Only showing requested fields on dialog?

[James Hollenbeck]

If a user has not used or not saved autocomplete information before, the dialog requests everything from address to phone number to credit card information. It does this even if the form itself hasn't requested all of these fields. I have three problems with this behavior, two hypothetical and one real.

Hypothetically, I may only want an address from the user. If I request the address and that forces users to enter a credit card, it's going to scare them away from my site. I can see why the intent may be to only use rAc for purchases, but it would be useful to also implement it for registration forms.

In another hypothetical scenario, I might only need the user's name and credit card information. In this case, if I use rAc, the dialog requires more than twice as many fields as a simple form would. Every extra piece of information that's asked for is going to turn away more customers, so I don't want to make the user enter anything they don't have to.

The real problem comes from an actual implementation I'm working on. My form needs everything the autocomplete dialog requires except for phone number. Like I said, extra fields can cost customers. I can also foresee this generating calls to customer service and confusion as customer service tries to explain that we don't actually collect their phone number. People will not understand the distinction between our site and the autocomplete dialog.

I can see others having the opposite problem: They want the phone number, but don't care about the email address.

To me the solution is to not ask for any information the form isn't requesting. Is that possible? If a user doesn't have anything saved and has to enter the information, only show the fields actually requested. If the user wants to save their information, then show the other fields. If the goal is to make forms easier for people to use, that should include the autocomplete dialog itself.

[Alex MacCaw]

I definitely agree with James here - we should only be asking for
specific missing information required to complete that particular
form.

Otherwise we may find that we're lowering conversion rates rather than
raising them.

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--
Alex MacCaw

+1.415.624.7665
@maccaw

http://alexmaccaw.com

[Rachel Blum]

I agree overall with the idea that we should only show required fields. However, there are a few things we need to consider:

1) some fields in general don't make sense to stand alone. (I.e. requesting a street address without a city, etc.).

2) As we lose fields, we lose the ability to validate data. (Phone number without an address, e.g.).

3) The payment integration will need to be disabled as soon as you lose fields that the provider requires.

- rachel

On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 11:32 AM, James Hollenbeck <jbho...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Dan Beam]

On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 11:32 AM, James Hollenbeck <jbho...@gmail.com> wrote:

If a user has not used or not saved autocomplete information before, the dialog requests everything from address to phone number to credit card information. It does this even if the form itself hasn't requested all of these fields. I have three problems with this behavior, two hypothetical and one real.

Hypothetically, I may only want an address from the user. If I request the address and that forces users to enter a credit card, it's going to scare them away from my site. I can see why the intent may be to only use rAc for purchases, but it would be useful to also implement it for registration forms. 

We currently omit the shipping section for digital goods and are looking into additional use cases for requestAutocomplete().  For the reverse: do you have any specific use cases in mind for requesting physical addresses *without* also wanting billing info?

 

In another hypothetical scenario, I might only need the user's name and credit card information. In this case, if I use rAc, the dialog requires more than twice as many fields as a simple form would. Every extra piece of information that's asked for is going to turn away more customers, so I don't want to make the user enter anything they don't have to.

The real problem comes from an actual implementation I'm working on. My form needs everything the autocomplete dialog requires except for phone number. Like I said, extra fields can cost customers. I can also foresee this generating calls to customer service and confusion as customer service tries to explain that we don't actually collect their phone number. People will not understand the distinction between our site and the autocomplete dialog.

I can see others having the opposite problem: They want the phone number, but don't care about the email address.

To me the solution is to not ask for any information the form isn't requesting. Is that possible? If a user doesn't have anything saved and has to enter the information, only show the fields actually requested. If the user wants to save their information, then show the other fields. If the goal is to make forms easier for people to use, that should include the autocomplete dialog itself.

rAc() currently requests enough information that little (or no) additional input should be required next time.  This is currently to a section-level granularity (i.e. if you ask for anything shipping-related, we show the whole shipping section).

Asking for a slightly conservative set of data upfront (for billing: email and phone number) means no additional info gathering when the user reaches your site.  This also means that if your site wants the user's phone number in the future (e.g. to double-check an order's address before shipping), the next run of rAc() can easily get you that data.

If there's no complete address/billing info in Autofill or Google Wallet to simply select from, we attempt to make text input as smooth as possible by suggesting previous form data as you type (see: http://imgur.com/a/z2Rr2).

Hope this helps,

--

Dan Beam

db...@chromium.org

P.S. If a form will never want all the information rAc() requests/provides, a good alternative is simply using the [autocomplete] attribute on your inputs (which will be recognized in the same way but show the traditional Autofill UI).  Here's more info on these types: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/association-of-controls-and-forms.html#autofilling-form-controls:-the-autocomplete-attribute

[Dan Beam]

On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 11:35 AM, Alex MacCaw <al...@alexmaccaw.com> wrote:

I definitely agree with James here - we should only be asking for
specific missing information required to complete that particular
form.

We already re-use partial Autofill and Wallet data (i.e. you've entered a shipping address without a phone number), btw.

--

Dan Beam

db...@chromium.org

[James Hollenbeck]

For better or worse, we require an address for registration.

[Evan Stade]

Sorry for the late response. Answers inline.

On Monday, October 21, 2013 11:32:42 AM UTC-7, James Hollenbeck wrote:

If a user has not used or not saved autocomplete information before, the dialog requests everything from address to phone number to credit card information. It does this even if the form itself hasn't requested all of these fields. I have three problems with this behavior, two hypothetical and one real.

Hypothetically, I may only want an address from the user. If I request the address and that forces users to enter a credit card, it's going to scare them away from my site. I can see why the intent may be to only use rAc for purchases, but it would be useful to also implement it for registration forms.

We recommend against using requestAutocomplete if you just want an address. A normal web form marked up with autocomplete= attributes should suit this use case.

 

In another hypothetical scenario, I might only need the user's name and credit card information. In this case, if I use rAc, the dialog requires more than twice as many fields as a simple form would. Every extra piece of information that's asked for is going to turn away more customers, so I don't want to make the user enter anything they don't have to.

As Dan noted, Chromium does support the purchase of digital goods by not requiring a shipping address.

 

The real problem comes from an actual implementation I'm working on. My form needs everything the autocomplete dialog requires except for phone number. Like I said, extra fields can cost customers. I can also foresee this generating calls to customer service and confusion as customer service tries to explain that we don't actually collect their phone number. People will not understand the distinction between our site and the autocomplete dialog.

I can see others having the opposite problem: They want the phone number, but don't care about the email address.

To me the solution is to not ask for any information the form isn't requesting. Is that possible? If a user doesn't have anything saved and has to enter the information, only show the fields actually requested. If the user wants to save their information, then show the other fields. If the goal is to make forms easier for people to use, that should include the autocomplete dialog itself.

Yes, it is a pain point that the first time a user enters their information, they'll have to enter fields that an individual site might not need. Hopefully this won't happen very often, since a user will enter their data once and then reuse it many times. It is an intentional choice that they have to enter all their information regardless of what the site asks for: since Chromium stores that information for future purchases, collecting all the info up front smooths out future purchase flows. Viewed in the terms of your example, for the site that does want the phone number (but not email address), Chromium doesn't have to prompt the user to add more info to their profile.

[Nick Presta]

Hi Evan and Dan,

I currently have a use case where we wish to collect credit card information (name, number, expiry, CVC) but don't require address information (not for billing or anything else). This is for selling both digital (software, artwork, etc) and physical goods. I would love a way to only request the top half of the form with the option to save to Chrome:

I realize I can use regular autocomplete attributes to get credit card completion, but then I miss out on the Google Wallet integration. Is there a way to specify with rAc() that you only wish to show the Google Wallet section -- I could then use my own form with autocomplete and then have a Google Wallet flow. Should I be using another API (the Instant Buy API looks similar and interesting)?

Thanks,

Nick