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Thread: research on location of submit buttons
Number of posts in this thread: 8 (In chronological order)
From: Angela French
Date: Wed, Apr 01 2009 2:20PM
Subject: research on location of submit buttons
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I am hoping that someone can direct me to some definitive research that has been done about the best position of form action buttons (submit buttons) on a web page with a form. I am testing an application built by our development team and the submit buttons (multiple possible actions) in some cases, are NOT located at the bottom of the form. They are in the left hand column which also serves as the navigation area. "Ouch" you say? I know. Now I need some research to back up my suggestion that it be changed.
Thanks for any links to studies/white papers written on this subject.
Angela French
Internet Specialist
State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
360-704-4316
http://www.checkoutacollege.com<;http://www.checkoutacollege.com/>;
From: ben morrison
Date: Wed, Apr 01 2009 2:25PM
Subject: Re: research on location of submit buttons
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You could start here:
http://www.lukew.com/ff/about.asp
He also release a great book all about forms.
Ben
On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 9:19 PM, Angela French < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> I am hoping that someone can direct me to some definitive research that has
> been done about the best position of form action buttons (submit buttons) on
> a web page with a form. I am testing an application built by our
> development team and the submit buttons (multiple possible actions) in some
> cases, are NOT located at the bottom of the form. They are in the left hand
> column which also serves as the navigation area. "Ouch" you say? I know.
> Now I need some research to back up my suggestion that it be changed.
>
> Thanks for any links to studies/white papers written on this subject.
>
> Angela French
> Internet Specialist
> State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
> 360-704-4316
> http://www.checkoutacollege.com<;http://www.checkoutacollege.com/>;
>
>
From: Steve Green
Date: Wed, Apr 01 2009 3:50PM
Subject: Re: research on location of submit buttons
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From: Cliff Tyllick
Date: Wed, Apr 01 2009 4:25PM
Subject: Re: research on location of submit buttons
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Indeed he does: Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks ( http://www.amazon.com/Web-Form-Design-Filling-Blanks/dp/1933820241/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&;amp;s=books&qid=1238620586&sr=1-1 )
Great book. My copy's at home right now; otherwise, Angela, I'd look up an answer for you.
Cliff
>>> ben morrison < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > 4/1/2009 3:23 PM >>>
You could start here:
http://www.lukew.com/ff/about.asp
He also release a great book all about forms.
Ben
On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 9:19 PM, Angela French < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> I am hoping that someone can direct me to some definitive research that has
> been done about the best position of form action buttons (submit buttons) on
> a web page with a form. I am testing an application built by our
> development team and the submit buttons (multiple possible actions) in some
> cases, are NOT located at the bottom of the form. They are in the left hand
> column which also serves as the navigation area. "Ouch" you say? I know.
> Now I need some research to back up my suggestion that it be changed.
>
> Thanks for any links to studies/white papers written on this subject.
>
> Angela French
> Internet Specialist
> State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
> 360-704-4316
> http://www.checkoutacollege.com<;http://www.checkoutacollege.com/>;
>
>
From: Waltenberger, Lon (LNI)
Date: Wed, Apr 01 2009 5:10PM
Subject: Re: research on location of submit buttons
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Angela, see http://www.lukew.com/resources/articles/psactions.asp.
Hope that helps.
From: Angela French
Date: Thu, Apr 02 2009 12:45PM
Subject: Re: research on location of submit buttons
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I know this will fail (or cause unhappiness among) data entry folks who use keyboard instead of mouse. Though perhaps setting up a tab order could help alleviate this.
This is an internal application and I do not know whether any of the possible users will be on assistive technologies.
I was hoping I could get them to change it before it even gets out the door for user testing if I could back it up with a little research.
From: John Foliot
Date: Thu, Apr 02 2009 1:10PM
Subject: Re: research on location of submit buttons
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Angela French wrote:
>
> I know this will fail (or cause unhappiness among) data entry folks who
use
> keyboard instead of mouse. Though perhaps setting up a tab order could
help
> alleviate this.
>
> This is an internal application and I do not know whether any of the
possible
> users will be on assistive technologies.
> I was hoping I could get them to change it before it even gets out the
door
> for user testing if I could back it up with a little research.
(re-threaded for clarity - please respect threading protocols folks)
Steve and Angela,
You might want to investigate Jakob Nielsen's research of eye-tracking and
screen 'hot-spot' studies as a possible suggestion to this idea
(http://www.useit.com/eyetracking/). Colloquially, I have observed that
most right-handed users (re: mouse usage), when in a rest state on a web
page, will likely have the cursor positioned to the top-right quadrant of
the screen - conditioning perhaps due to page scrolling, where the scroll
bar starts at the top right corner? So, if you *really* need to place
submit buttons in a non-traditional place, I would suggest the right-hand
side, as opposed to the left-hand side.
The most important consideration however will remain user-testing - I am
personally unsure that this will be a workable solution. Remind your
'designers' that form should follow function - yes?
Cheers!
JF
>
>>
From: Steve Green
Date: Thu, Apr 02 2009 1:15PM
Subject: Re: research on location of submit buttons
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Changing the tab order is not a good solution. I have seen utter confusion
during screen reader testing with sites that do this. The problem is that
the content is read out in one order in 'virtual cursor' mode (i.e. normal
reading mode) but the order changes when JAWS is in 'forms mode'.
If the user jumps in and out of 'forms mode' (as they often do), they cannot
understand why the page appears to be changing all the time.
Can you not present the opinions of this list as evidence that the design is
bad?
Steve