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How to Create a Bug Report Form Users Actually Complete

Learn how to design a bug report form users actually complete. Includes required fields, UX best practices, examples, and a CornerCue implementation pattern with screenshots and metadata.

CornerCue Team 8 min read

Most bug reports fail before engineering even sees them.

Not because users do not care. Because the form asks for too much, asks the wrong things, or asks technical questions users cannot answer.

The result is familiar:

  • “It is broken”
  • no steps to reproduce
  • no screenshot
  • no environment details
  • no way to follow up

A good bug report form fixes this without turning into a giant support ticket system.

If you want a bug report flow with screenshot capture and automatic metadata in minutes, try CornerCue. Start with the quick start.

Why most bug report forms get low-quality reports

Teams often optimize for “collect more details” and accidentally increase friction.

Usability research consistently shows that extra form effort hurts completion, and the number of fields matters more than most teams think. Baymard’s checkout research (different context, same form behavior principle) found that more form fields increase friction and reduce UX performance, and many flows ask for more fields than necessary.

For bug reporting, that usually shows up as:

  • too many required fields
  • technical jargon users do not understand
  • poor error messages
  • placeholder-only labels
  • validation that triggers too early
  • asking users for data the browser or app can capture automatically

If you want better bug reports, the form must do more of the work.

What a high-converting bug report form should do

A strong bug report form should help users answer 4 questions:

  1. What happened?
  2. What were they trying to do?
  3. What did they expect instead?
  4. What context helps reproduce it?

This matches established bug writing guidance.

  • Mozilla emphasizes a clear summary, precise steps to reproduce, clearly separated expected and actual results, and relevant additional information.
  • Atlassian’s bug report template guidance similarly highlights title and summary, steps to reproduce, expected vs actual results, and environment information.

The best bug report form structure (for real users)

This is a practical field set for customer-facing bug reporting.

Section 1: What went wrong (visible, simple)

1) Short title (required)

Label: “What went wrong?”

Helper text: “A short summary in one sentence”

Why it matters:

  • helps triage quickly
  • improves searchability later
  • reduces duplicate reports

Tip:

  • avoid labeling it “Summary” for non-technical end users

2) What happened (required)

Label: “What happened?”

Field type: Multi-line text

Prompt examples:

  • “Tell us what you saw”
  • “Include any error message text if you can”

Why it matters:

  • captures the observed result in the user’s own words
  • helps support and PMs interpret severity

3) What did you expect to happen? (required)

Label: “What did you expect instead?”

Field type: Multi-line text (short)

Why it matters:

  • converts vague complaints into an actionable mismatch
  • makes triage much faster

Label: “What steps led to this?”

Field type: Multi-line text with a numbered example

Prompt example:

  1. Open billing page
  2. Click “Download invoice”
  3. Select March 2026
  4. Nothing happens

Steps to reproduce are the most important part of a bug report because reproducibility directly affects fixability.

Section 2: Evidence (make this easy, not optional in practice)

Users explain UI bugs faster with visuals than with long text.

CornerCue supports screenshot capture of the current viewport, optional annotation, and attaching the screenshot to feedback.

Best practice: ask for the screenshot helpfully, not aggressively.

  • “Add a screenshot (recommended)”
  • “Mark the issue on the screenshot if helpful”

Section 3: Context (auto-capture what you can)

This is where most teams make users do engineering work.

Do not ask users to manually type things your app can pass automatically.

6) Auto-captured technical context (hidden or prefilled)

Examples:

  • current page URL or route
  • app version
  • user ID (internal)
  • plan or account tier
  • feature flag state
  • environment (prod or staging)
  • browser and OS (if available)
  • timestamp
  • viewport size

CornerCue supports passing user details and arbitrary metadata through button attributes (for example data-cc-user-* and data-cc-meta-*), and also supports a JSON all-in-one config via data-cc-json. See Button Data and Context.

Section 4: Follow-up (keep it minimal)

7) Contact permission or email (optional, but useful)

Label: “Can we contact you if we need more details?”

If the user is authenticated, avoid asking and pass their user context automatically.

Section 5: Routing (structured, but not confusing)

8) Feedback type (Bug, Feature, General)

This helps triage and prevents bug reports from getting mixed with feature requests.

CornerCue supports categories like bug, feature, and feedback, and you can skip the type picker by setting a default type on the trigger. For a dedicated “Report Bug” button, preselect bug to save a click.

UX best practices that improve completion rates (and report quality)

These details matter more than most people realize.

1) Mark required fields clearly

NNGroup recommends marking required fields clearly (for example, with an asterisk) and notes that only marking optional fields makes forms harder to complete.

Practical rule:

  • keep required fields to the minimum
  • make them obvious
  • do not surprise users on submit

2) Use labels, not placeholder-only fields

NNGroup warns that placeholder text inside fields often hurts usability, including error correction and recall.

Do this instead:

  • keep persistent labels
  • use helper text under the field
  • use placeholder only as an example, not the label

3) Show helpful error messages

NNGroup’s error message guidance emphasizes visibility, constructive communication, and respecting user effort.

Bad:

  • “Invalid input”

Better:

  • “Please describe what happened in at least 10 characters”

4) Use inline validation carefully

Baymard found inline validation can reduce friction and improve error recovery, but validating too early can interrupt typing and frustrate users.

Good pattern:

  • validate on blur for most fields
  • validate after sufficient input length for structured fields
  • remove errors as soon as corrected

5) Ask fewer questions, capture more context automatically

This is the single biggest win for bug report quality and completion.

If you can pass metadata automatically, users can focus on describing the problem rather than debugging your stack.

A bug report form template you can copy

Use this structure for a user-facing bug report form.

Required

  • What went wrong? (short title)
  • What happened? (actual result)
  • What did you expect? (expected result)
  • What steps led to this? (required for Bug)

Strongly recommended

  • Screenshot (capture plus annotate)

Optional or conditional

  • Can we contact you for follow-up?
  • Frequency (Always, Sometimes, Once)
  • Workaround found? (Yes or No plus text)

Auto-captured metadata

  • URL or route
  • app version
  • user ID
  • account plan
  • timestamp
  • browser and OS
  • viewport
  • feature flags (if relevant)

Example: bad vs better bug report form

Bad (high friction, low signal)

  • Summary
  • Description
  • Severity
  • Priority
  • Component
  • Browser
  • Browser version
  • OS
  • OS version
  • Reproducibility
  • Build number
  • Steps
  • Expected
  • Actual
  • Logs
  • Attachment
  • Customer ID
  • Email

This looks “thorough” but it is optimized for internal QA, not end users.

Better (user-friendly, triage-friendly)

  • What went wrong? (required)
  • What happened? (required)
  • What did you expect? (required)
  • What steps led to this? (required for bugs)
  • Add screenshot (recommended)
  • Can we contact you? (optional)

Everything else is auto-captured.

How to implement this with CornerCue (fast path)

CornerCue’s quick start is simple:

  • add one script tag
  • add a trigger button with data-cc-btn

Minimal setup

<script src="https://cdn.cornercue.com/widget.js" data-cc-key="YOUR_PROJECT_ID" defer></script>
<button data-cc-btn>Send Feedback</button>

Better setup for bug reports (preselect bug plus attach context)

<script src="https://cdn.cornercue.com/widget.js" data-cc-key="YOUR_PROJECT_ID" defer></script>


<button
  data-cc-btn
  data-cc-type="bug"
  data-cc-user-id="user_123"
  data-cc-user-email="jane@example.com"
  data-cc-meta-plan="pro"
  data-cc-meta-version="2.4.1"
  data-cc-meta-context="billing_page"
>
  Report a Bug
</button>

If you want users to send better bug reports, prefill context automatically instead of asking them to type it. CornerCue lets you pass user and metadata via attributes. See Button Data and Context.

Conclusion

A bug report form users complete is not the same as a bug report form engineers dream of.

The best forms:

  • ask simple questions in plain language
  • capture evidence with screenshots
  • auto-fill technical context
  • route reports into structured categories
  • minimize effort without sacrificing triage quality

Start with a simple “Report Bug” button today. Add CornerCue with one script tag, capture screenshots, and collect structured bug reports without building a full feedback system.

References

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