Also known as a pre-flight check. As soon as you have made a form, or someone has built a form for you, test the form! Do not wait for your users to find errors, fill out that form and hit submit. Is everything in order? The time to discover issues and rectify them is now!
What to look for
Here are some common issues that people experience with forms, and sadly discover when a user reports the error.
The form body
- Is the intro copy correct? Dates, location, welcome message?
- Do the form fields make sense?
- Have a colleague take a look, is anything confusing?
- Is the webpage hosting the form correct?
- Does the page title and heading match the form?
- Is the form accessible?
- Yes, Cognito will do most of the heavy-lifting, be a good steward and double-check that someone with a screen reader could navigate your form.
- Visit the Accessible U site for great tips on making accessible forms.
The thank you message
Often overlooked, does the thank you message appear as expected? Is the information correct? Sometimes people copy an old form to make a new form and forget about this old content! Now is the time to catch that oversight.
The confirmation email
This is the email the user receives after filling out the form. Fill out the form using your email to check this is accurate.
- Is the “from” field correct?
- Is the email subject line correct?
- Is the body of the email correct?
- Is it being sent to the proper recipient?
In the rare occasion you don’t want to send a confirmation email. Did you turn this off?
The notification email
This is the email you and the people helping you monitor the form receive. If you don’t want to receive an email every time a submission is made, by all means turn off the notification email. If you are receiving the emails, check the following now.
- Is the “from” field correct?
- Is the email subject line correct?
- Is the body of the email correct?
- Is it being sent to the proper recipient(s)?