Optional Entries: How do you Design for completion and reduced abandonment?

Question

This is my first post on here though I read and browsed several questions. I am not sure if this has been asked before...Related Questions didn't seem to have anything with the GUI but optional parameters in language.

Anyway, here are the question:

Q) How do you design/develop a form with a few optional entries in the form?

One option would be to show with some sort of highlighting of missing optional entries before, the data is actually saved, on the verification page.

Another might be to let the visitors edit the data at a later point and hope they provide optional data when they feel comfortable to do so.

The entries are not usual address info. Visitors will not only be entering the data several times (not necessarily during same visit) but using the data (entered by themselves and others) as well. So there is some motivation.

Q) Which of the following would be better for the optional entries?

• Drop downs with "-- Select One --" as default.
• Drop downs with some real value as default.

Q) On the web it is often advised to limit entries. So, how do weigh the need to obtaining optional but very useful entries (fields) with completion rate of such forms?

Q) Should this be a single page or multiple page form?.

Q) What do you think about give to get model (e.g. [GlassDoor.com][1])?

[1]: http://www.glassdoor.com/ Glass Door

Answer 1

It sounds like you want us to help you design your page, but you don't want to tell us what the page actually does. That will make it difficult to give specific advice, but here are my two cents.

If there is a LOT of info to enter, you need to break it into stages or steps. Each step needs the ability for the user to save it, so he can come back to it later. If you want to see a good example of this design, try filling out a FAFSA (Federal Application For Student Aid) at http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/FOTWWebApp/complete013.jsp.

If you want as little abandonment as possible, then the information they are getting must be worth as much as the information they are giving. The best way to do that is to establish relevance; the web page they are on must be relevant to them. If your page is a scattershot page that's just designed to attract the greatest number of users without making the information important to your users, then don't expect much results. If it's car enthusiasts you are after, then provide content that will interest car enthusiasts.

To build an effective form that is frictionless, follow guidelines established by eye movement studies for web page and web form design. Eye movement studies are important because they tell you what on the page web users find important, and what they find unimportant.

For web forms: http://www.cxpartners.co.uk/thoughts/web_forms_design_guidelines_an_eyetracking_study.htm

For web pages: http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/11/15/what-eye-movement-teaches-us-about-web-design/