Cut Your Forms in Half

2019-05-09

Building web forms can sometimes feel like a boring or daunting task. Don’t pass this dread on to your users - rip out as many of your form fields as possible.

Web forms tend to get a bad rep, mainly because so many horrible design choices are made without the user experience set at the forefront. Often times clients demand that they need those twenty input fields or else how will they collect critical information from their users? Normally when I’m approached with such a statement I simply ask them:

“How many form fields would you be willing to fill out for an emergency situation?”

“My form isn’t for emergencies though”, they might reply. In that case ask them why they feel it acceptable to waste their users’ time just because it isn’t urgent. Time is valuable.

Fixing a form in the wild

Let’s use a real-world form off the Great West Life Insurance website as an example (left is original, right is updated):

Breaking things down

So what exactly have we changed?

Helpful Micro improvements

You don’t need to be extreme when gutting form fields - just be practical.

Further reading