Regarding the amount of information required, in my experience people likes to provide as least information as possible, specially at initial stages. This can reduce significantly the engagement and the completion of the tasks, reducing the conversions for registration. I understand that the more information that we can collect the better, but there should be a balance and a right moment to get the information. It would be a good idea for the project managers to let the client know about the downfalls that this amount of information can represent, and to think about the possibility to split the information collection into several stages and probably ask for more information after a benefit or a free sample is presented to them.
Since there is so much information we can test either to have a multi step form, where each of the required type of information will be presented after the other, or to have a collapsible form. The multi step will get users attention focused on a task at the time and if the client agrees that users can complete the rest of the information after registration we won’t need to make huge efforts to change the layout; what can be a challenge is to reuse the coding for desktop versions, but I think that with a mobile first approach it will work perfectly fine. With the collapsible version what can happens is that users skip completely the rest of the form and it can be frustrating if they try to submit before completing the entire form. Those are the most common patterns that users are probably familiar with so I think it will be a good start, we should test both options before going forward. Also i think that if we go with the collapsible option, the submit button shouldn’t be enabled until all required information is entered.
Regarding the error handling, do you consider that real time validation would be too heavy for the system to handle? I think that if we can have that on the email at least it will help users to recover from the error sooner, for the rest of the errors I think that real time validation won’t be a problem since it is mainly format and content but it won’t need to check on the database. Anyway, to prevent the errors would be the best approach, and for that we can be really clear on what kind of input is expected; another thing that we can do is try to be flexible with the validation and allow different ways to write that information, for example: hyphens or spaces on phone numbers shouldn’t be treated as errors. If that is not possible, at the time of submission there should be a summary of the errors with anchors to the error location so users don’t need to scan the entire form to check where the errors are.
Regarding aesthetics I think that there are several things that can be done, it would be great to have more screens of the website to not go against or too different from what is currently on it since if we do that users may feel like they left the website. The green image on the background is blurry and is not helping with the general purpose of the form. Since the form is pretty heavy with information I would suggest to go for a more minimalist option for the aesthetics with either a simple image background or an illustration.
Please let me know if you need any clarification or if you need extra assets, any feedback will be highly appreciated.
Regarding the amount of information required, in my experience people likes to provide as least information as possible, specially at initial stages. This can reduce significantly the engagement and the completion of the tasks, reducing the conversions for registration. I understand that the more information that we can collect the better, but there should be a balance and a right moment to get the information. It would be a good idea for the project managers to let the client know about the downfalls that this amount of information can represent, and to think about the possibility to split the information collection into several stages and probably ask for more information after a benefit or a free sample is presented to them.
Since there is so much information we can test either to have a multi step form, where each of the required type of information will be presented after the other, or to have a collapsible form. The multi step will get users attention focused on a task at the time and if the client agrees that users can complete the rest of the information after registration we won’t need to make huge efforts to change the layout; what can be a challenge is to reuse the coding for desktop versions, but I think that with a mobile first approach it will work perfectly fine. With the collapsible version what can happens is that users skip completely the rest of the form and it can be frustrating if they try to submit before completing the entire form. Those are the most common patterns that users are probably familiar with so I think it will be a good start, we should test both options before going forward. Also i think that if we go with the collapsible option, the submit button shouldn’t be enabled until all required information is entered.
Regarding the error handling, do you consider that real time validation would be too heavy for the system to handle? I think that if we can have that on the email at least it will help users to recover from the error sooner, for the rest of the errors I think that real time validation won’t be a problem since it is mainly format and content but it won’t need to check on the database. Anyway, to prevent the errors would be the best approach, and for that we can be really clear on what kind of input is expected; another thing that we can do is try to be flexible with the validation and allow different ways to write that information, for example: hyphens or spaces on phone numbers shouldn’t be treated as errors. If that is not possible, at the time of submission there should be a summary of the errors with anchors to the error location so users don’t need to scan the entire form to check where the errors are.
Regarding aesthetics I think that there are several things that can be done, it would be great to have more screens of the website to not go against or too different from what is currently on it since if we do that users may feel like they left the website. The green image on the background is blurry and is not helping with the general purpose of the form. Since the form is pretty heavy with information I would suggest to go for a more minimalist option for the aesthetics with either a simple image background or an illustration.
Please let me know if you need any clarification or if you need extra assets, any feedback will be highly appreciated.