Web forms: The good, the bad and the ugly
By Winshuttle Staff Blogger on Jan 15, 2015
We all have experience interacting with forms on the web. On-line purchases, web registrations and subscriptions and travel bookings are among the many ways we daily interact with companies in our connected lives. The experience can be a pleasant one – quick and efficient, or it can be frustrating experience. Much of this depends on the design of the form presented to us.
This article intends to shed some light on what constitutes good vs bad design.
Here are some of my personal likes and dislikes from experiences with web-based applications:
Winshuttle Designer and its successor, Winshuttle Composer, are tools to create enhanced or extended solutions for your business. With a user-friendly front-end, easy no-programming integration to SAP and a custom designed workflow, many Winshuttle customers have managed to increase the value of their ERP investment.
While the tools offer absolute flexibility in design, here are some design considerations for getting the best out of your Winshuttle solution.
- Do not start with the most complex process as a pilot. As with any development environment, the authors have an initial learning curve to overcome.
- For maximum adoption pick the processes according to the Zorro principle: Choose initiatives first where low effort will yield high value (“quick wins”) before moving on to high-effort/high value, etc.;
- Avoid complexity: “Cater- for- all-events” processes may just replicate the complexity of your ERP system. Rather create multiple fit-to-purpose solutions targeted specifically at a specialised set of functionality or a specific set of end-users.
- Pick the most appropriate source for validating and looking up data: An F4 Lookup directly from SAP is relevant for dynamic data (e.g. customer number). A drop-down in provides fast response time and is appropriate for limited sets of values (e.g . “debit” or “credit”); a SharePoint list may be appropriate when the user does not have access to SAP (e.g. list of currency codes).
Have fun creating your Winshuttle solution and do share some of your own design tips…
About the author
Staff Blogger
The Winshuttle blog is written by professional thought leaders who are dedicated to providing content on a variety of topics, including industry news, best practices, software updates, continued education, tips and techniques, and much more.
Questions or comments about this article?
Tweet @Winshuttle to continue the conversation!