Designers working for EleganceIT believe that usability is an important aspect of website development. It is important to make pages more simple and user-friendly. Numerous studies on various aspects of website design and user interface help us to create products in compliance with usability standards. Let’s begin from the very first thing you see entering most of sites. We mean input forms.

It’s better to put left-aligned labels above input fields

The UX Matters web magazine has conducted a comprehensive study to find out look-and-feel of an ideal login / registration form. According to the results, the best way is to put labels above form fields. You definitely have noticed that many forms in the Internet have labels placed on the left side, creating a layout with two columns. It looks not bad, but it is not the easiest layout to use. Why? Because users enter information using top-down approach. It will be easier for them to read labels placed just before fields, rather than look for them on the left side.

For example, Tumblr has a simple and elegant registration form, which is consistent with the recommendations of UX Matter.

Labels on the left side create the following dilemma for website application developers: how to align these labels? A left-align label creates good looking layout, but at the same time it separates the label from your form, so it will be difficult to see what label relates to every field. And a right-align label makes the opposite thing: a user-friendly form with wry layout. While labels above input fields will be convenient in most cases. The study also has showed that labels should not use < b > (bold) tags, but this recommendation is not so obligatory.