The Best Place for Error Messages on Forms

Where are you placing the error messages on your form? If they’re not placed where users expect to see them, you could jeopardize their capability to complete your form.

When users make mistakes, they need to understand what those mistakes are so they can correct them and re-submit the form. They want to complete your form, but if doing so takes too much effort they’ll change their minds.

Top of Form Validation Vs. Inline Validation

The two most common placements for error messages are at the top of the form and inline with erroneous fields. Which placement is more intuitive for users?

A research study discovered that displaying all error messages at the top of the form puts a high cognitive load on user memory. This forces users to recall each error message for each erroneous field.

The approach that reduced the user’s cognitive load was displaying error messages inline with erroneous fields. Inline validation relies on recognition instead of recall so users can correct their mistakes faster and easier.

Another study found that “the distance between the erroneous field and error message influences the efficiency of error correction”. Top of form and bottom of form validation resulted in the longest amount of time…