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Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

uxmovement.com

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Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#11

Post by [deleted] »

navait wrote: post #6
kileywm wrote: post #4

The 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.

[deleted]

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#12

Post by eric_the_read »

navait wrote: post #6
kileywm wrote: post #4

The 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.

Even with ZIP codes, they don't always map to a single state. http://gis.stackexchange.com/a/167333 lists 13 zip codes that map to multiple states, never mind cities.

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#13

Post by detaro »

mschuster91 wrote: post #9

There'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…

I find the multi-dropdown pattern even more annoying. Yes, the individual choices are smaller, but then I have to click/tab-select the next drop-down multiple times, wait for fold-out animation, understand what the options are, repeat, and there often are strange bugs, e.g. if you try to fix an error. Non-dropdown selects next to each other are better for this pattern IMHO, but take space.

Searchable dropdowns/autocompleting text fields really should be part of the HTML standard...

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#14

Post by protomyth »

The biggest complain I see from users is the Mobile Picker part of the argument. It does make like a pain when you cannot read the options in their entirety. An improved picker would be better. I am not really convinced of the other arguments.

Also, putting items in the menu is some random order is not real helpful.

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#16

Post by molecule »

CM30 wrote: post #10
kazinator wrote: post #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 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?

> Why do sites use drop down menus for years like that?

One reason is that it's a (extremely) lazy / dead simple way of getting around the need to do input validation on the year field.

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#17

Post by kazinator »

CM30 wrote: post #10
kazinator wrote: post #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 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?

Moreover, if you want to be able to filter out bogus entries, you have to let users enter bogus info. If you put in too many constraints, you hamstring your ability to tell bogus from good. For instance if you reject 555-NNNN phone numbers because 555 is fake, the determined user will enter a more convincing fake phone number.

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#18

Post by wtracy »

kileywm wrote: post #4

The 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…

To top it off, most of the author's complaints about drop-down menus apply doubly so to radio buttons.

Selecting with the keyboard? My browser lets me select a menu, type a letter, and jump to the first entry starting with that letter. I've never seen that work with radio buttons (though I admit I haven't tried it recently).

Selecting from a long list on a phone? Selecting a menu on my phone gives me a popup menu that scrolls independently of the rest of the page. Selecting from a list of radio buttons requires a scrolling action that changes my location in the page. If I want to return to a field above the list of radio buttons, I have to scroll back.

My non-expert advice: Never use radio buttons for a set of more options than you can guarantee will fit on the screen simultaneously. If your UI has any mobile users, that probably limits you to four options, maybe less.

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#19

Post by coldtea »

EdiX wrote: post #15

More users start forms than finish them Imagine if the opposite happened!

What's so special about the opposite? It can easily be achieved.

10 users start 10 forms each, but leave them incomplete.

100 other users then finish one each of those forms.

So you have 10 users starting 100 forms and 100 users finishing said 100 forms, thus "more users finishing forms than users starting them".

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#20

Post by curiouslurker »

EdiX wrote: post #15

More users start forms than finish them Imagine if the opposite happened!

It does happen. I am from a third world country and one year my friend worked on the databases for counting election results. In certain regions where the ruling party rigged the elections, there were more votes (for preferred candidates) than registered voters!

The internal database checks would not allow this and the minister in charge of elections called him in the middle of the night to complain that the system was not working :)

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