I can’t imagine ever being in a situation where I’ve already entered enough digits of my credit card number into a form to trigger some sort of formatting and then decided that I no longer want to continue the transaction because no formatting happened, e.g. because it’s just a plain old input. Is this a real thing?
It COULD be a "real thing" but 100% don't believe it until someone links a study backing up a claim like that.
Breaking up long numbers into smaller input fields CAN help with data-entry (think dyslexia etc.) but in the case of CC numbers that are of different formats (ie: VISA vs AMEX) there's no good way to "auto-format" it even if you knew the issuing PCN of the card before hand.
So - best practice generally is, ignore the dashes and let it be entered as a 10-19 digit numeric only field (or 13-19 if you're not worried about ancient cards). Just don't allow non 0-9 characters in the input via JS which is SUPER easy. Then, before submission, ensure it passes a mod-10 Luhn check to let someone know they fat-fingered it! Easy-peasy.
> there's no good way to "auto-format" it even if you knew the issuing PCN of the card before hand.
this is plainly wrong. you can swap the mask as soon as you know it's amex from the prefix. i know because we do it without any issues. it's 4-4-4-4 for visa/mast/disc and amex is 4-6-5. you have more than enough info by 4 digits to choose the correct mask in all cases.
We speculated that it was the result of less frustration when entering the card number. Perhaps the visual parity between the distribution of the numbers on the card and the form causes customers to make fewer erroneous entries. I'd be lying if I said I knew the exact reason but that is what we observed.
edit: I want to add that this wasn't a scientific study, we did a lot of A/B tests so we felt pretty confident about it but I wouldn't claim that it's a general rule.
Yep - and I'm entirely skeptical of people who singularly use a singular "A/B" study to back up any case when it comes to a real business' sales funnel. Simple input masking or not - it just wouldn't hold up in some of the board rooms I've had to stand in front of during my career... the phrase "not statistically significant" comes to mind.
And before you link that "A/B Testing is Still Needed" HBR article - know that I 100% agree with it but on the premise of testing MULTIPLE solutions under the traditional "A/B testing" model. As far as you've posited in this conversation - you guys only tried one thing. You're also admitting it's not a "scientific study" so I assume you did nothing to minimize other changing variables/conditions in regards to the input masking.
TLDR: Input masking CC fields is probably a bad idea beyond filtering non-numeric/non-slash characters. I will make that generalization. I'm not convinced you've got a valid argument against that with your "A/B test" experience.
> I'm entirely skeptical of people who singularly use a singular "A/B" study to back up any case when it comes to a real business' sales funnel.
You're skeptical of people who test their business process and follow the data where it leads them rather than taking the advice of arrogant internet curmudgeons that try to puff up their opinions with flippant allusions to statistical significance and vague appeals to the authority of "board room" war stories? That doesn't speak very well for your own credibility.
> You're also admitting it's not a "scientific study" so I assume you did nothing to minimize other changing variables/conditions in regards to the input masking.
Well that assumption might make it easier for you to justify your haughty screed but it's also incorrect (you can apply that to your edits as well). Unlike you, I'm not arrogant enough to suggest that the insights I've gained in my own personal experiences are totally absolute and generalizable to every other business and circumstance.
> I'm not convinced you've got a valid argument against that with your "A/B test" experience.
That's the aspect you don't seem to be grasping; I have no reason to care about your opinion since it flies directly in the face of the data I've seen and you haven't provided any support besides your own feelings about why formatting credit numbers kills conversation rates. At best, both our experiences are anecdotal, the only difference is I'm not a dick about it.
That's assuming they tested for one masked/non-masked input only and not bundled it with other redesigns, or didn't have other confounders like a sale, or marketing campaign, etc. Also that they did run this as a trial for set amount of time, and not until Optimizely told them that the B-version is outperforming A-version (common A/B testing pitfall).
Overall, seeing the UX crap produced by many data-driven companies (Google included), I have low trust in their methodology.
Given my personal experience in this industry, and around adtech companies, I wouldn't. It's easy to get things wrong, and hard to verify against reality.
