An irritating website mistake: too-specific web forms

By Jean Levasseur, Captains of Industry

We all have one – an ever-growing list of website quirks that irritate us. Sometimes it’s something that interrupts our experience online (popup advertising), other times it’s just a peripheral annoyance (pixilated images).

I was registering to download a free eBook on SEO that I wanted to read, and was willing to give up my contact information for. I submitted first and last name. E-mail. Company. Website. Phone number. How many employees. I didn’t even lie. When I hit submit, the page immediately came back with an error. Apparently, the form only accepts 10 digits for phone numbers – meaning adding parentheses, a dash and my extension gave an error.

Really?

I gave this company my information so they could reach out to me directly, instead of having to call the main number and stumble through a touch-tone directory, making their jobs easier. Not only is there now a 50% chance that I’ll leave the site, but they don’t actually have my best contact information. A bad lead and a slightly irritated customer.

Make online forms easy. Let users enter their information however they want. If that means you have to deal with some ancillary characters, so be it. You’ll have better data.