Comments on: Why Your Form Buttons Should Never Say ‘Submit’

By: Keith Allpress

Keith Allpress — Fri, 26 Jul 2019 10:13:32 +0000

I can’t agree. People like conventions and are highly enculturated into them. You could add the odd explanatory button, but sparingly.
“Close” is these days is hardly seen any more because users are now more savvy than twenty years ago and know to look for the little cross.
“Apply” means to stay on the form of course.
“Next” is well understood conventionally for a multi-step process.
“Cancel” can be improved upon at times. “Continue shopping” already has established semantics in the world of e-commerce, during a checkout process. Its a good idea to pair these with the forward action button.
“Continue” is actually better than “Back” if the form is purely informational.
“Back” is dying, not just because your device provides one, but that can be a case of navigational design intruding on the user semantics. Plus users don’t like to have to imagine seeing something before they can just see it.

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 18 Sep 2017 15:11:46 +0000

There’s another level here.

We — the builders of the things — are not our users. We understand how the form hooks up to the database and that HTML comes with a submit button.

What we prefer doesn’t matter. What’s more important is the thought sequence going on in our customers’ heads. When they get to the end of our form, they’ve been paying us with attention (and anxiety over what we’re going to do with their details.) The least we can do is give them a little encouragement, by reminding them why they’re doing this onerous task for us.

Plus, as others have pointed out, “Submit” is computer language. Must we lowly users really kowtow to our robot overlords?

By: Cole

Cole — Wed, 30 Nov 2016 19:49:01 +0000

lol, you sir have just won the internet! Made my day. Hopefully someday you read this and know someone appreciates how awesome you are!

By: Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 19:41:46 +0000

Nobody ever wants to “submit”.

Especially not to government tyranny.

By: Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 19:40:29 +0000

Next/Previous works fine. It doesn’t need any extra work for the person filling out the form to understand it’s a multi-step form.

Maybe make it “Next Step”/”Previous Step” if you’re so inclined.