Just the other day, I was trying to update the contact information for the project I am currently working on, but instead I got a lesson on how NOT to handle form errors and customer information.

The form asked for the usual contact information. Things like name, address, email, phone number and credit card information. The form intself did not tell me what fields were “required” so I completed the form in its entirety. Clicked the submit button, waited a couple of seconds and suprise!

The information you entered is not correct. Please try again.

Not a big deal since I expected the vendor to give me a way to go back so that I would know what information was not entered properly. Having developed several forms in the past, I have learned to provide the user as much information as possible as early as possible. The error message did not tell me where I had made a mistake so I went back to the form and tried again. Every time I would see the same error, regardless of what I had changed.

This was a mess and I was just trying to update our contact information. Guess what happened when I tried to pay the company to renew the domain name? I will leave that for another time but rest assure that it was not a pretty scene either.