Here is an example of how you can really annoy
and frustrate your website visitors and make them go away forever.
The form is a dummy and illustrates bad form design. Necessary
elements are noted in green and bad
features are described in red
CONTACT US (NOT)
STEP 1 of 15 (Oh dear this
is going to take some time)
This is the good element
of a contact form and any or all of these can be required fields
quite reasonably
Your Name (obviously essential)
Your
Email (essential if email reply is required)
Contact
Telephone (essential if phone reply is
required)
Your message (good option
allowing responder to tell you something)
Postal address fields can also be included
quite legitimately if this is a form where a product is actually
being ordered but for an initial contact form
it is bad practise to require too much information
Now for the rubbish
Impertinent question1
(required)
Impertinent question2
(required) etc...
Don't demand information you don't need.
Your visitor will have clicked away by now.
The checkboxes: if the unnecessary
required questions haven't annoyed them already then pre-checked
checkboxes almost certainly will
Please
sign me up for your daily newsletter which is difficult to
unsubscribe from
Translation: Please fill my inbox with
annoying useless junk
Please
make your useless website my home page
Translation: Please really annoy me
Please let
me download your annoying toolbar which I will have trouble
uninstalling
Translation: Please clog my browser cache
and ram junk down my throat every time I browse the web
Please
sign me up to receive occasional offers from carefully selected
partners
Translation: Please fill my inbox with
annoying useless junk
I want to
send fun e-cards and games to all my friends
Translation: Please fill my friends'
inboxes with annoying useless junk and really hack them off
More bad practise:
Yes I know 15 stages is a bit over the
top but you get the idea. The form is already too long and the
annoyance rating must be stratospheric by now.
You haven't mentioned any prices and the
only way the punter can find out is to click your BUY button.
Extremely annoying but sadly quite widespread.
No of course it isn't free.
Translation: Not only are we not going to
tell you the price, we are going to make you download it, install
it and when you run it we will hit you with a subscription by
recurring credit card payment if you don't remember to uncheck the
tiny checkbox at the bottom of the small print. In addition you
will have installed numerous other rubbish which you can't remove
unless you are a clever geek.
