The graph on the left has been my eye opener. One of our customers showed me the graph and explained that there has been a significant drop in failures or non-validated entries in their customer portal. The number of wrong entries reduced significantly after they updated the data entry form. The cause for that drop is that they seriously looked at their entry screens. The old screens were very obvious for their own employees, but hardly usable for their – or selections of their – customers. It sounds obvious, there is nothing new in it, but it is still the case in many data entry forms, in a lot of customer entry portals.
In the example above, the primary focus of the specific company was pretty regional and did not serve an international audience. My conclusion, after taken a sample on the web, is that a similar data quality increase can be gained for globally operating companies, and that the same underlying paradigms need to be implemented. These paradigms are:
- Localize your entry screen: Design your entry screen in such a way that it fits with the cultural behaviour of your audience. And sorry to say, that is much more than changing the language from German to French, or from English to Italian – yes, there are more languages in the world than US English ;-).
Think, for example, about cultural differences in names, names per gender – and related salutations, addresses, postal codes, the need to ask for a state – that stupid fact that most non-US countries do not have states, and if they have states, the chance that it starts with Alabama is almost zero.
A well known authority on addresses is Graham Rhind and I love to hear his stories on clumsy entry screens in relation to the address. For example, simple facts like Ireland that does not use postcodes, or more recently inhabitants of small isle states that recently forced their government to introduce a postcode because they could not buy on the Internet, the entry screens forced them to fill in a postcode in order to buy. - Prevent pollution of your data source. As with your kitchen or bathroom, you need to clean it every now and then, but it significantly helps if you take some serious precautions to prevent that it becomes a mess. Simple things like wiping your shoes before entering your house, etc. The same goes for data entry.
The moment your user provides you with its data, it is better to validate and check it immediately before you use it – validate the syntax, the semantics, completeness, the existence and up-to-dateness. And in most cases it will pay off to enrich the data automatically before you check if the data is already available in your system(s).
I am curious, do we have user friendly entry forms somewhere in the world? Can you send me – in your opinion – the best entry screen you have ever used – preferably for an international audience. Please provide me with the URL and a small screenshot of possible. If you send me enough examples I will start a contest. And of course I am biased for western oriented screens but I will not run away from some exotic writing set that is used by 20% of the world population.
Help me in my search for the ultimate customer entry form. And… in case you want share some clumsy entry screens, do not hesitate to share them as well.