Progressive disclosure versus showing all information upfront. Whats the best practise?

Question

I'm designing a 'confirm and pay page' for an insurance provider.

At the moment, I've split the page into x2 parts:

Confirm User has to review 3 things and then explicitly 'agree to the quote'

Pay User has to select documents, method of payment & then pay

At the moment, i've designed it so that the Pay sections do not appear until the user has explicitly agreed to the quote (i.e. progressive disclosure).

Will this confuse the user first landing on the 'Confirm & Pay' page that there is no payment information?

Answer 1

I'm a big fan of progressive disclosure. Good on you for suggesting not to bombard the user with too many options. :)

It should be fine as long as you set some kind of indicator stating an expectation of how many steps there are in the process.

Here are a few alternate examples of other implementations.

Amazon has chosen to make the Confirm page a completely separate page:

Another example:

Paypal has it on one page. You could use this method but make the "agree to quote" a required checkbox.

These examples showcases the use of breadcrumbs or tabs to set expectation of how many steps there are in the checkout process:

eBay combines the "Confirm and Pay" button and brings the user to a separate pay screen:

Answer 2

I assume the user can't pay without agreeing to the terms. Not checking the box that says they agree will result in an error.
Forcing them to accept the terms first is good practice in this case. You make sure the user doesn't forget that step which prevents the user from getting irritated when they get an error message.

It can be confusing when you don't see the payment section when the page clearly states you are on the confirm and pay page. But is the payment section totally invisible when the user hasn't agreed yet? In that case I would disable the payment section making it gray/slightly transparent and impossible for the user to fill in.

Answer 3

It is important that the user has all necessary information beforehand:

• How much is the total price including all fees?
• What payment options do they have?
• Any extra bits that might influence his buying decision

If any of this is revealed only in the very last step, agreeing to all these terms and conditions is a scary thing to do.

For example, if I only have a certain type of credit card and I'm not sure if it's accepted by the site: Why should I sign this huge document and agree to all this legal stuff if I don't even know whether I can buy the product in the first place?

On the other hand, if I'm completely informed about what I'm about to do, the last three steps (terms & conditions, payment, confirmation) seem understandable and mandatory to me, and I have no anxiety moving through them.

As an example, you could show any relevant pieces of information somewhere on the Terms page (or perhaps before that), so that I'm assured that I'm ready to pass this intimidating step.