Mandatory fields – an excellent way to scare people away

Mandatory form fields are a real bugbear of mine. Whilst sometimes appropriate, they are all too often a classic example of the needs of the website owner being given priority over the needs of the user. In many cases, as well, they can easily lead to a reduction in conversion rates, so there are strong business arguments against them too.

The only legitimate uses of a mandatory field is to collect information that is essential to processing the request. So for example, when you are purchasing something online you need to put in all of the relevant credit card details. It shouldn’t be used for anything else, for the reasons explored below.

Unnecessarily mandatory = annoying

Unnecessarily mandatory fields are instances where the service provider wants to know information that is not essential to process the request. For example, a form may include the questions “where did you hear about us?”. That is very useful information to the marketing department, but is certainly not mandatory. Making it so will, at best, simply inconvenience your customers. At worst, it will annoy them so much that they abort the transaction.

And I’m not exaggerating that last point. I recently went to subscribe to an online music service. Let’s look at what info they wanted:

Registration screen with various mandatory fields

First and Last name are mandatory fields – that’s fair enough, as they’ll need to know that for billing purposes. Email address is mandatory – that’s necessary for contacting me about my account. Phone number isn’t mandatory – that’s perfect, as I don’t want people calling me. But wait – date of birth is mandatory.

I’ve seen this before, and to be honest I usually put a false date in. I can appreciate why declaring your date of birth is necessary for some sites – such as where the nature of a site is unsuitable for younger users (purchasing age-restricted products, online gambling, accessing ‘adult’ content etc). But this wasn’t the case here. I aborted the registration process and contacted the company to ask them why this was mandatory. The answer I got was at least refreshing in its honesty:

We want to know which people from a particular demographic are signing up (and) it will be helpful for us to split our mailing list according to age.

I replied to point out that this was therefore information they would like to have, rather than need. In fact, it really only serves to help them sell things to me more efficiently. They replied thus:

I do understand there is an element of vulnerability in declaring your birth date, but hope that the service will prove honest to you in time.

Which for me missed the point – why would I surrender my personal details now, in the hope that the service will prove honest given time? Put simply, I wouldn’t.

In conclusion, I never did sign up for the service, and that’s £10 a month they’ve lost just for the sake of a bit of marketing info.

Unnecessarily mandatory = inaccessible

There is also a wider issue that asking for information unnecessarily increases the task time required of the user, increases the skills and recall demanded of them to input certain data, and increases the chances of something going wrong. By its very nature, then, it is less accessible. It is putting up a barrier which need not exist. Some users may struggle to correctly input information unless it is explicit what is required of them. For example, the required format of an address or date of birth. There are many different formats that a date can appear in:

20 October 09
20/10/09
10.20.09 (the difference between dd/mm and mm/dd formats is perhaps the most confusing)
Oct 20th 2009

…and getting this wrong, for a mandatory field, means the user must work out what they did wrong and fix it. Another barrier.

Unnecessarily mandatory = illegal?

Last year I blogged about the benefits of a false identity. That was in response to a story about Spotify being hacked and customer’s personal details stolen. Trust is a key issue here, and a major element of that is that we should trust companies not to hold on to information unnecessarily. In fact, the Data Protection Act demands just that:

Anyone who processes personal information must comply with eight principles, which make sure that personal information is:

Fairly and lawfully processed

Processed for limited purposes

Adequate, relevant and not excessive

Accurate and up to date

Not kept for longer than is necessary

Processed in line with your rights

Secure

Not transferred to other countries without adequate protection

The 8 principles of the Data Protection Act

Therefore, asking for excessive information, such as date of birth when no reasonable need exists, breaches the Data Protection Act. Again, surely not a price worth paying for a few extra demographics?

Conclusion

Only use mandatory fields for information that is essential to the process. Even if using optional fields, only ask for personal information where absolutely necessary, and reinforce this with a privacy statement so people know how and why the data is being handled.

A Pretty Simple blog