When You Need to Show a Button’s Loading State

Buttons have more than an enabled and disabled state. They also have a loading state. The loading state isn’t usually shown to users because most actions happen within seconds. But for operations that take longer than usual to occur, not showing the loading state leads to action errors.

Action Errors

If the action takes longer than expected to finish, users need to know that the system is processing their request. If they see nothing happening, they’ll think they didn’t press the button correctly. This belief will cause them to press the button again.

When users press a button more than once, it not only increases the system’s processing load, but it duplicates the operation. Depending on the context, this can lead to significant errors that not only frustrate users but you as well.

For example, users could accidentally send repetitive messages, submit forms multiple times, or order the same product twice. These action errors create extra data that you have to manage and clean up. And sometimes cleaning up that data can cost you time and money.

Progress Buttons

To prevent these errors, you need to use progress buttons on operations that take longer than two seconds. A research study found that users expect pages to load in two seconds or less, and become impatient when it takes longer.