Form design is tricky. Sometimes designers don’t understand all the complexities of a given form and misjudge the time needed to properly design them. Your web site’s form is essentially the heart of any transaction. It is of the utmost importance to design the form correctly.

A frequent question on form design is how to handle error messages?

My typical response is to build the form to do the “heavy lifting” so that the majority of errors can be eliminated.

Create the form to handle varied inputs. For example don’t force a user to figure out how you want a phone number. If they enter with dashes (periods or parenthesis) don’t fire an error message and force the user to correct the problem simply strip out the extraneous characters on the backend and move on.

Clearly indicate what is required, best practice is to use an *

Since no matter how well the form is built there is going to be errors make sure the errors are clearly indicated as well as instructions on how to correct the problem. For long forms it is a good idea to indicate the errors at the top of the page and also by the field. This eliminates the need for users to scroll up down trying to find the errors. The standard for error messages is red. I’ve used a combination in the past of a yellow alert box with red text. This really stands out against a white background.

In some instances I’ve seen live validation work well for, instance when passwords don’t match, or password strength indicators. Other times it can become rather intrusive. Whereby it fires an error before I’ve even finished typing my response.

If the form is of the complex nature (i.e. mortgage applications, claim reporting, etc.) contextual help along side of the forms can prove to be a good idea. A good example of this can be seen at Wufoo

These points only scratch the surface on error messages and form design however should get you pointed in the right direction. It is important to think through your form making it as easy as possible for your users to complete.

There has always been a debate around whether or not one should use the words ‘click here’ as link text. On the one hand, we know usability experts strongly advise against this since the link is not descriptive enough.

While on the other hand some copywriters have exactly the opposite opinion and showing ‘click here’ is perfectly acceptable. The counter argument is that you will get better results if you tell the person exactly what you what them to do. Now if we throw in the fact that SEO gurus prefer links that contain keywords optimized for the page we have a real situation on our hands

So who’s right? The answer is all of them.

From a usability perspective it is true that the link should be descriptive and understandable to the user. It is also true from a marketing a copyrighting standpoint that telling the user what you want them to do produces better results. And we know that providing keywords in the links help with search engine optimization.

With all of these statements being true what would happen if you combined both the action word with the content related words to form a link such as:

Click Now to Subscribe to Our Design Blog

A link shown in this way solicits the action the user should take, Click Now, Subscribe tells them what the purpose of the link is for, clearly indicating the goal of the link and Design Blog is the optimized phrase.

The length of the link falls within the 7-12 word range, desirable when try to produce good information scent. Personally however, I think the link could be shortened and still be affective.

Subscribe to Our Design Blog

The action we want the user to take is to subscribe, the click here seems to be redundant since that is the typical action one does with a link. However, I can see how it provides a stronger call to action.

The lesson in all of this is to make sure the your links are understandable to your users. Whether you use ‘Click Here’ or something different if the users aren’t clicking then chances are they aren’t finding what they are looking for.

A U.S. Appeals Court has ruled that a website can incorporate terms and conditions language into the clicking of a continue button. Meaning a website no longer needs to require a person clicking a checkbox to agree to the terms and conditions of the site.

The dating website True.com was sued by a male user who said he was unaware that the website’s free membership was only for women. A main part of the case was the fact the user argued he had not agreed to terms and conditions on the website’s registration form when signing up for a free trial.

Now, I’m not sure about you but I have never completely read anyones’ terms and conditions however I still think this is a poor decision by the court and one that I would urge you not to listen to.

It seems a little shady to try and bury your terms and conditions – and causes one to question if you have something you are trying to hide. If you have terms and conditions that will affect how a person will interact with your site provide a checkbox that must be acknowledge before they continue. Even if the person doesn’t read the terms they will be forced to at least acknowledge there are terms to the service.

Terms, conditions and all that legal mumbo jumbo may not be fun to read but think about how poor of an experience it will be if the user is blind-sided by something they “should have” read but didn’t because it was “hidden”