Jakob’s Bonus

Yesterday, Jakob Nielson released his Top-10 Application Design Mistakes. His Bonus Mistake was the first issue I noticed today while reviewing sites. The use of a reset button on web forms.

What is Reset Button For?

Too often I find the reset button on forms, and I believe it is because most new webmasters just don’t know what it is for other than resetting the form. Well they are right. It resets the form, and clears all the data entered. Why would you want to do this though? Imagine you were signing up for a new service on a website, and the form requires you to enter all your contact information. Would you hit the reset button because you made a typo when entering your address? You might accidentally if the reset button was there, but otherwise no. There is no reason for it in this case. That would be a classic example of when not to include the reset button.

So when do you use it? An good example would be if the form was for repeated use by one visitor, such as entering contact information of all their friends. Even then, if done correctly, can be avoided. By simply having a link back to the form on the completed submission page should bring the visitor back to the form with cleared data. It is much faster to click a link than hit the back button.

Is there a reset button on your site?