The Right Way to Design a Modal Confirmation Dialog

Removing the question in confirmation

There are a few bad practices designers often commit on modal confirmation dialogs. If you don’t correct them, you’ll leave your users bewildered to where they cannot act with certainty.

Confirming data is essential when it involves monetary transactions and sensitive items. For instance, ordering a registration renewal sticker requires the user to verify their address. If there are typos, they’ll fail to receive the sticker and could face legal consequences. A modal confirmation dialog is needed to ensure that the address is correct.

A common mistake is to design the dialog as a “yes” or “no” question. Asking users, “Is this address correct?” only allows you to provide users with a “yes” and “no” button. These buttons do not have specific action labels that indicate what happens when the user clicks them. Instead, the dialog reads like a survey question.

It’s better to provide options that have a response to the confirmation. For example, a better response for “yes” is to say, “Address Is Correct.” A better response for “no” is to say “Edit Address” because if the address is incorrect, they need to go back and edit it.