Your goal is to offer the simplest path for your users to move from filling out input forms to hitting the submit button. There aren’t a lot of special effects required. In this article I’d like to focus on the user interaction and how each visitor is experiencing your forms. There are techniques you can use to streamline the process which converts to less frustration in your audience.

Keep a Small Focus

Since the web form is probably one of the most important sections on the website, it’s necessary for you to make sure that visitors can easily understand what information they need to fill into the form fields. Complex and long web forms increase the cognitive load for users — they are just harder to deal with. In this context, preferring simple and clean solutions seems like a sound approach. However, if the form was designed with an attention to details and looks good, it’s also reasonable to use some attractive imagery in the forms.

I’ve heard dozens of users complaining about signup forms which require too much info. If you’re looking to increase user registrations then you want the form to be as simple to complete as possible. The same goes for newsletter signups and other similar types of input data.

The minimum number of fields will vary depending on your objectives. Registration forms may ask for a username, e-mail address, and 2 password fields. This is certainly reasonable and users looking to signup will be expecting about this length.

Perform Actions as Expected

The one thing most users hate is unexpected page activity. You will absolutely want to keep your form behaving in a natural manner, and reduce any loading extras to a minimum – popup guides and inline validation are key components. Usable forms shouldn’t be split into multiple columns and spanned across the page. This is just one example of poor technique.

Another mistake I run into often is misuse of the keyboard tabbing attribute. This attribute is wonderful from a usability standpoint since your visitors can fill out forms even without a mouse. But if you have these numbered out of order, or only fill out a few input fields then the whole system is thrown off. This is certainly true with signup forms but even more-so with other types of input – especially online shopping carts.

Security is Priority #1

Whether you’re dealing with customer credit card numbers or simple e-mail addresses, you should always put website security first. Visitors are trusting your website and backend code to process each form properly and store user data in a secure database.

If possible I recommend using an SSL certificate on your entire domain. This way users won’t just be protected during signup, but their entire viewing session will be protected via https. It can be a bit of work, but some web hosts will actually aide you in the setup process. It’s certainly not a requirement for every site but it doesn’t hurt to go that extra mile for security. Your users will feel much safer, and it builds a level of trust going forward.

Large, Spacious Inputs

I have listened to a lot of arguments surrounding the sizes of web forms. Standard CMS brands including vBulletin, Joomla!, and Drupal use fairly smaller text sizes for input fields. These are generally default 10px-12px fonts with very little padding. You need to alleviate room between the many different input elements.

From the usability point of view, there is nothing more painful than a long web form with plain-text labels and without any visual indicators. Such forms are boring, unattractive and uncomfortable to use. You can design web forms better. In fact, not much is required. Often icons are used to visually indicate the information required from the user to fill the form.

Conclusion

There are a whole library of new trends emerging in web design. The newer CSS3 specs are still growing in popularity and we can see these properties in various layouts. Web forms are no different and deserve just as much attention from website designers.

I hope these guiding principles behind user experience can invigorate you towards building better web forms. Web developers, both frontend and backend, would do well to learn and understand these paradigms. If you’d like to share ideas on building accessible web forms please let us know your thoughts below in the comments.

To read the full article over at Mashable, CLICK HERE.

What’s the difference?

Flash, a technology owned and licensed by Adobe, is the programming language used by programmers to enable web sites and other media to display more visually engaging and interactive web pages. This includes animations, interactive content, simple games, and more.

HTML 5 is a competing technology, which is an open standard (not owned by anyone) which enables programmers to also display visually engaging web pages. Although there are some differences and limitations in what HTML 5 can display, compared to Adobe, the differences to many users are not that big.

Many developers have been using HTML 5 for some time now in favor of Flash, but with Adobe announcing that it is no longer developing Flash for mobile devices, the days of Flash are coming quickly to an end.

Google, BlackBerry, and even HP with its webOS platform have all at one point or another touted the Flash plugin as key to the ability to access the “full web,” but of course iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad have never supported it. More recently, both RIM and Google have dedicated more attention to HTML5 than to Flash on their platforms.

According to The New York Times:

Some 34% of the 100 most popular websites used HTML5 in the quarter ended in September, according to binvisions.com, a blog that tracks Web technologies. Resume searches by hiring managers looking for HTML5 expertise more than doubled between the first quarter and the third quarter, according the tech job site Dice.com.

The excitement has been spreading like wildfire, despite the fact that HTML5 is missing some features and capabilities compared to Flash. Many users, moreover, won’t notice striking differences from websites that use Flash.

One of the big differences with HTML 5 and Adobe Flash, other than programming differences, is that with Flash you have to download a Flash player to view Flash content. With HTML 5, your web browser can understand HMTL 5, with no additional software needed. Also, Flash has always been known to be buggy and extremely processor-intensive, causing slow load times and sluggish performance.

So what does this mean for your business?

As you look to update your website and you are working with your developer, think twice before using Flash on your site. So many users are buying iPads, iPhones and other mobile devices, and it makes sense to really consider if Flash is the best way to go. If a mobile user visits your website and it has Flash elements, those elements will be completely invisible to those visitors — which could potentially be a deal breaker if a potential customer is on the fence.

There is no doubt that in the coming months and years, the use of Flash will decline in favor of HTML 5. So if your current website uses any form of Flash, it’s in your business’s best interest to speak to a web professional and get your site updated to HTML 5.

What would you pay for all of those aspects of business without a website? You’d have to pay someone to answer phones, you would need a marketing team and a sales team, and you would need to pay for a store front, office equipment, brochures, business cards, promotional items, transportation costs, employee benefits…and you get the picture.

By having a web presence, you expand your market significantly. You make yourself available to people in other time zones and even across the globe rather than the limited market audience you can reach in your local geographical area. And at a fraction of the cost! With a website there is less need to send out expensive mailings to purchased mail lists that are often unreliable. Even those mailings that do make it to the target audience are thrown away without ever being looked at.

The point is that a website reduces or completely eliminates many of the traditional costs of running a business. It’s a valuable asset to a modern business and it’s essential for your future success. What is a resource like that worth to you?

Can you get websites done cheaply? Of course you can, but most of the time you get what you pay for. You might know someone who can create a website at a low cost, but how do you know that they are really designing with your business goals in mind? Do they understand your target market? How will they provide support for you in the future? The long term costs for a poorly-designed website will far outweigh the up-front costs of a well-designed website.

Understanding your business is important to us. We want to make sure that your website is going to effectively reach your target market. We want to help you define and achieve your business goals for your website.

The moral of the story is this – whether you are a small business owner, inventor, entrepreneur, artist, or large corporation, you need a website. In the world we live in, increasingly people are turning to the Internet to find information, and if you don’t have a presence on the Internet you will not only be making it more difficult for people to find you, but you will be sending the wrong message.

The obvious choice is your business name, but it may not be the best. Here’s why:

• First, is there something about your business name that makes using it as a domain an unwise choice? This situation typically arises if you have a long business name or have plural words. “Halstatt’s Rip’n Marketing Campaigns, Inc.” is going to be a horrible domain name. Clients are going to find it difficult to type in such a domain name. Make it short and sweet.
• Secondly, think about search engine optimization. If you are shooting for a particular keyword phrase, you may be better off using that keyword phrase in your domain name. Google, for instance, looks at the domain name when evaluating a site. If the words in your domain name are spaced with dashes, many believe it will help in the ranking process. This is why you see so many xxx-xxxx-xxx.com domain names on the net. If your business focuses on a very specific area, strong consideration should be given to using relevant keywords in your domain name.

Helpful Tips

• Choose a name that tells people right up front what your site is about. If you have a website for handmade cat collars decorated with tiny bells you could call it “BellTheCat.com”.

• Your domain name should end in “.com” and I don’t want to hear any argument or see any rolling of the eyes. The simple fact is that when people think of sites, they always type in .com. Yes, there are other extensions and .us, .net, .biz, etc., may seem unique, but it kills your traffic. Pavlov and his dog experiments had it right. People have been mentally conditioned to type in .com, so don’t select any other ending. If you do, a smart competitor will register the .com version of your name to get some free traffic.

• Purchase domains with common misspellings also if you can, as unscrupulous competitors will attempt to snap these up and divert traffic away from your website.

• One last thing – Check out your competition to be sure you aren’t infringing on a trademark in any way. It would be a shame to go to the trouble of building up a site only to be sued because your name is too similar to an established competitor.

LinkedIn has great tools for connecting you to customers, prospects, and industry thought leaders alike. But it’s also great for online PR.

Here are just some of the ways that LinkedIn could be used to improve a company’s (or an individual’s) PR efforts:

1. Give your spokespeople a unique URL – This is easy to configure in your Linkedin control panel and will give you a search-engine-friendly URL – e.g. http://uk.linkedin.com/in/yourspokespersonsname
2. Set up a company profile – You can now have company profiles in LinkedIn just as you can individual ones
3. SEO your company profile – Make sure that your company (and spokespeople) appear in internal and external searches by including lots of relevant keywords in your LinkedIn titles, biogs etc.
4. Create a group – LinkedIn groups allow users to connect and chat with each other. This is a great way to start chatting to customers, prospects or partners
5. List all your forthcoming events – LinkedIn Events is fairly new and is free to use. You can add events you might be running (or attending) and it will even flag up events that other users in your network have found interesting
6. Run a poll – LinkedIn Polls can be targeted to particular demographic splits or interest groups. The service does have a cost attached, but could be a great way to get relatively cheap industry insights or even get research for a PR campaign
7. Monitor and answer questions – LinkedIn Answers is a way for anyone on LinkedIn to ask questions of the entire community. Monitoring these questions on a regular basis and answering any that apply to your business or sector will help you build up recognition
8. Join groups and get involved in the discussion – As well as setting up a group for your business, you should also join and monitor other relevant groups that are in existence
9. Connect with journalists and influencers – If you’ve recently met a journalist, analyst or even a blogger, make sure you connect to them on LinkedIn. This will keep you front of mind and might mean that they will come to you first the next time they need a comment or interview
10. Update your status – Having built up a following on LinkedIn, make sure you keep your connections updated with your latest goings on by updating your status. You can now link status updates to Twitter (and vice versa), but bear in mind that LinkedIn isn’t primarily a micro-blogging platform, so you’ll probably want to go easy and not overload your connection’s streams with continuous updates

SortPrice, shopping search engine and e-commerce leader, recently released some exciting statistics about the growth of F-Commerce. The SortPrice stats establish the online shopping comparison engine, along with the SortPrice Store Application for Facebook Platform, as leading resources for retailers looking to go social. But aside from that they illustrate the sheer size and force of Facebook commerce. The stats are based upon retailers that used the company’s Store Application for Facebook Platform in 2010, which include Petco, Adidas Soccer, Golfsmith and more.

Some of the most impressive statistics are as follows:

• More than $3.78 billion worth of merchandise was put on SortPrice-built Facebook storefronts in 2010.
• Over 7.6 million products were posted to SortPrice Facebook storefronts in 2010. This is a whopping 60 percent increase from 2009, in which 4.6 million products were posted.
• In 2010 there were approximately 53,000 different categories of products and 28 different product industries accounted for in SortPrice-built Facebook storefronts.

With so many different product categories and industries being represented in F-Commerce, which are the most popular? According to the SortPrice study, apparel is the most popular product industry, with 62,106 products posted. However, Home & Garden was the top industry in dollars, at $7.97 million.

These stats make it clear that F-Commerce is definitely a booming industry, and it’s only growing, and SortPrice seems to be at the head of the pack, having built Facebook stores for over 1,500 retailers. Asaf Klibansky, the co-founder and CTO of SortPrice, says, “Last year, retailers across the board began to realize the importance of hopping on the social shopping bandwagon. And as they have since 2008 when we introduced the Store Application, more merchants turned to SortPrice.com than anyone to help them tap into the enormous audiences available to them on Facebook.”

For those of you who are unfamiliar with social shopping, here is a quick description for you. Basically, users are able to browse store items, like, share or add them to their shopping cart directly from Facebook. Once they are ready to purchase, they checkout as usual and receive a confirmation email. It’s exactly like having a full-blown e-commerce website, but located on your company’s Facebook page.

Of course, Facebook storefronts are great for companies because it gives them an additional outlet for letting their customers spread the word about the products they are interested in purchasing. It’s great for consumers as well. If I’m thinking about buying something, I can post the item on my wish list and share it with my Facebook friends to ask them what they think before I decide to make my purchase. The social aspect of F-Commerce is certainly great for everyone involved.

“What do your website visitors want to accomplish?” is a question I ask almost every business owner as part of some initial information gathering during our meetings.

• “They want to learn more about my products.”
• “They want to see what I have to offer.”
• “They want to learn about my company.”

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

It’s Not You, It’s Me

The goal of your website visitor is not to help you out, but to help themselves out. Learning more about your products or services is only a byproduct of their need to accomplish a goal, overcome an obstacle or fulfill a need.

Seeing what you have to offer comes only after they’ve been directed to your site by a search engine that’s already visited your site and (hopefully) returned relevant results. And nobody but people looking for a job or a new customer care anything about your business.

As you ask yourself the question, “what do visitors to my website want to accomplish?” put down the mirror and pick up a pair of their shoes. This isn’t about you…your website isn’t about you. It’s about getting into the head of your website visitor and understanding their problems.

By doing that, you can better understand what their goals are at your website, and build your site around that. Create paths that help your visitors get to where they need to go as efficiently as possible. Those paths become your most effective sales funnels.

Think About Individual Pages, Too

Imagine you’re looking through a printed catalog for something. Most catalogs are fairly similar. No matter what catalog you’re looking at, you know the “rules.” You flip through the pages in a predictable fashion. You have a general idea of where to find product information, ordering instructions, the company’s toll-free number, etc.

Now imagine someone is looking for something online, and Google turns up a product page from your site. The person clicks on the link, and thus enters your website through an internal page, NOT your home page.

Will that visitor know where he is in your website? Will he understand who you are and what you do? Will he know what to do next? Or will the page leave him at a dead end?

Make Those Goals Easy to Accomplish

Visitors don’t have time to waste on your website. And really, getting around on your website shouldn’t be rocket science anyway. Keep your pages simple and task-oriented. Remember: The content should be about your visitor, not about you.

Make links clear and navigation menus intuitive. You don’t get bonus points for creativity – only results. Always tell your visitor what to do next. Use calls to action like “Click on the button for more information,” “View our online catalog here,” “Call our toll-free number today,” etc. It makes a difference.

And always, always, know what goals most of your website visitors share, and make it easy to achieve those goals. You’ll end up with a website that makes your visitors happy, and you’ll convert window shoppers into new clients.

Sorry to say, but it’s people who use “password” as their password for everything and those who have two-year old antivirus software that embolden hackers. If everyone was more committed to protecting their own data, then hackers would have a much harder time. As it is, so many people are blissfully unaware of their own vulnerability that, for hackers, it’s a numbers game – try enough websites and eventually they’ll find a vulnerable one to exploit. But that site doesn’t have to be yours!

Here are 6 effective ways to thwart the best efforts of hackers:

1. Keep Your Versions Updated

This is one of the simplest ways to stay a step or two ahead of the hackers. By downloading the newest versions and updates of your operating system (ie. Windows), WordPress, and your antivirus platform, you can make your applications or website just tough enough to crack. That way, hackers won’t bother with your site and instead move on to some other site whose owner hasn’t been as vigilant.

2. Beef Up Your Passwords

Ok, it’s 2011. The web’s been around for some time now. Isn’t it time you changed your password from your spouse’s name,“123456” or the dreaded “password”? If this past year taught us nothing else, it’s that people are surprisingly lax when it comes to choosing passwords for even their most sensitive accounts. Pick strong ones and and use different ones for your banking info and email, your cPanel, and your FTP accounts – otherwise, your info and your site are vulnerable.

3. Lock Down Your File Permissions

Do you know what your file and folder permissions are set at? Some applications require them to be set at the open “777” to install, and then most of us forget to set them back to either “755” for folders or “644” for files. Double check yours to make sure your web server folder and file permissions are secure.

4. Use a Secure Web Hosting Company

Not all web hosts are the same when it comes to ensuring your website’s security. Not all offer round-the-clock active server monitoring, or even suPHP (secure script access), so choosing a host that takes your security seriously takes a little legwork.

5. Look Beyond Shared Web Hosting

If your website is your livelihood, then it might be the case that no amount of security talk and password strength can make you feel safe enough. If your site is critical to your operations, then you might want to consider VPS hosting so that you can have peace of mind. A VPS is inherently more secure due to its separation from other sites, and you can create custom firewalls and install other security measures that most hosts won’t allow on shared accounts. Basically, a VPS allows you to take a more active role in your website’s security.

6. Be Savvy

If you know what you’re looking for, then you’re making a hacker’s job more difficult. Most hackers, if they come across a site that’s locked down tightly, would just as soon move on to another that offers easier access. You can make your site not worth the trouble by regularly scanning your logfiles for code that doesn’t belong, not installing suspicious WordPress plugins, and basically just being aware of what’s going on inside your site.

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These tips are just the basics, really – they’re a way to get everyone thinking about all the factors that go into running a secure site. If you make it a habit to keep your an eye on things and keep everything up to date, then you’re a much less attractive target to hackers than many other website owners out there.

There is a thin line between design and development, and as we move into a new decade, this line is becoming extremely blurry. Is it enough to have some pretty pictures and graphics on your website? Maybe 5 years ago. These days, the average internet user requires more. All beauty, with no substance, gets boring after a while. If your only goal is to impress a small group of people with your flashy designs, you’ll find yourself quickly beneath the tide. 2011 is not about beauty, it’s about function. The trends for this new year and emerging decade are responsive design, constant connection and virtual reality.

1. Bye Flash, Hello HTML5 & CSS3

We’re sure that some of you out there will debate whether this can be called a “trend” or a new emerging standard in web design, but the bottom line is that HTML5 and CSS3 are something to watch out for, and will only grow in popularity in 2011. If you don’t know what they can do for you, then you may fall behind the curve. HTML5 and CSS3 make it simpler to build modern web elements into your web designs including smarter forms, beautiful typography and social tools like wikis and drag and drop functionality.

Designers are finally starting to let go of Flash. However you may feel about Flash, you do know that it does not play well with some of the hot, new technology available to your current and potential visitors. In 2011, you will slowly step away from Flash and embrace the magic known as HTML5.

2. Using Typography as a Design Element

Why is typography so important? Well, it’s one of the main ways that you communicate with your audience on your website. In the past, getting rich typographic elements meant resorting to creating beautiful images that were neither search engine or website optimization friendly. Now, using new font embedding tools, web designers can find web-friendly fonts that can help you communicate with your audience in a visually appealing way, while still optimizing for search engine rankings.

3. Minimalist Color Schemes & Layouts

Simplicity… There’s nothing quite as impacting as an honest message on a quiet backdrop. Quiet can be interpreted several different ways. Forget black and white or shades of gray. Think of green, yellow or even red as your primary color. However, limit your palette to two or three colors tops. Work within the shades of each color for variety. It can be truly remarkable what a few colors can do for your message.

This is especially great for smaller organizations with less content for their website. Minimalist layouts take fewer resources to maintain and manage, they load faster (which is great for SEO) and can often be developed and implemented more quickly than larger, more complex designs. Many businesses are beginning to favor the clean, neat and easy-to-use navigation of these style layouts.

4. Mobile-Friendly Websites

Smartphones, iPads, netbooks, oh my! There’s a dizzying amount of mobile products available to the consumer in 2011. This means your web design must be responsive to multiple viewports. This has become less of a trend and more of a necessity for many businesses. Creating a mobile-ready website is not simply removing the bells and whistles from your design. This can create a vacant and impersonal design. Although not impossible, distilling the magic from your original design into a pure representation of your brand is tough! Fortunately, technology is quickly removing this burden.

With the help of CSS3 (mentioned above in #1), mobile web design has taken a big leap forward. One of the most important advances is that you can build an entire website and allow your coding to conform to the user’s viewing medium. It may be tempting to just create a dedicated mobile site, but that may no longer satisfy your audience. Increasingly, mobile sites include the option to visit the original site. If you do not offer this option or if your original site is not optimized to mobile standards, you are simply not ready for 2011. Forecasters predict that smartphones will outsell personal computers this year. Bulletproof your design to meet this demand.

5. Full Image Backgrounds

Do you want a website that immediately grabs your visitors’ attention? Having a beautiful image as your entire background is a good way to do that. Large scale backdrops will surge in 2011. These types of websites are growing in popularity, especially for organizations with portfolio-friendly work. These images will be high resolution, and cover the entire site. Most important, though, is that the background photo must be content-appropriate. Simply having a pretty image in the background without any context will disrupt your user’s experience. Trends point to soft and slightly transparent imagery that does not overshadow your content, but harmonizes with it.

It’s always important to remember when your designing or redesigning a website, it’s primary job is to support your overall business goals. That means that it needs to help you get found more easily, it needs to convince your visitors to convert and it needs to communicate your message effectively. No matter how beautiful your website is, if your design doesn’t support those initiatives, then it’s not worth the time or money it takes to create it. Make sure that when you are thinking about a new website, you are using a firm that will design your website as part of your overall marketing strategy.