I’d gotten used to seeing the term “mandatory” somewhere on a form filed, and a little asterix. It just seemed to be common practise and I hadn’t thought much into it having any negative connotation until recently.
Synonyms for mandatory
And how this small bit of copy could potentially put a user off filling in your form. So I decided to have a look at what the big players used…
Gmail:
Hotmail:
yahoo:
Not only did they use friendlier terms. They also didn’t include any asterix’s at all. Every form field was required. They only collected the information that they really wanted, and nothing else.