What is the benefit of having a “Confirmation Page” after submitting a Form (e.g. “User Registration”, “Order Checkout”, etc.), and is it something you expect?? :-/
I ask this question from a selfish standpoint, in that it is EXPONENTIALLY HARDER to properly code such a page and keep the User’s Data safe!!
(For something like an E-commerce Checkout Page, this also opens up a bunch of liability to me, because now I am passing Order/Payment data between pages, and if I make any design or coding issues, I run the risk of being sued until the end of time?!)
Obviously confirmation is much nicer for something like “Order Checkout”, but what about things like “User Registration”?
Is it that likely that someone would screw up their Username or Email or Password (or change their mind at the last minute) and be saved if they had one final time to review things?
Again, even in this scenario, it is A LOT more work for me…
I don’t mind doing it, if it really adds value, but I need to be careful and not build all of this fancy functionality that Users may not care about, and which adds unnecessary complexity (and liability) to my website!!
Had to read this twice because when I think of order confirmation, I think of messages like “Thank you for your order. Your order number is #451344252343245346”. Those are critical purely from a customer confidence perspective.
But if you’re talking about “Are you SURE?” types of pages, then it makes much more sense to have them on order confirmation pages then on user registration pages. They make sense on order confirmations because a majority of a time, there are financial repercussions to orders. So, just to make a user feel more confident because they can verify it AND to hopefully prevent a couple refunds along the way.
Now, confirmations on user registrations don’t make sense. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen a confirmation of user registration in I don’t know how many years (if ever). Double entry on the key identifiers (username and/or email, and password) are the de facto standards, but a completely different confirmation page are not common.
The only way I can even think that the confirmation would be appropriate would be paid memberships. However, I would think a better approach is to have free memberships with limited access, with the ability to upgrade their membership at any time. This separates the e-commerce functionality from the registration.
So, for E-commerce Checkout, then I guess I would sorta be a jerk if I had a “Checkout/Payment Form” page that, when submitted, went directly to a page displaying…
Order #: 1234 was successful.
You AMEX ending in 9876 was charged $44.83
Thanks for the business!!
Okay, so this relates to my other thread that you are helping out with…
Currently, my “User Registration” form looks like this…
HELL YES
if it doesn’t appear, something broke and I try to send again
or am I the only retard who buys stuff onlne?
Always tell people sh*t worked, so they know they don’t have to try it again.
For the sake of teh Pete
I want to know IT WORKED
especially if it took money from me, TELL ME HOW MUCH otherwise I have to wait for a statement from whomever (bank, cc, whatever I paid with).
When I said “Confirmation Page”, I was referring to a page that re-displays what was entered into a Web Form so you can review the information one last time before it really gets submitted. (Maybe there is a better name for that?!)
I was not referring to a page confirming that the form was successfully submitted for good, which based on your reaction, sounds like what you are saying “HELL YES” about.
(David talks about my use of semantics in his post above…)
For example, currently, when someone goes to “Checkout” on my website, they get a “Payment Form” and after they hit “Submit” they get a new page confirming their credit card was charged.
It seems to me it would be nice to have a page in between those two that would display the Order & Payment information - in a read only format - so the Customer could confirm everything looks right before they hit a final “Everything looks good and this time I really want to buy this!!” button.
(That is what I meant by “Confirmation Page”.)
Such a workflow could apply to other instances as well, such as a “User Registration” form, although David didn’t see any value using it there.
Hope that clarifies anything that could have been worded better?!
But i also like “show I didn’t f*x0r up my info” pages, but only for important things.
we indeed had such a page in our insurance forms… about 2 employers ago, and we let you hit the back button and resubmit the form with corrects too, since the complete POST only happened if you hit “I ACCEPT ALL THE CHARGES y’HONOUR” button (this also had a few new things like the usual “did you read our legalese yadda yadda and you agree to give up your firstborn etc” stuff).
If its some minor thing, it’s maybe not worth it, but if you just spent some srs time filling out some dippy form, HELL YES. esp if money is involved (like with insurance)
I work now in e-commerce and our default template is a final page showing "sh*t went through OK " (after that they have to go to My Account to see what all happened… since it’s complicated and some people could order stuff but their supervisor/dept lead might have to ok it… )
I believe amazon does as well: some final page saying “you bought x, you were charged y, for more info go you your account page and yeah we also sent you an email”
I feel it’s a bit of bad practise to entirely rely on the user’s bank to tell them what went down, but many sites rely on this, esp if they use internet banking.
this is after filling out fricking everything and the button at the bottom lets you change stuff (“gegevens aanpassen == change your info”) plus asks if you read the legalese.
