What is a call-to-action?

A call-to-action is the fundamental reason that you have a website in the first place. In web marketing, it’s defined as something, either a design element or some piece of content, that compels a visitor to take some specific action that you can measure to determine whether your website is working or not.

Every type of website you can think of has a call-to-action built into it, although of course some websites are better at emphasizing it than others. Calls-to-action provide focus for your website and if done right, give direction to your visitors for what you ultimately want them to do. Examples of a call-to-action include:

• Make an online donation
• Request an appointment
• Purchase a product
• Fill out a request form
• Register for an event or program

What makes a call-to-action effective?

Unfortunately there are no easy answers to that question, and there are plenty of people out there who ponder that question every day. While every website and every situation is different, there are some general guidelines you can follow when making your calls-to-action, both from the content and the design perspectives.

Also keep in mind that you should continually test whether your calls-to-action work or not. There are some free tools out there that will give you a good start at this, especially from Google. Their analytics tool will tell you what people are looking at on your website, while their website optimizer can help you test different combinations of calls-to-action in order to see what works better.

Writing calls-to-action

Using the right words appropriate to your website will drive people to take the action; using the wrong words can distract them, at best, or cause them to leave your website, at worst. With that in mind, here are some tips for writing effective calls-to-action:

• Lay the groundwork – Before someone is willing to follow one of your calls-to-action, they first have to recognize a need that requires them doing so. Telling your visitors the benefits of taking that action will help give them the motivation to actually do so.
• Use action-oriented words – Using an active voice encourages people to follow your calls-to-action, and also helps people scanning your website quickly identify what your call-to-action is about. This is also one of the reasons you should avoid using “click here” in your link text.
• Have one on every page – There should always be at least one call-to-action within the content on every page of your website – no page should be a dead-end. Ending your content with a call-to-action tells visitors what the next step is and keeps them moving on your website.
• Limit the number and keep them distinct – Having too many calls-to-action on a website can be confusing for your visitors. Limit yourself to only a few, and keep them distinct so visitors know what the primary call-to-action is, as well as what you want them to do first from the choices.
• Keep your forms short and clear – Unless someone has a compelling interest, many people see a long form asking for unnecessary information and won’t fill it out. Follow some of my other tips for writing clear instructions if your main call-to-action is a form.

You can also look through a previous post that I’ve written about improving your titles and sub-headers for some tips that are just as applicable to writing effective calls-to-action.

Designing calls-to-action

Web designers can have a lot of influence over how effective calls-to-action are. Following general usability and design guidelines help make the website as effective as possible. Here are some tips for how to do that:

• Put it above the fold – You want your main call-to-action to be visible wherever people go throughout your website – almost like your logo. The right side of your website’s header is a natural location to do that; any other lesser calls-to-action can go in sidebars, above the fold as well.
• Use images for emphasis – Images or icons get people’s attention because they get noticed by your eyes before content on a page does. Buttons also do the same thing and are great to use because they stand out against text AND imply action by their very nature.
• Choose contrasting colors – If you’re using a button as your primary call-to-action mechanism, use a color that contrasts with your main colors for maximum effect. Just don’t choose a color that contrasts so much that it becomes too hard to ignore when reading the content around it.
• Consider homepage placement – We all know how important your homepage is, which is why you need to make it as usable as possible for your visitors. Your main call-to-action should be prominently placed on it where people will really see it.
• Use some white space – The more white space around your call-to-action, the more people’s eyes will naturally be drawn to it. Crowding your call-to-action in with surrounding content will decrease its effectiveness as it gets lost in the overall noise of the page.
• Make it bigger – Size isn’t everything when it comes to your call-to-action, but making it bigger definitely makes it more likely that it will get noticed. Just don’t make it so big that it totally overwhelms the rest of the content on your website – find the right balance.

Thoughts?

Creating effective calls-to-action are a HUGE topic and business for a lot of people, so I hope that this gave some good, introductory guidelines for making your calls-to-action more effective.

Have you had any particular success working with calls-to-action on your website or on a website you’ve done for a client? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts and experiences!

There are many people who fall into the category of lower literacy when it comes to websites. Some researchers estimate that as much as 50% of the U.S. population can be defined as having a lower literacy, while 30% of total online users can be said to have the same.

What’s discussed below is definitely something worth considering and applying to your website, especially if you think that a significant proportion of your visitors fall into the lower literacy category.

Higher literacy vs. lower literacy

The most important thing that I can emphasize up front is that when I use the term “lower literacy”, I’m not talking about people who are illiterate or unintelligent. Quite the opposite in fact.  People who have a lower literacy are able to read – they just struggle with it to some degree depending on the particular medium in question. In this case, I’m talking about lower literacy as it pertains to websites.

In general there are some common characteristics of people who have a lower literacy:

• They have trouble scanning text
• They need to go through content word-by-word
• They’ll often find themselves re-reading long, unfamiliar words

People who are otherwise highly literate and intelligent might actually have a lower literacy when it comes to websites. Older people in their 50s, 60s, etc. are a perfect example of this. Anyone who has sat and watched how their parents use a website knows exactly what I’m talking about – some of those characteristics describe them perfectly.

Higher literacy is just the opposite. People who are highly literate, especially on the web, are able to look at a website quickly, scan it for what they’re looking for, and interpret what’s on the website and what the website has to offer them.

If you think this describes you perfectly, you’re not alone – there’s a significant gap in web literacy levels between older and younger generations. Younger people have been using websites for a greater percentage of their lives than older generations have, so they’re that much more familiar with them. Add in the fact that older generations tend to be more “afraid” of computers than younger generations are – such as clicking the wrong link, filling out a form, etc. – and you begin to account for that generational gap.

Lower literacy on the web

So how does lower literacy manifest itself when people use websites? Here are some common habits that lower literacy website visitors display:

• Reading the navigation – Lower literacy visitors tend to read through all of your navigation links first, and then choose the option that best meets what they’re looking for.
• Narrowing the field of view – Lower literacy visitors will read through content line-by-line, giving them a particular narrow focus that they might find hard to zoom out from.
• Skipping over information – If something becomes too complicated, then lower literacy users are more likely to completely skip over it, potentially missing something important.
• Accepting as “good enough” – Digging deeper requires a lot of reading (which can be challenging and time consuming), so lower literacy users skip, usually looking for links.
• Avoiding search tools – Lower literacy users might have difficulty spelling the search terms, and then when they see the results, have difficulty processing out-of-context content.

How to design for lower literacy users

How can you improve your website’s usability for lower literacy users in order to make it work for a broad audience? Here are some suggestions:

• Prioritize your content – Place the most important content at the very top of the page, where readers who might otherwise give up after a few lines will see, and keep any other important information above the fold. This especially applies to your call-to-action.
• Avoid confusing navigation links – The links in your main navigation(s) should be written so that they’re as intuitively as possible. There’s no need to be creative and write “Who We Are” when writing “About Us” will do just as good a job instead.
• Improve your in-content navigation – Follow some of the basic recommendations to improve your page titles and headers, and you’ll not only break up the content for higher literacy users, but keep lower literacy users from getting frustrated.
• Avoid distractions – Design elements like Flash banners can serve a useful purpose on your homepage, but on internal pages, avoid anything that moves or might otherwise be a distraction. These really get in the way when you’re trying to concentrate, which lower literacy users need to do.
• Use a consistent page design – Unless there’s some compelling reason otherwise, every page on your website should have the same general feel to it, and should include all of the major navigational elements. Consistency is the goal – something that lower literacy users struggle without.
• Make effective links – There are things that both designers and writers can do to make links more effective. Follow some of these recommendations – such as using icons on particular types of links, or making the links scannable – to help lower literacy users navigate your website easier.
• Simplify form instructions – Forms give many people trouble, so you can imagine the trepidation with which lower literacy users fill them out – especially if giving away personal information is involved. Keep your instructions clear to avoid unnecessary confusion.

Do some of these tips sound familiar? If so, it’s because many of them are also general usability guidelines that you should be following anyways when creating your website. If you’ve already tried to incorporate many of them into your website and think that it’s as user-friendly as possible, then lower literacy visitors shouldn’t have much of a problem using it.

Thoughts?

Is lower literacy something you should be concerned with if you have a website? Or do you think it’s dependent solely on who the particular audience for that website is – no different than gender, profession, interest, etc? Share your thoughts with everyone by leaving a comment below!

Many forms contain some content aside from the questions of the form itself. This content usually serves some instructional purpose such as helping the visitor understand the purpose of the form, knowing how to get help, etc. There’s not anything wrong with having it in your form, but it can be problematic if you have too much or if it doesn’t clearly communicate why someone should complete the form.

Everyone avoids trying to read instructions on a form, so the challenge is making them as usable as possible – especially if there is key information in them that visitors need to know. With that in mind, here are some tips for writing clear instructions for your form in order to improve its overall usability.

(The tips below are based on chapter 4 of Caroline Jarret’s and Gerry Gaffney’s book, “Forms That Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability”.)

4 tips to writing better instructions

Want to write better instructions and content for your forms? Following these tips can go a long way towards making your forms more usable:

• Keep it simple – Write the instructions in plain language that most people will understand; anything more complicated and you might be asking for trouble.
• Know your audience – Use the right terms in the right ways. For example, there’s a big difference between American English and British English – something travel websites have to consider.
• Limit the jargon – Only use terms a specific audience would understand if the form is designed for that audience. If the form is meant for the general population, keep the language simple.
• Show graphics if necessary – Where can they can find the information you’re asking for? Show them; the security code on the back of credit cards is a good example.

Write these instructions…

Now that you know how to write better instructions, here are the things you should include as instructional text in your forms if you want to make them more usable:

• A clearly written title – The title of your form page is the first thing that people will notice about it, so make sure that it says exactly what they can do by completing the form. Is it an order form? Then the title of your form should be “Order ____”. And since a form implies that people are going to take some action, your title should start with an action word to emphasize that point.
• Where they can go for common answers – Maybe you’ve noticed people are using your contact form to ask questions they could easily find the answers to elsewhere on your website. Do you see that happening a lot? Preempt those questions with instructions at the top of the page telling where they can find that information before they take the time to complete the form.
• Who this form is intended for – Put some instructions at the top of the page saying who exactly should fill out the form, and you’ll save people the time from filling it out for the wrong reasons. Write these instructions in the positive voice though, and be as specific as possible – people will understand what you’re saying much easier than if you were to write it in the negative voice.
• What they need to complete the form – Most people want to get through a form as quickly as possible. If they’re halfway through the form and are asked for information they don’t have right in front of them, are they likely to continue filling it out? It depends. Telling them what’s needed ahead of time could avoid any aggravation on their part, and increase the likelihood of them completing it.
• Why you want certain information – Only ask for the information that’s absolutely necessary for the person filling it out to tell you. For example, does your contact form ask for a street address when only an email is needed? If so, will you be adding them to your print mailing list if they give you their address? Then tell them why you’re asking for it  – but give them the chance to opt out, of course!
• What the next step will be – Most forms display some confirmation content once the user hits the “submit” button. This is an often overlooked spot to leverage, and where you should tell them what the next step will be as a result of their having completed the form. You might also put links here to other content so that they don’t leave the website just because they completed the form.

…but don’t write these instructions

You can skip on this content in your forms – it might make them less usable:

• Sales pitches – When someone is ready to fill out a form on your website, they’re willing to complete some transaction with you because they’ve already been sold on what you’re selling. Keep the content directly related to the task of completing the form – anything else can and should go.
• How “quick and easy” it is to fill out – Your visitors will be able to tell right away both how easy your form is to complete and whether they’ll be able to do so quickly or not. Don’t have to specifically tell them that; some people might even be suspicious if you do. Is it really that quick and easy if you say so?
• The time needed to fill it out – For relatively simple forms, mentioning how long it will take to complete isn’t necessary. It’s understood that forms take some short time to complete. But, if you have a truly large form that might take, say, 20 minutes to complete, advance warning is useful.
• Help text for every field – If your field labels are clearly written, skip the help text. But if you have a field where it’s not so obvious how the user should respond, you might need it. Just make it short enough to fit right next to the field, or use an icon (such as a question mark) as a link to it.

Thoughts?

Do you have any other tips for writing clear instructions in a website form? Has anything in particular that you’ve tried worked well? Share your thoughts with everyone by using the comment form below!

There are a variety of popular hosted search services available, such as Google’s Custom Search Engine, but the thing to keep in mind is this: no matter which one you choose, if your visitors can’t find the search field or it’s not very usable, it won’t do them, or you, much good.

So here are some tips for how to make your hosted search tool as usable as possible once you incorporate it onto your website – both for the search field itself and on the results page.

For the search field

• Use a search box with a type-in field – Let your visitors type in their search term right from the page that they’re on, rather than having them go to a specific search page to do it. Doing so makes the search more accessible and cuts out an unnecessary step from the search process.
• Style your search field appropriately – If the search field is too short, your visitors won’t be able to see the full search term they’re typing in. This is a problem particularly if they need to revise their term before searching. Avoid this problem and make the search field wide enough to contain multiple terms.
• Keep it in a consistent location – Your search function should be in as prominent and consistent a location as your website’s logo. I prefer either the right side of the header or in the main navigation area. The point is, visitors expect it near the top of the page, so make sure to put it there.
• Use an icon to emphasize its nature – Improve your website’s usability and make your search field more obvious by using an icon within your input field. A magnifying glass is the universal symbol for search, so use that to call attention to, and visually communicate the nature of, your search field.

For the search results page

• Limit the number of search results per page – If you have a lot of content being indexed, a large number of results might show up for certain search terms. Break the search results up into manageable chunks will help your visitors browse through them easier.
• Put a search box at the top of the search results page – This will make it easier for people to do another search should the results of the first one not be what they were looking for. You should customize the code a bit to make it look a bit larger than your regular search field.
• Have the term they searched for display in that search box - Having the searched-for term appear within the box on the results page when the results appear will further reinforce what they had typed in, and if they mistyped something and got wrong results, they’ll see what the mistake was.

Thoughts?

Do you use a popular hosted search tool on your website? If so, have you customized it to make it more usable for your visitors? If not, which of the tips mentioned above would you incorporate? Share your thoughts with everyone by leaving a comment below!

I’m working on a few WordPress websites for clients at the moment, so I’ve discovered these plugins as I’ve been searching for solutions to some of their design requirements. Finding these plugins just reinforces for me one of the best things about working with WordPress – that for almost anything that you’re trying to do, chances are that there’s a plugin that already exists to meet that need.

(I also wrote last year about some of the other reasons why I want to build your website in WordPress – the availability of plugins being only one of those reasons.)

Without further ado, here are 6 more plugins that you should be using on your WordPress website or blog…

#1: Easy Contact

Easy Contact is a good plugin to use if you’re looking to incorporate a basic contact form into your website or blog. What I like most about it is that unlike the previous contact form plugin that I had been using (the Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form plugin), the additional CAPTCHA security question is an optional choice on the form.

Why is that important to me? I used the other form for one of my past projects, and they kept telling me they were having problems with the contact form – specifically that people said they had sent a message through the form, but the client never received it. Turns out what was happening was that people weren’t answering the required CAPTCHA question, so the form results didn’t go through, even though the form page refreshed – giving people the impression that the message had gone through.

In any case, the Easy Contact plugin should help avoid that confusion (the security question is optional to display), while still enabling the basic functions that you would expect from a contact form. You can style it however you want to as well, although that’s pretty standard for most plugins of this nature.

#2: Thank Me Later

Thank Met Later is a great plugin to incorporate into the functionality of your comments area. Once you install this plugin, it will send a thank you message to people who leave a comment on your blog or website. There are a lot of ways to customize your message, from the content to when the thank you note is sent out, making it really versatile.

Why would you want to send out a thank you note to people who leave a comment? I think doing so is useful as another way for you to reach out to, and interact with, people who are coming into contact with your website in some way. Sending a little note can put a more personal face on your website, encourage them to subscribe to your RSS feed or email newsletter, start fostering relationships with your commenters, etc. – all things you want to do to help build your brand and reputation.

#3: WP-UnitPNGFix

The name may be difficult to read, but this plugin is definitely getting added to my must-install list. WP-UnitPNGFix fixes the problem that occurs in Internet Explorer 6.0, where PNG images that are supposed to have a transparent background instead have a grey block behind them.

Firefox, Safari, and newer versions of Internet Explorer don’t have a problem rendering transparent PNGs, but since so many people are still using Internet Explorer 6.0, us web designers still have to account for it in our design. (Yet another reason why I hate Internet Explorer 6.0 so much and why I wish people would upgrade already.)

#4: Thumbnail for Excerpts

On some blogs, you’ll see photos used next to the post excerpts as a way to attract people’s attention to particular posts. A great example of a blog that uses this technique is PSD Tuts – visit their website and you’ll immediately see what I mean.

I think that this effect works nicely for when you’re using WordPress as a content management system for clients, rather than just a blog post. The current projects I’m working on fall into that category, so posts are really being used as news updates about particular events. When that’s the case, having a small thumbnail photo is a nice touch that can help accentuate the posts page.

What Thumbnails for Excerpts does in particular is look for the first image within the post, and that becomes the thumbnail that’s displayed next to the excerpt. You can easily specify the size of your thumbnail, and then it’s just a matter of styling the image for how you want it to appear.

#5: Multi-Level Navigation

Drop-down menus are always a contentious topic in the web design world, but I think they do have their uses and can be an important way to help your users dig deeper into your site’s content.

The Multi-Level Navigation plugin lets you have drop-down menus in WordPress, which otherwise would involve some complicated coding in order to have.  This plugin lets you customize everything through an easy-to-use interface. You can add up to two levels to your drop-down menus (which in most cases is probably the most that you should have anyways), style it however you want to, determine the contents for the menus, and more.

#6: Embed iFrame

The reason for using the Embed Iframe plugin is somewhat obscure, and truthfully most people probably won’t have use for it on their websites. Simply put, an <iframe> is a means of embedding one HTML page in another. The projects I’m working are regional websites for a national organization, and they want to be able to include content from the national website without having to duplicate it on the regional websites – so that’s why this is coming in handy.

But there’s also another more common use for an <iframe>, and that’s if you want to include a Google calendar on your website. Calendars are certainly a useful feature to have on your website, especially if they’re used to highlight programming and events. Google calendars are certainly popular and easy to use for your users.

In order to display your Google calendar on your website, after installing this plugin all you would do is reference the URL of your Google calendar within the iframe code on your page, and you’re all set!

Thoughts?

Do any of these plugins sound like something you would use on your WordPress website or blog? If so, let me know what you think of them. Or, if you have any other WordPress plugins that you think might be useful for everyone to know about, share them by leaving a comment below!

The reason I bring up this topic is because last week, I was installing the Search Everything plugin on this blog, and had to decide how to style the new search form. I knew from the start that I wanted to include a little icon in it to convey its purpose; I had seen that done elsewhere and really liked the look of it, and felt that it would work here.

When and how to use icons

This is a nice design effect, and I believe that it could have a place on most websites, in one form or another. But here are a few pointers that I think are worth mentioning regarding when and how to use icons on your forms:

• Use sparingly – Icons shouldn’t be used within every input field in all the forms on your website. It will work best on forms with a small number of input fields – search bars, contact forms, and blog comment forms, for example. On shorter forms like these, you can use it on all the input fields without making it seem like you went overboard.
• You still need a label – You’re not using an icon as a replacement for an input field’s label – you’re using it as a way to accentuate the label. An icon can give some extra usability and design benefits, but that’s presuming that your form is already well-designed and usable to begin with. (If they’re not, you might want to read through an earlier post I wrote about how to design your forms to emphasize their usability.)

Step-by-Step Instructions

For those of you who aren’t reading this on my website and aren’t able to scroll up the page to see the search for yourself, here’s what my search field looks like:

If you’re interested in creating a similar look on your website, here are the steps I went through to make my search field look that way, complete with the styles that I used in my CSS to achieve that look.

1. Step 1 – Create the blue outer wrapper that the search bar resides in. This element isn’t totally necessary, so feel free to skip this step if you want to. (One note: I used a <div> tag here, but you could use a <fieldset> instead – it would do the same thing.)

   #search {
   width:230px;
   padding:10px;
   border-radius:5px;
   -moz-border-radius:5px;
   -webkit-border-radius:5px;
   background-color:#98afc8;
   background-image:url(images/search_bg.png);
   background-position:bottom;
   background-repeat:repeat-x;
   border:1px solid #849ab2;
   text-align:left;
   height:1%;
   overflow:hidden;
   }

2. Step 2 – Create the actual search bar. What you’re doing here is simply creating the <div> tag that the input field will be placed within; the background image for this <div> will be your icon. Just make sure to leave enough padding on the left so that the input field doesn’t overlap with the icon.

   #search #searchField {
   background-image:url(images/search.png);
   background-position:10px;
   background-repeat:no-repeat;
   background-color:#ffffff;
   border:1px solid #849ab2;
   border-radius:10px;
   -moz-border-radius:10px;
   -webkit-border-radius:10px;
   height:1%;
   overflow:hidden;
   padding:0 20px 0 34px;
   float:left;
   margin-right:10px;
   }

3. Step 3 – Style the actual input field. I want it to be seemingly invisible within the <div> tag, so I’m making both the border and background color of it white, which will match the color of the <div> tag.

   #search #search_field input {
   border:1px solid #ffffff;
   background-color:#ffffff;
   }

4. Step 4 – Create the submit button that people will click on.

   #search button {
   padding:3px;
   background-color:#da5e2a;
   color:#ffffff;
   font:bold 13px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
   border:none;
   margin-top:3px;
   cursor:pointer;
   border-radius:5px;
   -moz-border-radius:5px;
   -webkit-border-radius:5px;
   }

Here’s how the final HTML code will look:

<div id="search">
<div id="searchField">
<form method="get" id="searchform" action="http://www.addicottweb.com">
<input type="text" value="Search" onblur="if(this.value=='') this.value='Search';" onfocus="if(this.value=='Search') this.value='';" title="Enter the terms you wish to search for" class="srch-txt" name="s" id="s" size="15" />
</div>
<button type="submit" class="SE5_btn" id="searchsubmit">Go</button>
</form>
</div>

What if you want to style multiple input fields?

My approach works well if you’re only styling one input field. But if you wanted to use icons within multiple input fields, my way isn’t the best solution. You would have to add multiple styles for each icon you’re using, which would make your CSS more bloated than necessary.

Fortunately, that’s where Javascript comes in. As I was researching this topic, I came across a good article by Janko Jovanovic where he describes how to accomplish this technique using Jquery to style multiple input fields. This automates the process a bit, and helps you keep your CSS to a minimum.

Thoughts?

If you’re a web designer, what kinds of websites do you think this would work well with – blogs only, or other websites too? Do you think that it should be used selectively, such as for search bars (which you currently see), or do you think there’s a greater need for this? Share your thoughts using the comment form below!

What I’d like to talk in particular today is the subject of forms and usability. Now, I’m sure many people know some of the basics of website usability, especially if you’ve been reading this blog for awhile. If you do, you know that it is often the smallest usability quirks which can create the biggest annoyances for your visitors. There is no better example of that than HTML forms.

So if you want to know how to build better forms on your website, keep reading. I’m going to discuss some of the HTML elements that you can use when building a form on your website, and then give some tips for how those elements can be used to create a more usable form.

HTML elements for forms

When it comes to creating forms, HTML gives us web designers a variety of elements to use. Some of these are used by designers more frequently than others, but they are all useful in creating a more usable form.

So what are these elements?

• fieldset – A group of related content, used to make the form easier for users to follow.
• legend – The caption to a fieldset.
• input – The actual field that you enter information into.
• label – The description found in front of an input element – “Name” or “Phone Number”, for example.
• textarea – Like an input field, except for longer answers – “Comments”, for example.
• select – A drop-down menu used to present multiple choices for you to choose from.
• option – One of the choices contained within a drop-down menu.
• optgroup – A label used to categorize a group of choices together within a drop-down menu.

Using these elements properly – labels in particular – gets you away from using tables to lay out your form. Using the HTML elements, in combination with CSS, is the more modern way of doing things, and because you’re using less code, it means that web browsers can process and load the page much quicker.

Style form elements to improve usability

All of these form elements can be styled using CSS just like any other HTML element – which is the key to making your forms more usable. When you apply styles to these elements, what are you really doing? You’re visually separating them from the surrounding content in order to make the form appear more organized and less confusing to the user.

Whenever I create a form for someone, I try to keep the following things in mind, all of which relate to how the form is laid out and how the form elements are styled.

• Use fieldsets to group similar content together – Fieldsets can be used to separate content in your form so that it seems less lengthy and more logical to the user. The bonus is that by going from one section to another, it also gives a sense of progression as they fill out the form. In terms of styling, most often you’ll see fieldsets styled with a border and/or background color combination. Again, the goal is to visually differentiate the form from other content on the page.
• Labels should always go above the input field – Eye-mapping studies have shown that people are best able to associate labels with particular input fields when the label is above the input field. This also gives you room if your label and/or input fields in question are long(er). In that instance, they won’t appear scrunched up, which might happen otherwise if the label is to the left of the input field.
• Labels should ask for the exact information needed – If you’re looking for information in a particular format, or a particular answer, then make sure that your label says exactly what it is that you want the user to type. For example, when it comes to phone numbers, there are various ways that people type those into a form. If you’re looking for the phone number (or any information) in a particular format, then make sure that your label specifies that.
• Give the user breathing room to type - I add a few pixels of padding to my input fields so that the text isn’t crushed up against the edges of the field. This helps give the form a much cleaner and modern look to it – intangible qualities that can help give an overall positive impression of your website.
• Don’t forget to style the input fonts – Another nice touch for your form fields is to specify the font that will be used when someone types into one of your input boxes. It’s not necessary to do it, but if done right further contributes to the clean and modern appearance mentioned above.
• Color your input fields to make them stand out – By default web browsers render input fields as a white box with a black border, making them hard to notice.  Giving them some color can help them stand out from the surrounding content. There are two things to keep in mind though: use colors from within your color scheme, and use colors with enough contrast against your page background.
• Show the user what input field they’re on – If you’ve colored your input fields already, you can provide even greater visual distinction by styling the particular field that the user is currently filling in. Just use “input:focus” in your CSS, and style accordingly.
• Don’t forget the submit button – I’m sure you’ve seen the standard way that most web browsers render form buttons. The look is definitely a bit outdated, so if we can do better, why shouldn’t we? How you style these all depends on the overall style of the website, but if you use a gradient background image or a color, it will do wonders to making your forms look even nicer.

Want to see examples?

Now that I’ve gone through some tips for how to style your forms, you might want to see some examples of forms that were created using some of the techniques I just mentioned.

Smashing Magazine has put together photo galleries of well-styled and innovative forms. You might find some good ideas for your website by looking through these two posts:

• Web Form Design: Modern Solutions and Creative Ideas
• CSS-Based Forms: Modern Solutions

If you’re interested in the common practices of other designers when it comes to creating forms, Smashing Magazine also ran a design survey where they asked some well-known websites for all sorts of information how they styled and designed their forms.

• Web Form Design Patterns: Sign-Up Forms – Part 1
• Web Form Design Patterns: Sign-Up Forms – Part 2

Thoughts?

Now that you know how to create forms in ways that improve their usability, what do you think? Are there some tips that I gave that you agree or disagree with? Do you do anything differently with your forms, and if so, what is it that you do? Share your comments with everyone by filling out the comment form below!

Yes, you read that correctly.

Barack Obama ran for office using arguably the most technologically-committed campaign ever. The new look of the White House website is no surprise when you keep that in mind – although I must say that I actually was a bit surprised to hear about it. Considering everything else that is being talked about this inauguration day, honestly, who was even thinking about the White House website?

Thoughts on the new design

The new look of the White House website picks up where his campaign and transition websites left off. In fact, if you go to Change.gov now, there is a note saying that the “transition has ended and the new administration has begun. Please join President Barack Obama at Whitehouse.gov” – so you do get the sense of continuity from one phase of his election and presidency to the next.

Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media for the White House and a contributor to the White House blog, writes that the new website is “just the beginning of the new administration’s efforts to expand and deepen the online engagement” that many Americans used to help play a role in the election.

I think what I’m most impressed with the most is how Obama’s calls for transparency and communication in government were carried over to the website. What those two things translate most readily into in web design terms is what I talk about all the time – a commitment to site usability.

What’s done well

What are some features on the new website that make it very usable and that I really like?

• Intuitive navigation – The top navigational bar has only a few simple choices, and the drop-downs that appear when you hover over a link provide links to all sorts of information about his agenda, the administration, the history of the White House, the government, and how to stay informed. They’re simple to use and look great – what more could you ask form.
• E-mail updates – This is a standard feature on many websites, but this is downright genius the way it’s incorporates here – not to mention groundbreaking. But it comes as now surprise to see the administration use this, considering Obama’s use of other technologies during his campaign, such as text messaging.
• Functional footer – This is also a commonly found design element nowadays, but again, it’s use here really fits well with the openness and accessibility that the website and administration are both trying to convey. It makes it even easier for people to find the information that they’re looking if they don’t want to use the drop-down menus at the top – again, a hallmark of usability.

Of course, the snazzy Web 2.0 design really does wonders in tying eveything together, and the web designer in me can’t help but wonder if it’s running on WordPress!

What could be fixed

I know I’m probably being a bit too nit-picky here, but there are a few small touches that I would have done differently:

• Styling the text links – The text links are the same color as the text, and aren’t underlined either, so it’s hard to tell what is a link and what isn’t. I would have done this a bit differently, since styling them properly helps with both usability and accessibility – something I detailed in another post I wrote on the subject.
• Page title tags – The page titles on pages throughout the website are very basic: “Contact Us” is all it says for the “Contact Us” page, for example. I’m sure that the White House website doesn’t have search engine optimization forefront on their mind, but it wouldn’t hurt to include some more information in them. People who use tabbed browsers would be appreciative of that!
• Breadcrumbs – Once you get into the sub-pages on the website, there is a well-styled breadcrumb bar that appears at the top of the footer area. I just wish that they would have done the same at the top of the page where it would be more visible.
• Form fields – Eye-tracking studies have shown that it’s best to put the labels on top of input fields on website forms, but the Contact Form on the website has them reversed. I would switch this up and it will look a lot better.

It’s a great start

Overall though, this is a great website that I’m very impressed with. I’m curious to see how the website grows and changes over time as more content is posted to it – pending legislation and executive orders, for example – and new features come online – such as the RSS feeds, which aren’t quite ready yet.

From a marketing angle, I think it very accurately reflects the message that the new administration wishes to convey about itself. And as I’ve written elsewhere, if the design of a website is able to help convey the right message about an organization, then that truly a great website.