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Why Your Form Buttons Should Never Say 'Submit'
- larrik 16y agoI think the analogy of "submitting a form" is perfectly reasonable to average folks. It's akin to giving a form to the receptionist at the doctor's office through the window: 1. You get form, and go fill it out 2. You bring back the form and hand it to the receptionist 3. You get a range of responses ranging from nothing to a helpful answer. Sounds exactly like an HTML form to me. Is this the sort of parallel you want your users thinking of? Probably not, but it's also not some arcane terminology only programmers use either. (edited for formatting)
- zephjc 16y agoIt's still vague and doesn't tell the user what is DONE when you submit. "Save Changes" for settings, "Sign Up Now" for users joining a website, "Log In" to log into a website, "Reply" for replying to a comment ;-) Etc.
- citricsquid 16y ago> Sign Up Now ew, no. For me at least "sign up now" implies starting the sign up process. I would think "complete registration" or "create account" or "finish and create account" would be much better than "sign up now" especially if you've previously used "sign up" wording.
- zephjc 16y agoAgreed, those are better, but the idea stands - tell users what they're doing when they click that button with the button text
- nocman 16y agoI don't think it is vague at all. For one reason. Hitting the "Submit" button happens within a context. The person just filled out a form. That form showed up in their web browser because they navigated to the page the form was on. Much of the time that navigation was the result of clicking on a descriptive link, like "Create an Account". The person filling out the form knows that they are completing a task that they started by filling out the form. Submit, as others have said here, is a perfectly logical name for the button (just like submitting a paper form to a real person). You could try to make it more descriptive, but you run the risk of confusing the user with things like "Create Account". I agree with others here, that in some contexts, and for some users, rather than clarifying what is happening, you will confuse them into thinking the "Create Account" button starts the process over again at a blank form (rather than submitting the form they just filled out). Also, it isn't like this is new technology. Anyone who has any significant amount of experience using the web in the last ten years (or more even) has filled out an HTML form, and a high percentage of those forms have submission buttons that read "Submit". Even non-technical users understand it. I can't think of a single case where a person has talked to me because they have been confused by a "Submit" button. And of the few people I can think of that might have trouble with an HTML form, renaming the submit button would do absolutely no good (because they are the type of people who are so afraid that they'll do something wrong on the computer and delete all the information in the known universe :-D ) (laughing to myself as I click the "reply" button -- I missed that part of your comment until after I noticed the button)
- andrewmu 16y agoIt may not be vague for a user who knows the current context, but I still think that using a descriptive verb is better than the generic 'submit'. For "Create Account" even "Create" would give some idea as to what will happen when the user presses the button. I remember being impressed by the Mac HIG that said all dialogs should have buttons with a verb instead of the typical Windows "Ok"/"Cancel". It informs the user slightly more and, I think, reduces the likelihood of automatically clicking "Ok" as some interfaces effectively 'train' a user to do.
- larrik 16y agoI really don't think that a pop-up window and a form have much in common from a UX perspective. The fact is that pop-ups interrupt you with a nag, and the user's desire is to get rid of it as soon as possible (regardless of which action they actually want to take). Putting the text on the button itself speeds this process up, and reduces errors. Submitting a form is a MUCH MUCH slower, and more thoughtful process. You can make a snark about replying quickly to a comment, but have you ever WATCHED a user deal with a message popup they've seen before? Blink and you'll miss the whole thing. Even more importantly, most forms have only ONE button. I bet you could label it simply "Button" and a ton of your users would never even notice.
- dpcan 16y agoPrecisely. Everywhere you go in the real world, someone sends you a form to fill out and they tell you where to "submit" it. This is why Internet forms started off saying "submit" - because it makes sense.
- zephjc 16y agoThis harkens back to Windows vs Mac conventions for alerts (see http://developer.apple.com/ue/switch/windows.html#designClearDialogs http://developer.apple.com/ue/switch/windows.html#designClea... )
- raganwald 16y agoLike the "Dolt" button? http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Do_It.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...
- sp332 16y agoI had a window manager on an old Linux box (I forget which one) that would replace the "OK" text on dialog boxes with random interjections: "Oh, well" or "Damn!" or "Huh..." :-)
- drblast 16y agoI can't remember which dialog it is in Windows, but the most hideous example uses the standard Yes/No/Cancel buttons out of context but explains beforehand what each one does, like this: -To continue closing the program and save the document, click "Yes" -To continue working without saving, click "Cancel" -To save and then continue working click "No" Which takes you five minutes to read and could have easily been replaced by set of a "Save and Close," "Save and Continue" and "Cancel" buttons.
- forensic 16y agoFor poor visual basic coders, it's easier to use standard dialogs than make custom ones. In the old days the Yes/No/Cancel text would be hardcoded into a specific dialog object.
- extension 16y agoThe trouble with putting the current task on the submit button is that the user is already doing that task and they might think that the button is a link to start the task over, particularly if they clicked on identical text to get to the form in the first place. I have personally made this mistake while using some sites. I try to include some context in the submit button but still make it clear that it will submit the form. Short, generic verbs seem to work well, like "Save", "Delete", or "Send". EDIT: thinking more about this, I think what's important is to use a verb that applies specifically to the form data as opposed to the whole task: You send a reply, you don't reply a reply.
- burgerbrain 16y agoExactly, I've had this issue a few times and actually consider "submit"/"finish"/etc to be far more user friendly for this reason. Presumably I already clicked something to the effect of "create user" to get to the form, and now I have to click "create user" again? What?
- thwarted 16y agoThere's possible value is calling out the genericness of getting to the empty form vs the specificness of the submitting the data on a single instance of the form. "Create user" takes you to a form that has potential to be any user (because it's empty), "Create this user" finalizes the action based on the filled-in data on the form.
- sp4rki 16y agoIf you click on a link or button called 'Create a User' that that takes yo to a form, it would be almost universally more usable to have the button at the end say 'Save' instead of 'Create this user'. Verbosity is not always a good thing on the web.
- rue 16y agoI'm probably in the minority but when I see "save", I assume it's "saving my progress". In a user creation form, even just "create" is clearer than "save".
- mrkurt 16y agoI would argue that the "do something" button should focus more on where you are in the process than the process itself. The examples in the page all sound like the "start" step, instead they should reflect that they're finishing or moving the user on to the next step. "Submit" is generic, but at least sounds final. The reality, though, is that we're all guessing. Unless you go to the effort to A/B test something like that, it's just voodoo.
- tokenadult 16y agoThis is an empirical question, and ought to be resolved by actual user data from a usability study.
- bphogan 16y agoI can't believe that 16 years after forms first appeard on the web we're still having this discussion. Using "submit" as your label? So are thousands of other sites. Your users won't be confused. Using something more descriptive? That's fine too. Maybe it looks a little nicer and less generic. But it's not a usability problem. Don't worry about this for a second. Instead focus on the real problems, like creating usable and accessible form fields with associated labels. Write easy to follow directions that explain which fields are required and what format you're expecting (or write better error handling techniques to accept a variety of inputs.) Write and make visible appropriate error messages to help your users through the process so they don't make mistakes. Record the mistakes they make so you can use that data to engineer your forms in ways that reduce user errors. There are so many other things worth your attention.
- RobertL 16y agoIf you make a living off of your website and that living is dependent on conversions then this subject is always "worth your attention". But I agree with patio11. Get everyone's opinion and then learn how to run A/B or multivariate tests.
- sp4rki 16y agoI totally agree. Using buttons with concise messages is best when they're used to access some functionality, but when submitting data the users have been clicking on submit buttons for more than a decade to do so. I'd even go on and say that in a lot of cases when you're submitting data, it's correct to use either simple actions as 'save', 'send', and 'submit' instead of 'Do the chicken dance when you click on this button' Instead of worrying about submit buttons, which by the way generally exist a lone entities at the end of a form (which makes it's use even more obvious), worry about the actual usability of your forms and the logic behind the error handling. tl;dr => In more cases than not it's more correct to use 'submit' as button copy than a more verbose counterpart when submitting forms.
- pyre 16y ago> when submitting data the users have been > clicking on submit buttons for more than > a decade to do so So you only want users on your site that have at least a decade of experience with the internet?
- patio11 16y agoEverybody already knows what I'm going to say but by golly it is the right answer: test which one performs better for your site. 2 + 2 = 4, in the time it takes two highly paid people to debate "Submit!" versus "Sign up" you can have the A/B test already running and be back doing productive stuff.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- djb_hackernews 16y agoWhat if you are creating an MVP, and can't A/B test because you have nowhere to test? What then?
- patio11 16y agoIf you can't scrape together a hundred visitors a day, then the text on your submit button profoundly doesn't matter. If you can, you can A/B test.
- slyn 16y agohaha, this sounds like a piece of advice straight out of Starcraft 2. If you're anywhere but in the top 10% of ladder or above, you'll win more games and get better faster by just focusing on building more stuff than your opponent. Unit composition, racial balance, specific attack/scouting timings, etc. profoundly don't matter if you can't scrape together a hundred food army and an expansion 10-15 mins into a game. If you can, you can start strategerizing. The parallel is funny to me.
- idlewords 16y agoA/B tests are only useful when you can gather statistically significant amounts of data from them. For a lot of small websites, or infrequently used features on larger websites, that is not the case.
- thezilch 16y ago
- kolya3 16y agoI received user feedback from a woman who said our submit button was "vile" and "sexist" because the label on it said "Submit". It took me a second to process. I can't imagine the emotions bubbling up inside her every day that she browses the web. But regardless, we'll be changing the "Submit" button to "Sign In".
- droz 16y agoThose kinds of comments always say more about the commenter than the thing being commented on.
- FluidDjango 16y agoMight there be enough people feeling the way she does to warrant browsers providing an option (like setting minimum font size) of specifying what 'type="submit"' fields should display? Perhaps the woman in question might prefer that they all displayed, "Dominate". [Sorry: it just seems worth the down-votes.]
- bostonvaulter2 16y agoI would say not a full browser option, but it would make sense as an extension/userscript
- blasdel 16y agoThe classic is people fretting over master/slave nomenclature on hardware: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/master.asp http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/master.asp
- mayank 16y ago...unless of course you're running a BDSM site.
- jayzee 16y agoRead this somewhere: The internet is like a dominatrix. Everywhere I turn it asks me to submit.
- richcollins 16y agoSubmit buttons are bad UI to start with. All content should be directly editable. You don't see a submit button on word processors.
- Toucan 16y agoPeople who use the web are used to have some sort of confirmation that their data has been safely squirrelled away somewhere. When I use sites that behave like this, I often find myself going back to the settings page to make sure my new settings have actually been changed, even though I understand the technology behind it.
- joshtynjala 16y agoI expect to see this change to match desktop expectations eventually, but I agree. Connectivity, and web apps themselves, can be unreliable, so it feels safer to see a new page load to confirm that our settings have been saved. Additionally, many Windows apps still use OK, Cancel, Apply buttons in settings dialogs. The instant saving of settings is more of a Mac thing. Users are going to expect similar things from UI on the web, and the majority are probably new to the idea of no save/cancel choice.
- richcollins 16y agoThe fact that people are "used to it" doesn't make it the best UI choice.
- Joakal 16y agohttp://uxmovement.com/forms/best-way-to-align-buttons-on-forms http://uxmovement.com/forms/best-way-to-align-buttons-on-for... In examples provided, 'submit' is used. "Never say 'Submit'" indeed.
- true_religion 16y agoIt's a generic form in the example, so he used a generic submit button. Without context, how are you supposed to say what the 'submit' button should be changed to?
- 5teev 16y agoIt's sometimes worthwhile to use boring, "wrong" default form elements, like when the browser will automatically translate their text labels into the user's preferred (i.e., non-English) language.
- nfriedly 16y agoI'd rather the submit button say "Submit" than have any "Reset" button anywhere. I hate it when I accidentally click those.
- k0n2ad 16y agoDarn, I was planning on having a Submit! button for when I become supreme dictator. Of course I'd have my own website.
- stephenou 16y agoI noticed http://news.ycombinator.com/submit http://news.ycombinator.com/submit said submit on the button too.