Checklist

It's not easy to get people to finish forms, let alone to provide complete and accurate information.

Here are ten reasons that will frustrate your website visitors and prevent them from completing your forms. Mandoforms have no difficulty in handling these 'traditional' pitfalls, as illustrated in the right-hand column.

	Reasons for Failure	Mandoform's Capability
1	Broken links between pages: 'Page cannot be found' errors.	A Mandoform is a single deployed, self-contained file.
2	Irrelevant questions are asked (eg asking someone who has already stated that they are single, for details of their partner).	Intelligent navigation through the form avoids irrelevant questions. Forms are no longer than absolutely necessary.
3	Field data not properly validated (especially dates). Leads to poor data quality.	Sophisticated validation rules are easily specified by the form designer. No programming or scripting required.
4	Errors only reported when the form is submitted (to the server). The user has to go back through the form again to find the offending field/s and may have to re-enter all the data.	Immediate validation by the applet on the client. Leading to faster form completion and a less irritated customer.
5	Wizard-based approach, but slow response times between pages	The applet provides fast progress through the form.
6	Inappropriate terminology used for error messages and on-screen prompts; not easily understood by the user. (Programming skills don't necessarily go hand-in-hand with a knowledge of form 'usability' ).	Mandoforms enable the non-IT business functions to be closely involved in the forms creation process. No programming or scripting required.
7	Javascript errors. It's very difficult to provide multi-browser support with so many versions of Javascript.	Mandoforms validation is platform independent and does not encounter this problem.
8	The form works well with Internet Explorer but not with Netscape (or vice versa).	It can take a lot of time and effort to get a form to work well with all browser types. That's not the case when Mandoforms is used.
9	No PDF output. Users can't save and print a copy of the form locally.	Mandoforms integrates with Adobe Acrobat. Form data can be overlaid onto a PDF and printed by the customer.
10	Free-format address entry. The user may feel it takes too long to complete all their address details. There's a good chance their input will contain errors.	Automatic postcode lookup saves typing and improves data quality.