We had noticed more of our users getting errors on our Quicken Loans website calculators than we thought there should be. So we took a look. Apparently some people use a period when typing a number greater than or equal to one thousand in place of the comma.

Some people were typing: $200,000

Others were typing: $200.000

Truthfully, they mean two different things, but we’re not here to debate whether a comma or period is correct. We just want to know how to best adapt to our visitors and help them along through our site.

So here’s what we told our engineers:

If a visitor types a period or a comma with three trailing zeroes, go ahead and the punctuation and we’ll take the number as is.

But – if a visitor types a comma or decimal with two trailing zeroes, drop the punctuation and the zeroes and we’ll just use the resulting number.

Might sound complicated, but it really makes a lot of sense. This way, whether you use a comma or period to denote the thousands place or the cents on the dollar, either way, we get it. We understand and we’ll do our best to get you results for your calculations.

Just another way we listen to our users and make their visit to our website just a little more pleasant.

On the new Wholesale Rate site, the pre-production calculator fields asked for “Your Loan Amount” and “Monthly Payment”.

Issue:

This language didn’t resonate with users and several people were confused by it. They weren’t sure if the calculator was asking for the amount they currently owe on the loan or their original loan amount.

Feedback in Action:

We changed the fields altogether and made the language clearer. Now they read “Current Loan Amount” and “Cash Out”. Hopefully this makes more sense and is easier to understand.