Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus
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Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus
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Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus
#2Devils advocate here: use select menus to reduce the amount of support tickers from users. The html form version of the automated telephone menu.
Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus
#3This strikes me as somewhat of a mish-mash:
- It predominantly addresses the lowest-common-denominator subset of users: beginning / un-savvy users who are using a site / its forms for the first time, but the article attempts to make a point by referencing behaviors of familiar, advanced users: navigating a form's fields using the keyboard: Most forms begin with text fields where users type in their input. But when a select menu appears, they have to move their hands from keyboard to mouse to select an option. This interrupts their typing flow and slows them down.
- Discourages the use of select menus because they are 'hard to read' and require 'dexterous mouse maneuvering', but both of these can be mitigated via CSS.
The article has good points and has some good recommendations and is useful for its target use case, but the absolutist prescription, 'The Only Time to Use a Select Menu', seems to only address a specific case: using a form on an unfamiliar site for the first time, which would be fine for the article if were stated as such. However, there are many times when a select menu is appropriate: familiar users who use a site multiple times, when available space and / or menu population precludes the use of radio buttons, etc.
Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus
#4The article suggests radio buttons instead of most select menus.
I can appreciate the ease with which one can skim radio buttons vs select options; however, once there are more than a few options, the sprawl of radio buttons can be a little ridiculous.
The screen space required to display 50 states via radio buttons vs select menu is tremendous. At that point, I suspect it would be difficult to determine where the list of radio options end and the next form field begins.
Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus
#5 One common reason is if your form contains multiple
select menus. Research shows that forms with select
menus often get abandoned. This is because they take
more time and effort to complete.
Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus
#6The article suggests radio buttons instead of most select menus. I can appreciate the ease with which one can skim radio buttons vs select options; however, once there are more than a few options, the sprawl of radio buttons can be a little ridiculous. The screen space required to display 50 states via radio buttons vs select menu is tremendous. At that point, I suspect it would be difficult to determine where the li…
Zip code is usually a better way if it's relevant - you can fill in the state/town automatically.
Obviously, there are situations where that would not apply.
Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus
#7Devils advocate here: use select menus to reduce the amount of support tickers from users. The html form version of the automated telephone menu.
I've seen this before in IT tech support. Invariably there's some drop down where none of the selections apply to my issue, but it's required to pick one.
I always pick the most dire issue.
Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus
#8> But when a select menu appears, they have to move their hands from keyboard to mouse to select an option. This interrupts their typing flow and slows them down.
Simply not true. They do not have to; they just don't know that when the keyboard focus is on the list or combo box, they can go through the selections using the arrow keys.
But even for those who know the keyboard shortcuts, long lists are annoying, like long lists of countries (most of which will never produce a paying customer for that site), or lists of of years starting from 1900.
Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus
#9There's another solution: cascaded dropdowns.
One common, nasty example is a list of countries in online shops. Many at least either pre-fill based on IP geolocation or stick the most common target countries at the top, but there are also some sites that sort alphabetically, or worse, group by continent and then sort.
This can be solved by having only one dropdown visible with the continent; once this is selected, a dropdown with the country appears below, and optionally a third dropdown for the county/state (e.g. USA, optionally in Germany but no one requires the state in Germany anyway).
Downside of this approach, though, is that browsers cannot auto-fill.
On a sidenote, I remember that you can "annotate" input HTML elements to ease auto-fill (besides the obvious type=tel/fax/email). Can anyone please give me a hint? I seem to be too stupid to find the guide for this again :(
Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus
#10> But when a select menu appears, they have to move their hands from keyboard to mouse to select an option. This interrupts their typing flow and slows them down. Simply not true. They do not have to; they just don't know that when the keyboard focus is on the list or combo box, they can go through the selections using the arrow keys. But even for those who know the keyboard shortcuts, long lists are annoying, like l…
To be honest, that reminds me.
Why do sites use drop down menus for years like that?
I mean, in new browsers (or older ones with Javascript) you can add perfectly good calendars for things like date of birth, booking date, etc. In other ones, you can just let them type in the value in some restricted format. Who honestly cares if someone claims to be 150 years old?