Insights

What Is Visual Validation On A Form, And Why Is It Important?

July 12, 2024

Written by:

David Berry, Agency Director

What Is Visual Validation?

“Visual validation” refers to the real-time feedback that a website provides to users regarding the correctness or incorrectness of the data they have entered into a form. This feedback can be conveyed through visual cues or messages that can guide users to complete the form more accurately. 

 

Why Should You Care About Visual Feedback On Forms?

Visual validation on a form helps to improve the user experience by providing immediate, clear, and helpful feedback, ensuring accurate data entry, and most importantly making it an easier, simpler job for users to provide you with the information you’re requesting. 

 

What Are Some Examples Of Visual Validation?

Visual validation itself is quite a broad term, and within it there are a few different “types” of validation that website designers or developers might employ.

 

Colour Changes: The correct input might be highlighted with green borders or backgrounds, while incorrect input might be indicated with red – we often apply this to the field outline. 

Icons: Checkmarks (✔) for correct entries and crosses (✘) or exclamation marks (!) for errors. When paired with the aforementioned colour change of the field too, this is incredibly effective.

Error Messages: It’s important to provide text messages near the input field explaining what is wrong (e.g., “Please enter a valid email address”). It’s no use telling the user that the input they’ve provided was wrong, without telling them where they went wrong. 

Tooltips: Hovering over or clicking an error icon might show additional details about the error. This is particularly important for complex informational fields that users might not input very frequently (for example, Drivers License Number). Making it clear where they can find this information, how many characters it should be, and what it might begin with are all helpful cues we can provide in a tooltip. 

Guidance Text: These are helpful hints provided before, during, or after user input to guide users on what is expected (e.g., placeholder text like “MM/DD/YYYY” for date fields). It makes it clear to the user what kind of information the user is expected to input here – quite often, we may use false personal details such as “Joe Bloggs” or “ACME Ltd.” to help the user understand the types of information each field is expecting.  

How Can Developers Help?

When we build a website, there are pieces of functionality we can build into the form to help verify and check the information that users have provided in real-time. Often this is specific to the client and the information that is being requested in the form itself, but some frequent examples of this might be:

 

  • Regular Expressions: This refers to patterns (regex) that are used to validate information formats such as email addresses, phone numbers, and postal codes. For example, it could be as simple as – in an email address – there is always an “@” symbol, or it ends in a common suffix (or TLD) such as .com, .co.uk, etc.
  • Predefined Rules: We can also set specific rules for each field, such as required fields, character limits, allowed characters, and value ranges. This is particularly helpful for fields like phone numbers – for example – whereby we know that UK mobile phone numbers are almost always 11 digits. 
  • Database Checks: Finally, sometimes we might be able to look up the information that users have provided to ensure it matches the type of input we were expecting – if we have that information stored in a database. For example, we recently worked on a website project whereby users have to input the make and model of their car. The client was able to provide us with a constantly updated database of all car makes and models, and so we could check to make sure the combination of make and model the user had provided was indeed correctly matching a valid car type. 

 

Best Practice Examples of Visual Validation.

Whilst implementation of visual validation is often unique to the form, website, and client, we thought it helpful to provide two frequently used examples for “best practice” visual validation on forms.

 

Data Entry:

Upon Correct Input: As soon as a user types the correct input, the field border turns green, and a checkmark icon appears.

Upon Incorrect Input: If a user types an incorrect input the field border turns red, and an error message appears below the field saying, “Please enter a valid email address.

Password Field:

Complexity Requirements: Real-time validation shows which requirements are met (e.g., “✓ At least 8 characters”, “✓ One special character”).

Strength Indicator: A visual bar showing the strength of the password (e.g., weak, moderate, strong) based on the criteria met.

Why Is Visual Validation Important?

Visual validation is an important part of any form design and build! It’s an interesting, engaging way to help users provide you the data you’re requesting, and ideally to make the user’s journey smoother, removing any distraction or disruption.

 

User Experience Improvement.

  • Immediate Feedback: When users receive instant feedback about their input, they can immediately understand what needs to be corrected. For instance, if an email field is incorrectly filled out, the form can show an error message like “Please enter a valid email address” right away, rather than after the form is submitted.
  • Clarity and Guidance: Visual cues such as red borders, warning icons, or explanatory text next to the problematic field make it easy for users to see where they went wrong. For example, if a password doesn’t meet complexity requirements, a message like “Password must include at least one uppercase letter, one number, and one special character” can appear below the password field.

 

Form Completion Rates.

  • Error Reduction: Real-time error checking helps users correct mistakes as they go, which reduces the overall number of errors by the time the form is submitted. This makes the form-filling process smoother and increases the likelihood that users will complete the form.
  • Confidence Boost: Seeing a green checkmark or a positive message like “This field is correctly filled out” can reassure users that they are on the right track, encouraging them to continue filling out the form. These are often referred to as “micro-moments” – those small, little positive prompts of feedback that a website can give back to a user, helping make the overall experience more positive.

 

Data Quality.

  • Accurate Data Entry: Ensuring that fields like phone numbers, email addresses, and dates are correctly formatted before submission helps maintain high-quality data. For instance, a form can automatically reformat phone numbers to a standard format or require certain fields to follow specific patterns.
  • Consistency: Consistent data entry across all form submissions helps in maintaining a clean database. For example, if all dates are entered in the same format (e.g., MM/DD/YYYY), it simplifies data processing and analysis.

 

Accessibility.

  • Inclusivity: Visual validation should include features that make forms usable for people with disabilities. This might include high-contrast colours for error messages, descriptive text for screen readers, and keyboard-navigable elements (ie. the ability to “tab through” a form).
  • Error Prevention: For users relying on assistive technologies, instant visual and textual feedback can prevent them from making errors that might not be easily corrected later.

 

Security.

  • Preventing Invalid Input: Real-time validation helps prevent invalid or malicious input from being submitted. For example, input fields can be set to only accept certain characters, thus preventing script injections or other malicious activities.

 

Additional Considerations.

  • Compliance: For industries that require compliance with data standards (e.g., healthcare, finance, insurance, etc.), accurate and validated data collection is crucial for meeting regulatory requirements.

 

Conclusion.

In summary, “visual validation” on a form is the process of providing real-time, visual feedback to users about the correctness of their input using visual cues such as colour changes, icons, and error messages. 

It ensures that users are immediately informed if their entries are correct or need correction.

By integrating thorough and well-designed visual validation into web forms, developers can create a user-friendly, efficient, and secure data entry process that benefits both users and the business.

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