It's the Steps that Count

"I am not a fan of long, scrolling web forms for tasks that people are likely to perform infrequently (for example, a sign-up flow). Yet, I encountered such forms regularly in my work with clients - forms created in most cases with the goal of "reducing clicks."

The problem I've seen in testing with very long forms (particularly when people need to enter information carefully, as with financial data) is that they are difficult for people to check over before submitting. Errors can be hard to find because it requires scrolling up and down the page to locate them. And, if something technically goes wrong, people potentially have a huge amount of re-entry to do.

I sometimes have a challenge convincing a client we need to break a form into smaller, simpler steps. There is a fear about creating "extra steps" (even though we are obviously working with a fixed quantity of information that must be completed)."