The Design and Presentation Order of Web Page Buttons

Abstract

As part of a guidelines standardization effort, a company wanted to know what customers think a “good” button looks like for web sites. A study was conducted with 63 participants that had them rank-order four existing button designs and then asked follow-up questions about their preference for several button characteristics. Results show that participants preferred bold text for labels, dark characters on a lighter background, rounded corners, and the button and page background colors to be different. One of the four designs was preferred over the other three, even though it embodied only three of the four preferred characteristics. The horizontal ordering of button pairs was also investigated. Participants preferred Save to the left of Cancel and Next to the right of Back, but did not indicate a preference for Continue with respect to Cancel. Possible reasons for these findings and future research topics are discussed.