One of the things that has always irked be about online is the poor graphical design of many of the surveys that find their way to my inbox. At one point we established a folder on our corporate network where people could dump screenshots of the especially bizarre. We called the folder, "Hall of Shame." The web offers us a vast palette of color and interactivity with which to design surveys, but as often as not it seems that people just make a mess of it.
Over the years we have done experiments with some aspects of design including background color, screen size, progress indicators, and location of the navigation buttons. Some of this research is reported in Mick Couper's excellent book, Designing Effective Web Surveys. We have used the results of those experiments along with what we can find in the web usability literature to create the corporate standards that we apply to every survey we do. Oddly enough, no element of those standards seems to be getting more questions from clients these days than placement of the Next and Back or Previous buttons.
The natural positioning in many people's minds is to mimic the Back and Forward buttons on the browser: Back on the left and Next on the right. But our research shows that it works best for respondents if we do the reverse: Next on the left and Back on the right. We've run two experiments and the results have shown:
- Surveys can take longer to complete with the Next button on the right and the Back button on the left.
- Respondents terminate at a slightly higher rate with the Next button on the right and Back button on the left.
- Respondents terminate at an even greater rate when we don't give them a Back button at all.
- If you put the Back button on the left respondents will use it more, probably by mistake.
Now I've also just stumbled across some research in the form design literature by web form design expert Luke Wroblewski that confirms placement and adds a new dimension I'd not thought of: color. He is trying to understand the best way to present what he calls "primary action" and "secondary action" buttons. In web form design this typically means Submit and Cancel. The results seem to be to be equally applicable to Next and Back. His findings:
- People seem to work with forms most efficiently and with the fewest errors when the Submit button is on the left and the Cancel button on the right.
- The worst design—the one that slows people down and causes the most mistakes—has the Submit button on the far right and the Cancel button on the left.
- Using color to distinguish the buttons (green for Submit and red for Cancel) seems to work very well. Better still, make Cancel a link rather than a button.
Now this may seem like a silly little issue and not worth getting all worked up about, but as we finally begin to recognize the importance of creating an hospitable and easy experience for survey respondents these little things do matter.
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