Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

How can I pre-populate form fields using form autocomplete data?

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by tiderb

tiderb
tiderb
more options

I'm building a typical web form with text fields for name, address, email, phone number, etc. and would like to pre-populate data fields with the most commonly used autocomplete data for that user/computer. I believe this could make filling in the form easier/faster for users and improve conversion rate on my end - a win-win. Is this possible?

I recognize a couple of potential downsides but I think it's worth it. If the pre-populated information is not correct then it won't take any longer to adjust it to the correct info than it would to fill in the fields from scratch. It might be viewed as a privacy issue but since the data would display in the drop-down menus as a user filled in their information I don't see it as very private data to begin with.

Thanks very much.

I'm building a typical web form with text fields for name, address, email, phone number, etc. and would like to pre-populate data fields with the most commonly used autocomplete data for that user/computer. I believe this could make filling in the form easier/faster for users and improve conversion rate on my end - a win-win. Is this possible? I recognize a couple of potential downsides but I think it's worth it. If the pre-populated information is not correct then it won't take any longer to adjust it to the correct info than it would to fill in the fields from scratch. It might be viewed as a privacy issue but since the data would display in the drop-down menus as a user filled in their information I don't see it as very private data to begin with. Thanks very much.

All Replies (3)

Swarnava Sengupta
Swarnava Sengupta
  • Locale Leader
more options

You can use one of this addon

Swarnava Sengupta
Swarnava Sengupta
  • Locale Leader
more options

You can use one of this addon

tiderb
tiderb Question owner
more options

Thanks for the links Swarnava. These are all good solutions for an individual user trying to quickly fill in forms but I'm not sure they'd work for my goal here since I'm on the business side of things building forms that thousands of users will come to and fill out.

My goal is that when any user shows up on the form it will be as complete as possible with their personal information. So if a user "John" shows up the page is smart enough to grab any available autocomplete data from his browser and automatically fill in the fields - so John shows up on the page and without having to do anything his name, email, phone number, etc. are all filled out (but not submitted). The same would happen for any user that shows up on the form. Obviously we wouldn't want to require these users to have any specific add-ons installed so it could be as scalable as possible.

Alternatively, not sure if this could be accomplished with one of the options you sent - but if we had a button at the top of the page that said something like "Use information I've previously entered" and that communicated with the user's browser to autocomplete any available fields that would be a step in the right direction.

Thanks very much for your help.