OK–Cancel or Cancel–OK?

By Jakob Nielsen

Summary
Should the OK button come before or after the Cancel button? Following platform conventions is more important than suboptimizing an individual dialog box

OK–Cancel or Cancel–OK?

OK and Cancel Buttons- What’s the Right Order?

By Tom Tullis

Takeaways

1. Avoid using grouped buttons labelled as “OK” and “Cancel” on the web. There’s too great a chance that your users may have a different expectation from yours about which button is which. If they’re in a hurry, they might accidentally choose the wrong button.
2. It’s probably better to use buttons that are visually separated.
3. With the buttons visually separated, putting the action to continue (e.g., OK, Save, Submit, etc) on the right is more likely to match your users’ expectations.

OK and Cancel Buttons- What’s the Right Order?