Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#21

Post by seszett » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 6:50 PM UTC

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…

> long lists of countries (most of which will never produce a paying customer for that site)

On the other hand, it's extremely frustrating to arrive to this step, fill in all your details, and there, right at the end, open the country list and... it's just a handful of large English-speaking countries including one that neighbours your own country, but not yours.

What would you suggest in order not to have an annoying long list of countries, but still allowing everyone to order even if you did not expect customers from Luxembourg or San Marino?

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#22

Post by mwfunk » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 6:57 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #19

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".

Well, call me crazy, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and postulate that in the context of this discussion, the people finishing the forms are presumed to be the same people who started them. You could probably also find loopholes if you take into account things like time travel paradoxes but I'm not sure if it really adds anything. :)

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#23

Post by kbenson » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 7:11 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #19

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".

I think your assumption of what a form is, and the implied behavior it exhibits, is different than mine. How do multiple people pick up a single abandoned form and complete it?

Edit: Oh, nevermind. I read your example more closely. I guess, the question is in a digital context, how are different users completing forms than the ones starting them. Unless you are just making a point about how it's theoretically possible, even if more likely in an analog context.

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#24

Post by coldtea » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 7:27 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #23

coldtea wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I think your assumption of what a form is, and the implied behavior it exhibits, is different than mine. How do multiple people pick up a single abandoned form and complete it? Edit: Oh, nevermind. I read your example more closely. I guess, the question is in a digital context, how are different users completing forms than the ones starting them. Unless you are just making a point about how it's theoretically possibl…

>I guess, the question is in a digital context, how are different users completing forms than the ones starting them. Unless you are just making a point about how it's theoretically possible, even if more likely in an analog context.

Well, it was more of a tongue-in-cheek reply -- I tried to hack through the seeming "impossibility" the parent mentioned.

That said, I can see several ways to achieve that in a digital context:

a) the users can be in the same physical space. So one starts 10 forms etc, and then ten others sit on his computer and finish them.

b) we could build a fancy networked way to share forms ("collaborative form completion"), or just use something like remote access / VNC etc to be able to keep the users each in their own space.

c) or merely share accounts. A user logs in as X1 to X10 and starts 10 forms, then 10 users login in the same accounts with the same shared credentials and finish them.

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#25

Post by coldtea » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 7:29 PM UTC

mwfunk wrote: post #22

coldtea wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Well, call me crazy, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and postulate that in the context of this discussion, the people finishing the forms are presumed to be the same people who started them. You could probably also find loopholes if you take into account things like time travel paradoxes but I'm not sure if it really adds anything. :)

Yeah, mostly tongue in cheek response.

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#26

Post by Apofis » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 7:32 PM UTC

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…

Yeah, for example, entering your State or Country would be impractical with a radio field.

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#27

Post by ramanathanrv » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 7:37 PM UTC

The article is postulating only a theory. We have seen the opposite true in credit card forms where users have to input card expiry date. No matter what sort of formatting we did, users always typed expiry wrong and our JS would point it out. We finally had to abandon input text boxes in favor of select boxes for card expiry month & year. We measured the eventual success rate and that turned out to be higher as well.

My guess is that since the scope is so narrow (1 out of 12 choices for month) and selection is very obvious, perhaps people made lesser mistakes here. Select boxes are more effective in mobiles as typing takes more effort than tapping.

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#28

Post by kbenson » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 7:39 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #24

kbenson wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your assumption of what a form is, and the implied behavior it exhibits, is different than mine. How do multiple people pick up a single abandoned form and complete it? Edit: Oh, nevermind. I read your example more closely. I guess, the question is in a digital context, how are different users completing forms than the ones starting them. Unless you are just making a point about how it's theoretically possibl…

> I guess, the question is in a digital context, how are different users completing forms than the ones starting them. Unless you are just making a point about how it's theoretically possible, even if more likely in an analog context. Well, it was more of a tongue-in-cheek reply -- I tried to hack through the seeming "impossibility" the parent mentioned. That said, I can see several ways to achieve that in a digital…

I like c), I think that neatly satisfies the preconditions that I think would most likely be present and cause problems with a) and b). It wouldn't necessarily work on multi-page forms that store data in the session, but that still leaves quite a few systems where it's possible, and not really hard to accomplish. :)

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#29

Post by oneeyedpigeon » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 7:41 PM UTC

Apofis wrote: post #26

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…

Yeah, for example, entering your State or Country would be impractical with a radio field.

I was wondering myself what the use case for 50 options would be, then I thought about countries. However, a select list is usually far from ideal: are there 'popular' choices at the top? is the list grouped by continent? is my country "united kingdom" or "great britain" or "england"? is the drop-down set to display an absurdly small (i think the default often is) number of options?

If you insist I enter my country to conform to the exact string you've chosen for it, please let me just type it into a well-implemented auto-completing text box.

Re: Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus

#30

Post by StillBored » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 7:41 PM UTC

Uh, apparently the author didn't notice that on a couple platforms, you can generally type into a select box and it will act sorta like an autocomplete. I do this all the time for US state select boxes, I tab into them and press 'T', 'T' which generally gives me 'TX' which follows 'TN'.

Select boxes are for long exclusive lists. I would like to see all the US states in a radio grouping... Not..