
Making beautiful forms; Square and Recurly - colinprince
http://functionsource.com/post/beautiful-forms
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mgkimsal
I just got done putting together a basic CC form for a project, and they
_insisted_ that we have a separate pulldown indicating what type of card the
user was going to enter. I argued against it, and was voted down.

One of the justifications was, by forcing a pulldown, you're telling the
people what cards are accepted. However, showing icons and text does the same
thing. There are no good justifications for it, imo. But, until people stop
coddling end users from 1996, we'll be stuck with bad form input habits.

For goodness' sake, I saw a RESET button today. And not just a regular RESET
button, but a custom icon, about 50% the size of a normal input button, butted
up next to the 50% smaller 'submit' button.

WHO ever says to themselves "hrm... shoot - I just entered in 40 instead of 50
in field 7 of 29 fields - I wish there was a way I could erase everything and
start over!". No one was pining for that functionality in 1995, but for some
reason we got it, and every browser maker since then has seen fit to
faithfully recreate it.

Sorry... slight tangent there...

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donw
Maybe framing your argument in terms of the direct value (or loss) to their
business would have helped.

Maybe something along the lines of this:

"Of course, this is entirely your call. I just want to make sure that we're
all on the same page about why I disagree with adding a separate pulldown.

By adding a separate pulldown, you're asking the user to make a choice. One of
the choices they can make is to not complete their purchase.

Would you teach your retail cashiers to ask each customer if they were really
sure that they wanted to buy today? Are they certain that today is the day to
give your business money?

Because that's what adding an extra step to the checkout does. The only
possible effect will be to decrease the number of customers that will complete
a checkout.

That's why I'm against adding that pulldown."

~~~
weego
The user chose to be at this site, chose to pick an item to purchase and then
chose to go into payment processing. The idea that suddenly an extra drop-down
is going to outrage someone into questioning their entire choice-path is
hugely unlikely, and infact the example here is a site that knows it's
demographic won't be scared off by what seems at first glance to be a fairly
ambiguous user input. If say Amazon tried this I would suggest their A/Bs
would have this style of form failing for most demographics.

~~~
donw
It's not a matter of outrage, it's a matter of momentum.

Every pause in the purchase process slows down the cognitive momentum of the
user, which is why adding, say, forced registration before a checkout is a bad
idea.

Admittedly, having to select your credit card from a drop-down is only a small
speed bump, but why introduce it at all when there's no benefit and a very
real downside?

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pbreit
I would argue there is benefit (what cards are accepted) and little downside.
Without testing, I would not be prepared to make a definitive statement
though.

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Zev
Be sure to read the comments as well; the guy who built the form for Square in
the first place points out some other subtle details that the form has.

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budu3
It looks great. I like it. I just wonder if too much javascript magic on a
credit card processing form might make users feel uneasy about security.

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mgkimsal
In what way? Most users don't ever think about "javascript" as a thing. It
might alarm techies, perhaps?

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ez77
For what is worth, it alarms me that my bank doesn't let me access my account
with javascript disabled...

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wnight
It's an empty page.

