I’ve decided to go back to uni part time and so today went along to the UAC site to register myself and find out what to do next.
I thought I had seen the worst that web forms could give me in terms of bad usability, unclear error message and unintelligible flow but UAC really took the cake on this one.
I managed to get an error at the first field.
The error - “First name must all be uppercase”. WTF?? Seriously, it’s a 2 line piece of javascript to take any form fields and make them upper-case, so why the hell are they making their users type their first name in upper case? I have never seen that anywhere else on the web, ever, so they are breaking convention and forcing their users into filling in something unnaturally.
Of course, because the error checking was ajax, I couldn’t even go and delete my name, it kept chucking up the error over and over and over whenever my mouse touched the field.
The form went from bad to worse as it was completely inconsistent. I managed to get my email address and postal address in there, but then rather then checking validation on each field, it then did it as I clicked the next button - same problem, address should be upper case, email should be upper case, and address can’t have - or / in there.
Seriously, as I said before… 2 lines of javascript instead of annoying every single user and spewing forth dozens of error messages.
But the crowning glory into the shambles that was the registration process - you couldn’t copy and paste the account number and pin they give you, and they also don’t email it to you.
I had to take a screenshot and then write it down - how old-skool!
Luckily I’m not going to uni to study web design as this would definitely put me off studying there.
This post is tagged under: customer experience
so. sad. I’ve been working with a couple of smaller companies lately and it really is scary how little they get about the basics :-(
I love it! It’s actually so bad it’s almost funny :-)
Yeah or would be if I wasn’t in a rush to start with, a little bit anxious if I was going through the right procedure and hoping I wasn’t accidentally signing myself up for medicine or agriculture or something instead…
Actually, I think the worst web form would have to be the one used by Australian Air Express (www.aae.com.au). Aside from the fact they make it impossible to find, it actually doesn’t achieve anything as no one follows up your enquiry.
What gets me is that the form is delivered by their CRM application (salesforce.com) and has to go to someone - but still nothing. It’s not only the small firms that don’t get the basics right - often its the enterprise that get the basics wrong as well.