the following: (a) a gated
asset [e.g., white paper], (b) a call or email from a sales person,
or (c) a trial download. (The forms are all B2B.)

- In some cases (more added every few months), we set this
registration form to create a Single Sign-On (SSO) so that upon
return, the user can enter their email address and password so as not
to need to fill the form out again. (Though, depending on entry point
or the reason for the visit, users may be prompted with a marketing
form - optional fields [I think] - before they can continue to the
'asset'.

3. The request for email first was brought up by a regional team
which has email first on their SSO form. So, it was an idea to keep
things 'consistent'. Thus, I am trying to identify if it makes
sense.

- The form has about 14 fields (6 of which are for street address).

4. Usability. Yes. I so very much wish I had the luxury of these. I
do ask others around me (friends, family, coworkers) for input on a
lot of items; however, my team is just not yet understood in the
organization.

5. Finally, I agree with the idea of creating a sort of 'standard'
in the community; however, I wonder if this is a realistic goal? This
is not meant to be a cynical perspective as I believe that
foundational efforts and baselines are imperative in setting the
course for long term success. There's nothing worse than spinning
one's wheels over the small things.

What this makes me think of is something I'm continually being asked
by my manager and stakeholders, "Do you have any documented best
practices on X?" And, though I find tons of awesome articles by all
you wonderful people here, what is really desired is a 'checklist'
of best practices.

So, to wrap up a long response... :)... Have I missed a great 'best
practices' library; and, if there isn't really one... is it
realistic to expect that one may be able to be developed and
maintained within the UX community?

Ok. I think I about used up my caffeine for the morning.

Thanks and best to all,
Jennifer


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[Caroline Jarrett]

Jennifer asked
<snip - background on the forms she's working on>

> What this makes me think of is something I'm continually being asked
> by my manager and stakeholders, "Do you have any documented best
> practices on X?" And, though I find tons of awesome articles by all
> you wonderful people here, what is really desired is a 'checklist'
> of best practices.

I'm going to interpret this as "Why did you write a book (and a bunch of
articles) instead of the checklist of best practices that we actually need?"

And now I'm going to brood on an answer:

I don't have a problem with checklists. Mine might run something like this:

1. Find out what your users want to do
2. Establish the relative importance to them of filling in the form compared
to what they want to do
3. Find out what your organisation actually does with each data item you
collect
4. For every item you ask for, think very hard whether the value to your
organisation outweighs the risk of losing a user who doesn't want to give it
to you.
5. Write questions that are easy to answer
6. Create a flow that puts questions into a logical order
7. Think hard about whether your validation will encourage correct
completion, or will simply force a user into giving you the wrong answer
8. Make it look good
9. Run loads of usability tests, and make use of the findings.
10. If in doubt about what to do, see item 9 and repeat as often as you can.

First possible problem: I think that the type of checklist some people want
(probably not you) is a lot more trivial than that and contains advice like
"put the labels above the fields". Or maybe "put the labels to the left of
the fields". The trouble with bits of advice like that is that users don't
care all that much where the labels go, but they do really, really care
about what they're being asked and the context they are being asked it in.
Items 1 and 2 on my list, but things that have to be thought about rather
than issued as instructions.

Second possible problem: the checklist tends to require a follow-up here and
there. For example: What exactly are questions that are easy to answer? What
does answering a question actually mean?

So why did I write a book? Hmm, a moment of madness, maybe? But also because
I thought it might help people to have a short overview of the topic from
beginning to end.

And we did keep it to under 200 pages.

Should I have written a checklist instead? Probably. I've written this email
in about 10 minutes and it took 10 years of anguish to write the book. Only,
maybe I was only able to write a 10-item checklist *because* of the 10 years
of anguish - and the several years before that of thinking about the
problems. Maybe the checklist doesn't work for you either...

Anyway. Hope this helps.

Best
Caroline Jarrett
www.formsthatwork.com


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