Comments on: Error Prevention vs. User Satisfaction – What’s the Deal with Duplicate Form Fields?

By: Georgia Otto

Georgia Otto — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:06:04 +0000

Yeah I do see it a lot with passwords too. Good point about auto-complete features on browsers; I hadn’t considered that.

By: Bruno Abrantes

Bruno Abrantes — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 10:48:44 +0000

When I read the title of the post, I thought you were talking about password fields. I rarely see a duplicate for the e-mail, but they do exist. I don’t even bother with correctly filling out e-mail inputs, my browser generally auto-completes them. However, between risking an error in the e-mail address and bothering users with extra things to fill out, I say yay for risk!

By: Georgia Otto

Georgia Otto — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 22:54:42 +0000

I think I’ve seen the duplicate fields used more on corporate lead-generation forms, like “register to download this whitepaper” and stuff like that.

By: Georgia Otto

Georgia Otto — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 22:53:34 +0000

Well the methods I linked to in this post do make sure the email is valid, but they won’t guarantee it’s owned by the person entering it. So yeah, if you need to identify that a person is who they say they are, then one way to do that is with the confirmation email.

I would recommend giving immediate access to the resource but having a notification beside certain locked features that says you can’t use this until you verify your email. That way you aren’t blind-siding them with being kicked out, and you’re able to give them the option to change the email they registered with, in order to verify that one instead. In case they made a typo or whatever.

By: Andrew Littler

Andrew Littler — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:42:47 +0000

I agree with you, but in the case of error prevention… I have mistyped my e-mail twice now, and neither service have offered a way to fix that.

As for duplicate forms, I havent seen that many cases of it, but sites like Tumblr are great uses of simple form entries.

By: Adam

Adam — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:37:59 +0000

There really is no sure fire way to make sure the user has entered a valid email besides emailing them and making them click a link from that email. What do you think about this practice? Would you recommend giving the user immediant access to the resource and lock them out after a period of time if they have not verified their email?