Journal
Forms people can actually finish
Forms are where most products quietly lose people. On Tidewater we tracked where guests gave up and fixed the boring things first.
- Visible labels above inputs, never placeholders as labels.
- Errors shown next to the field, in plain words, after the person leaves the field rather than while typing.
- Keep focus where the person expects it, especially after an error.
None of these are new ideas. Together they cut abandonment on the payment step by a little over a fifth.