5 Minute Usability Tip: Humans make errors; check your key pages frequently
Usability Tip: Humans make errors; check your key pages frequently
With so many pages to work on, so many projects to handle and so few resources it’s easy to build a page and leave it alone thinking all is fine for eternity – big mistake. Over time changes begin to impact each other, IT projects update old systems, templates get shifted and style sheets get renamed leading to some potentially nasty usability issues.
This week I’ve had 3 separate reasons to fill out contact forms and all 3 had one common issue – they failed to properly star their required fields. Oddly none of the sites had issues staring some required fields but, for whatever combination of reasons, they all failed to explain that one or two fields were required. It took trying to submit the forms and getting errors back to even know I was missing something in the first place.
Given that these sites all were well done and easy to navigate I’m sure they didn’t get built wrong they’ve simply been forgotten. So while you may not think there’s a reason to check something you haven’t touched in months don’t make the mistake of thinking nothing has changed it. I suggest everyone keeps a list of their interactive pages from support forms to checkout pages and checks them periodically. It’s amazing what you can find trying to fill out your own form.
