Use CAPTCHA Effectively for Product Specs & More

With the ever-growing need to provide product-hyping data sheets and other downloadable features, store owners are recognizing ways to save on bandwidth and further protect copyrighted works from not being crawled by search engines. But at what point is it too cumbersome on the shopper, thus costing you sales?

I’m referring to PDF and other downloadable formats, whereas you want to validate the requester is human, and prevent search engines from archiving the work, even though it’s free. The typical solution is to use CAPTCHA - a feature that provides an input boxes where the visitor enters the text he/she sees on the screen. Message boards started implementing this some time ago to cut down the number of bots and “software driven” spammers creating accounts and posting spam messages.

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CAPTCHA stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”

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Why would an online store even use such a feature? Sites selling appliances and furniture might want to provide detailed specifications or product manuals to cut down the number of phone and email requests. By linking directly to PDF documents you save time and money, and can also help close sales sooner by not sending customers elsewhere to locate information.

Such documents, however, can make the bandwidth used by the server add up quickly, and feeding PDFs from a public directory means it can be spidered by search engines (and many times converted to HTML). So there’s good reason to feed such items from a non-public repository, and require entry of some type to obtain the information.

The simplest method is to require entry of an email address, but with so many online shoppers concerned about being added to yet another email list, CAPTCHA is the most logical solution. It instills privacy and greatly reduces the number of non-human calls for data. But CAPTCHA itself can also hurt the process altogether if not implemented logically.

Some things to consider when implementing a CAPTCHA feature:

• Choose backgrounds wisely. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been alerted that I need to enter text “exactly” as it appears because I simply cannot read the text! Using grainy backgrounds with choppy font letters/numbers all displayed at different angles - well, let’s just say if it’s difficult for me to read, my father is going to go nuts!
• Explain the what and why. Many surfers don’t understand what CAPTCHA is or why you even use it. Be sure to explain what it is and why it’s used, and ease them by explaining that nothing is being “store” on their computer as a result.
• Five Characters. Any more than that is just too difficult. Many look at the graphic, quickly memorize the letters, then look at the keyboard to make sure they’re entering them correctly. Don’t assume visitors aren’t “hunt & peckers” on the keyboard (meaning they have to stare at the keys to type properly). Hey, we didn’t all take typing class in high school!
• Have a tasteful error message. When I see a bright red error message that reads along the lines of “ERROR! You Must Enter…”, I’m insulted. Try something like, “Whoops… it seems the code doesn’t match the graphic. Please…”
• Use Lower case From a user’s perspective, having to enter strings at all is tedious enough. Having to use the shift key? Even worse. Forget case sensitive. Go all lower case.
• Using photo selection CAPTCHA? Don’t forget the ALT tags. Commonly used by free message board sites, another form of CAPTCHA displays several photographs on the screen, asking the user to check off which ones are, say, pictures of cats. Without ALT tags, however, browsers with images turned off, or the blind, cannot “read” the images.
• Let them hear it. If you’re going to invest the time to implement the feature, keep in mind those with poor vision will need to “hear” the text string. Even some of the Big Dogs neglect this, requiring users to call a phone number and stay on hold to obtain a set code to enter. It’s a waste of time and, in my opinion, a slap in their face. (NOTE: I’m still researching the most ideal method for audio referencing for CAPTCHA, many formats lack usability)

The concept of CAPTCHA is a great one. Designed to cut down mass access and creation of data by spam bots and the likes, it’s helped a great many web sites keep things clean and save money on bandwidth transfers. For online stores, it can do the same, so long as it’s implemented logically. The concern that it might deter online shoppers from further navigation is ever-present, but just as anything else, if there’s good reason for it’s use, the bulk of shoppers will be both understanding and accommodating when faced with that verification field. Ignore the real needs for usability and explanation, and you might as well not deliver additional product specifications and data sheets at all.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 2:06 pm and is filed under General Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Pamela Hazelton in as ecommerce consultant, trainer and speaker. She is the author of The Official Guide to MIVA Merchant books and additional ebooks on the topics of shopability and security, and speaks at ecommerce conferences regularly. Pamela Hazelton is the owner of DesignExtend.com, a services site with additional focus on the MIVA Merchant shopping cart.