Buttons on forms and surveys: a look at some research

Where to put the buttons on forms? There seem to be endless discussions:

  • Does ‘submit’ or ‘send’ or ‘OK’ go to the left or right of ‘cancel’?
  • Does ‘next’ go to the left or right of ‘previous’?

My views are:

  • put the primary action button under the left-hand edge of the final text entry box
  • position the ‘previous’ button to the left of the primary action button

In this talk at the Information Design Conference 2012, I discussed three research studies that contributed to my advice.

(I also wrote an article on basic best practices for buttons, published a shortly after).

#forms #formsthatwork #surveys #surveysthatwork