To opt or not to opt

By Lucy Carruthers

Every time I complete a form online, be it purchasing a concert ticket, subscribing to a magazine, or signing up to a retail web site, there is a different means of opting in to marketing communications. For me, this is somewhat irksome and often it’s overcomplicated. Radio buttons and check boxes, opt-in or opt-out, whole paragraphs of marketing talk that bedazzle me and that I have to read again and again until I can decipher whether I should be ticking the box or not.

Surely the same rules should apply here as for the rest of the form; keep it simple.

Language should be short and easy to understand, avoiding all marketing jargon. Get the legal information across but make sure the choice the user needs to make is obvious and does not get lost in all the text. My preference is to have opt-out as the default requiring the user to physically opt in and thereby giving them control, but there are no rules on this so long as the user is given the choice. If the user opts in then ask them by what means (e.g., post, SMS, email etc), but if they want to opt out asking them by what means is a waste of their time. Radio buttons and checkboxes should, according to accessibility guidelines, be placed to the left of the label. Checkboxes are the convention, with a tick denoting the user is opting-in, but radio buttons are fine if it makes the options clear and they are used consistently. The use of other writing for the web guidelines may also help, such as the use of white space and bolding of key words – ‘I would like to be contacted…’ or ‘I do not want to be contacted’. These are just some basic guidelines that, if followed, would make it far simpler for the users to make the right choice, quickly.