The importance of providing feedback to users

One of the primary goals of using progress trackers is to notify users about what is happening in the system when they fill in a form. Users may get distracted, leave the window, and get back to the form later. They should immediately understand what they're doing, their current status, how many steps they've already gone through, and how many steps are waiting for them ahead.

Progress trackers support Nielsen's "visibility of system status" heuristic. When users know what's going on in the system, they feel in control and don't experience any fear of the unknown.^[1] Plus, people will be more likely to complete the process if they know what's ahead of them and have a sense of completion along the way.