In an effort to figure out how some of these atrocities are making it on to the internet, I’ve created a two question anonymous survey to try to get an idea of the level of testing that is currently considered acceptable.  Please complete or forward to the appropriate people:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/G8VB28K

Here’s three tips for making the most of your entry pages:

- Make people feel comfortable about being in the right place.
Every page on your website should have consistent branding and be clear about what your company does.  You’d be surprised how many sites miss that second part.

- Provide navigational orientation that indicates where users are on your site.
Is it easy for the user to know how deep they are in your site structure and move up to a category level or homepage?  You can easily handle this by using a main navigation that clearly indicates the active page and using a crumb trail on more complex sites.

- Properly target your search terms and make sure your landing pages have all relevant information.
Nothing frustrates users more than irrelevant search results.  Make sure your site isn’t contributing to the problem by paying close attention to the search terms that drive traffic to your site and adjusting content accordingly.

- Never break standard browser functions:
My friends at AT&T thought it would be a good idea to move the cursor from one field to the next after I entered the proper number of characters for the field I was editing.  For example, on phone number, once you type 3 digits in the area code field, the site automatically moves you to the number prefix box.  I’m sure someone at AT&T thought it was a good idea that would make things easier, but after using the internet for 14 years and expecting to use the tab key or mouse, it was more frustrating than helpful.  I find it hard to believe that this was user tested before deployment and there’s no excuse for that when you have the website budget of AT&T.

- Make your website work with all common browsers:
http://www.mykplan.com: These guys aren’t kidding about the compatible browser list in the left column.  This website has a lot of issues, but the biggest offender is that the site only works with Internet Explorer.  I use a Mac, so none of my browsers worked.  I could access the necessary forms, but was unable to enter any information.  Having a website that only worked with certain browsers stopped being OK at least five years ago.

- Avoid drop-down menus:
This will be the most controversial issue on this post, but after suffering through multiple drop-downs, mostly to enter my state, I agree with Jakob Nielsen on this one: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/annoyances.html

- Don’t ignore your error messages.

Following web standards and properly testing functionality before launching any website or addition is cheap and easy.  If you need help, contact me.

What other common problems do you encounter with online forms?

To prevent a massive “land rush” to claim as many valuable URL’s as possible, Facebook implemented restrictions on who may register a name and when. Facebook’s poorly managed effort turned into a mess of confusion and misinformation. The published date when smaller companies like mine could register their username was June 29th.  I arrived on June 30th, figuring the midnight rush would be over. I visited http://facebook.com/username and started the process. When I arrived at the step to check availability for my pages and selected Maximus Internet, this is what Facebook told me:

“Maximus Internet, LLC is not eligible for a username at this time. In the future, Maximus Internet, LLC will be able to set a username.”

Wow. Thanks for the groundbreaking information. There was a “learn more” link that basically told me what I already knew – I would be eligible for a username after June 29th.  After wasting 20 minutes searching the internet for answers, I finally found out on another website that Facebook also requires your business page to have 100 fans. Why wouldn’t Facebook just say that on the initial error message?  Facebook is free and very popular, so people will tolerate a certain level of inconvenience, but too often neglected error messages are costing companies more than they think. What if the equivalent happened in your shopping cart on a high value order?

An error message happens when something has gone wrong with a process you want a user to complete, usually becoming a lead or completing a purchase. The information you provide at that critical moment can make or break your relationship with the user. At the point of error, the websites job becomes getting someone back on track easily and in a friendly manner. Don’t leave this critical task in the hands of default error messages that came with your website platform or programmers that don’t understand relationship building. Doing so will usually produce punitive error messages that make people feel stupid and/or don’t clearly explain how to correct the problem. To prevent these issues, you should always complete extensive testing of your error handling process. More importantly, make error handling a priority in your development process instead of an afterthought.