A typical Web form usually enables several “final” actions. Actions like “Submit”, “Save”, or “Continue” are intended to enable form completion –the primary goal of just about anyone who has started filling in a form. Because they enable the most important action on the form (completion), they are often referred to as primary actions.

Quite rare is the Web application that doesn’t make extensive use of forms for data input and configuration. But not all Web applications use forms consistently. Variations in the alignment of input fields, their respective labels, calls to action, and their surrounding visual elements can support or impair different aspects of user behavior.

In using eyetracking to evaluate the usability of search forms for my previous article for UXmatters, “Evaluating the Usability of Search Forms Using Eyetracking: A Practical Approach,” we discovered much interesting data. I’ll provide an in-depth analysis of that data here.