Usability of online forms

Online forms can be notoriously user unfriendly. Often you fill out a long form, and press submit, only to find out afterwards that it didn’t like one of your entries. To make matters worse, the error messages can be so cryptic that it takes a few tries to get it right. Today I finally came across a form that gets it right: the form to sign up for a Starbucks account checks each textbox for errors as you fill it out and displays a check mark as you got it right. And it provides some help with entries, such as the proper format for a phone number. Easy. If all forms only were this straightforward.

Oh, and you get two hours of free wireless for the effort of signing up – and a free birthday drink. A good customer experience all around.