Jennifer Wolfgang: <snip - background: downloading papers> > The process that our stakeholder wants is > to have a page with, say, > an executive summary to 'entice' > people to then click on a link > that then takes the user to a form page. > > Unfortunately, that link says only, "Read study". > It does not in any way establish the expectation > that the user will need to fill out a form. ... > My suggestion has been to put the form > on the same page of the executive summary > as it allows the user to understand the function > clearly / up front without having to be surprised > (which may / may not occur, without testing, I don't know).
I've repeatedly found in usability testing that users are surprised and disappointed when they click on a link to get something, and instead are faced with a form. This undermines the relationship between the users and your organisation, and makes them noticeably less likely to fill in the form and less willing to divulge accurate personal information if they do fill it in. Putting it more bluntly: they are more likely to lie. (Similarly, they don't like it at all when they click on a link that's expecting a form, such as 'apply now', and get faced with a page of text to read). In our book "Forms that work", I describe the best practice here as "give users a small reward: a form when they expect it". And the corollary is, don't give them a form when they don't expect it. Your suggestion could work. The problem with pages with forms on them is that they look like forms. So users might react badly as they might not read the executive summary. Or maybe if the form is short and the summary is written well enough, you'd be OK. Another suggestion would be to label the link something like: "Sign up now to read study" or "Register (free) to read study" which signals that the form is coming. Hope this helps Best Caroline Jarrett "Forms that work: Designing web forms for usability" foreword by Steve Krug www.formsthatwork.com ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
