I’ve just written an article on my own blog with regards to form conversion, and thought it’d be appropriate to post it here on the Netbasic blog too! I quote:

It is absolutely critical when developing a form that must convert well to accept pretty much anything in the form. For example if I want to write “15,000? or even “£15,000? in the amount box for my insurance, then let me! Don’t tell me it’s wrong, because it isn’t.

So here’s a big hint to form developers on business-critical forms that must convert well: don’t be lazy – let the customer enter whatever they like, and try and interpret the data the best you can. Even better – if you can’t truly determine what the user has entered, provide some feedback.

The issue here is that automated handling of data is never going to be as accurate as a real person checking over things. When validating form fields, we need to do the best job we can to make what the user has entered into something that we understand, and not just throw a wobbly if we can’t understand it – as I say in the original article, provide some useful feedback to the customer and help them out as much as possible!

Click here to read the original article.

conversion, form, validation