Hi all,
Who here writes forms? Who’s had the opportunity to see the results of those forms?
I’ve been reading about “gradual engagement” for forms in articles by Luke Wroblewski such as this one and [url=http://visitmix.com/Articles/Web-Forms-for-People]this one and was wondering how this would work for something like insurance forms, where there’s really no getting around needing a certain amount of required information to give something meaningful back to the user.
I notice as I try to use our competitor’s forms for getting a quick quote that they string me along, asking a few questions, then after I hit the submit button I get just more questions… this is usually 2 or 3 times before I either finally get a quote, or worse, get told they’ll email it to me. Arg. Personally I find this frustrating as hell, but I wonder if Most Normal People actually like this. Of course, without any money of my own for user testing (and I get paid rock-bottom wages, I’m pretty much NOT going to spend my own money to test) and my employer strangely not interested in user testing, I’m wondering if anyone who does know their users has any useful information.
Our forms, by contrast, do ask the least number of questions necessary by our back-end software which calculates premiums, but we ask them all at once. There are two forms: the simpler “get a quote” form (which asks for a postal code, birthdate, basic vehicle info and what kind of coverage they want), and a “direct purchase” form where it asks everything necessary to just insure them entirely. Users can either start with the quote form, and if they like what they see (they see the proposed premium right away), they can click to the next form where everything they’ve already filled in remains filled in… only then do we start bugging them for personal info and email addresses… or they can just go directly to that form by clicking a link.
I think we’re doing it right for two kinds of vehicles (cars and motorcycles) where on the main page there’s just one question: fill in your license plate number and hit enter to begin, OR hit the button that says “no license number”. If they know the license number, their quote form gets a lot of the vehicle information already filled in for them. We can’t do that for scooters though, but it does seem more inviting and simple to start with just one broad question, and a seemingly important one.
Both forms show all questions at once. The quote form has either 10 or 12 questions (depending on the kind of coverage you choose) and a submit button.
Since everyone else does the stringing-along thing (though I notice they all ask way more questions and they don’t always give me the payoff), are they doing this because it’s what they do, or is this perhaps based on some user research floating around out there? Reading about the “gradual engagement” is making me wonder if we should also string people along… or should it be called “tempting them into filling it in”? With one exception, the questions don’t change as you go; the server doesn’t have to present new questions based on current answers.
Or, conversely, I wonder if it would be beneficial to actually state above the form something like “all you need to do is fill in the 12 questions below and you will immediately see your premium!” or something. Would people even read it? Does it convince people to go ahead and start filling it out? Or is looking at a list of form questions, no matter how sexily styled (lawlz boring insurance forms) always form a big turn-off in the Westerner’s eye?
Currently there’s also some text stating how “easy and simple” and “fast” it is to get a quote. I wonder if this is counter productive. If I’m promising something’s easy and the user comes across a confusing question, did I just make them more frustrated??
Any feedback is appreciated.