I think they are counting on most people not paying full attention and clicking on "cancel". That way your subscription stays active and they can still send you stuff. At least until you notice and end your subscription properly. I guess they figure if they've irritated you to the point where you want to cancel, why not irritate you a little more with poorly designed web forms. Maybe this one is broken on purpose.

Posted by: lefty-chef at January 17, 2007 11:52 AM

While it's always better to have verbs in the buttons:

[Unsubscribe] [Do nothing]

I'm not sure that it's that odd to have "Cancel" here. You've started an unsubscribe process; do you want to cancel the process?

Posted by: rich at January 17, 2007 12:43 PM

I have to agree with Rich... and it specifically tells you what to do... it doesn't just have a screen that says :

Unsubscribe ******* to [whatever]?

continue/cancel

That would be broken, this one actually tells you what one to press for whichever action you want to take. If you aren't willing to take the 5 seconds it takes to read and comprehend what they wrote, then too bad for you.

Posted by: Memnon at January 17, 2007 04:08 PM

What do you want it to say?

Posted by: Webmaster at January 17, 2007 10:23 PM

'Continue' cancels your subscription, 'Cancel' continues your subscription. They do explain it, but you are then forced to give your entire attention to what should be the simplest of choices. All you are doing is verifying that you didn't end up on that page by accident. Show, don't tell- have a 'Unsubscribe' button and a 'Stay Subcribed' button. Then there's no need for them to have explain what to do. No technical challenge, user's experience improves. Picking the inferior of two options is always broken.

Posted by: gmangw at January 18, 2007 12:21 AM

It's not broken, but it would be simpler to have the buttons say, "Unsubscribe," "Cancel".

As Memnon points out, it's only five more seconds of your time to read it, and after all, why should they care about your time? Five seconds here, five seconds there, sure it could add up to hours of lost productivity a month, but that's your problem, not theirs.

Posted by: mmcwatters at January 18, 2007 08:09 AM

mmcwatters... what IS your problem? You seem to be purposefully derisive towards my posts every time I read one.

Why don't you take a little personal responsibility for your life and stop blaming others so much...

Yes, there are things out there that are broken, and are a real waste of time, or dangerous, or whatnot. Then there are things like this that have no real issue, just that some people don't think they should be required to pay attention to what they are doing. If they have to actually think before acting, then it must not be done right.

That's the type of thing that one day comes back and bites them. They sign/click on/whatever something without reading it, then realize they just did something they really didn't want to and get very upset.

What ever happened to people being responsible for themselves and their actions?

Posted by: Memnon at January 19, 2007 11:14 PM

Memnon: this is a forum for discussion. You seem to take a decidedly anti-user stance on nearly every post. (I do wonder why you're here at TIB, but that's another story.)

You talk about personal responsibility, and I couldn't agree more.

But, this forum is about people / organizations / companies taking responsibility for the experiences they create, be they big or small, important or not-so-important.

Regarding this post: it would have taken no more time to have correct labels. Why not do it?

So, to your point, why wouldn't you ask the person or people who created this interface to be responsible for its usability?

Posted by: mmcwatters at January 21, 2007 08:36 AM