Question page templates

Split it up

When building a service it's not enough to just "put your form online." People do not read or understand content the same way when reading from a screen or paper. Think about splitting your content up. It's best to display one topic per page. This allows people to easily undsertand the content of the page and focus on the topic.

Start by asking one question per page

Asking just one question per question page helps users understand what you’re asking them to do, and focus on the specific question and its answer.

To help you follow this approach, you can set the contents of a <legend> or <label> for a page’s input as the page heading. This is good practice as it means that users of screen readers will only hear the contents once.

Asking multiple questions on a page

Sometimes it makes sense to group a number of related questions on the same page.

User research will tell you when you can group pages together. For example, if you’re designing an internal service for government users who need to repeat and switch between tasks quickly.

If you need to ask for multiple related things on a page, use a statement as the heading.

Asking A / B option questions on a page

Asking A / B option questions can be used determine a persons eligibility to use the service. They can help quickly channel people through a flow and to present them information that's specific to their situation. Selecting otion A or B should automatically move the user to the next screen.

Do not use this pattern if people may have difficulty understanding the difference between options. If they cannot confidently answer, it might cause them to hesitate or abandon the service.

If it is difficult to ask a clear question you might need to break it down into a set of smaller questions or add another option to catch exceptions. For example, you could provide the option 'None of these apply to me" or 'It's complicated' if needed. User research will help uncover these areas of uncertainty.