bradleyjoyce [dot] com

The truth is often times very harsh, but it is still truth. If your web application ever reaches such levels of success as to be used by “the general public” then you must make an effort to design for the lowest common denominator (as much as is possible). Why? If things are too complicated, it could result in $12,000,000 (yes $12 Million!) in lost sales. At least, that is what Expedia found after investigating their analytics and making a change to their checkout form. What was Expedia’s problem? Their users couldn’t figure out what Expedia wanted them to put in the (optional) “Company” field on the checkout form. Rather than putting in their employer, users tended to enter their Bank, and then continued entering in their Bank’s info for address, rather than their home address. This caused the credit card transaction to bomb and resulted in users not being able to properly checkout and inevitably giving up. Of course, the other side of the coin here is to blame Expedia for poor UI/UX and not adhering to the well proven fact that less = better when it comes to web forms. It’s been show over and over again that the fewer fields you have in a single form view, the more likely users are to complete the form successfully. It may be a bit harsh to call the user stupid, but designers sure as heck need to make sure that when it comes to forms and e-commerce, that the page/form design is as simple, short and easy to understand as possible.