You’re Telling Me
Whenever I try a promotion, one of the first things I do is to submit an empty form. Sometimes it accepts an empty form, if you can believe that (and, if you’re a long time reader, you probably can by now). Sometimes, the page offers client-side validation to say, hey, you forgot something. Sometimes it relies on server-side validation. The Michael Payne $10,000 Exciting Windows! Makeover Sweepstakes promotion offers the last with a bit of self reflection perhaps.
If you submit the empty form, it displays the following message:
One wonders if the error message, There is one or more error on the form. Please fix then try to re-submit;, counts the one or more errors within the error message itself. Or that the copy in the image above the form says that the required fields are marked, where they are not. All fields are required, by the way, including the marketing questions that are optional on most promotions.
Hey, how about a little unnecessary AJAX that acts on the user changing focus from the e-mail edit box?
The application promptly tells you if an e-mail address is in the database. Did they do this to make it really easy for someone to automate a run through their database full of respondents for user e-mail addresses, or are they that freaking incompetent? I know, logically, this presents a false dilemma. They could be both incompetent and malicious. One wonders who entered test@test.com into the database, since this form is flawed in the extreme.
Also, chalk up another grammar error in the message itself.
Now, suppose you suss out the actual required fields and manage to make it past the dinky CAPTCHA. What do you get? Oh, yeah, a JavaScript error:
Another error in the form! Well, they warned me.
Finally, after dispelling the JavaScript error, we get a misspelling in the success message:
Successfull, indeed.
Well, someone parted a fool from a meager development budget here. And, apparently, tested it once to see if it worked. And sold unnecessary AJAX to jack up the price.
I would be much more wealthy if I lacked the ethics gland that keeps me from a successfull career in sales or customer development.
