Comments on: Designing a Strong Call to Action

By: Shay Howe

Shay Howe — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:12:53 +0000

@CB Du Rietz – Thank you for your comment, you bring up some good points.

Part of designing a good call to action is knowing its importance and presence within a page. In these examples, as you mentioned, the call to action is primarily dominant over other elements within the page. This is done specifically because they want users to find the call to action and to proceed with it without having any other interruptions while doing so.

You brought up having a “Pay Bill” call to action. Depending on the page itself there are probably actions needing to be completed before clicking the pay button. When it comes time to click pay yes you want users to be able to easily locate it and complete the call to action however you also do not want to make the call to action so prominent that users move straight to it without taking time to complete the required actions before hand.

Again, you must know the importance and presence of your call to action for it to be effective.

Hopefully I was able to answer your question or at least give you a little better explanation. Thanks again for your comment.

By: Eko Setiawan

Eko Setiawan — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 03:01:28 +0000

Hi..Thanks for share, i learned a lot from this article

By: CB Du Rietz

CB Du Rietz — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:23:39 +0000

Well, this just looks fine and dandy with me, but one thing that is quite obvious is that all this is marketing gadgets. It’s trying to draw people into a service. It’s all “Sign up”, “Join now”, “Buy this”.

Yes, the primary goal is to increase conversion. But what if the scenario is more mundane? Lets’ say Online Banking, which is more like an application rather than a store-front window. Do we really want huge button spelling out “Pay Bill” – being the default Call to Action on a payment page within the application? Or is a more traditional document flow model better, positioning the Submit Button in a logical way?

I’m not advocating either side. To be honest, I don’t consider the two being contradictory by design. It’s just that I think people have a tendency of using the old “bigger is better” strategy.

And no – I realize that users won’t interact with near invisible stuff.

What’s next, folks? When every site have maxed out on the size? Is the next fad?

By: Terrintokyo

Terrintokyo — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 23:17:20 +0000

excellent round up and commentary on this key element: thank you!

By: Rob Smith

Rob Smith — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 18:18:13 +0000

This is a great post Shay and one I’ll include in one of my forth coming smashing magazine articles – really well out together. Really like your blog’s style too, very clean.

By: Jack

Jack — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:52:33 +0000

Nice list and examples of good call to action buttons. I noticed there were quite a few that used colors that were already found on their page.

By: Richard Castera

Richard Castera — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 16:59:04 +0000

This list is great! Also great for inspiration! Thanks for sharing this!

By: Siân

Siân — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 12:15:52 +0000

Great selection, and really well explained – thanks. Just a shame I can’t work out how to put it to use on WP.com. The argument for self-hosting is getting stronger…

By: Multimedia Designer

Multimedia Designer — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 22:42:50 +0000

Excellent post. I would add that variation and multiplicity are also good elements to consider. Use text links, graphic links and links in multiple locations to catch different points of attention. Obviously, as you noted, good design and taste prevail, but having more than one link doing the same job will increase the odds.

By: Tim Marshall

Tim Marshall — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 19:52:01 +0000

I was looking the other day for something to make a client read to understand “Call to Actions” better as his idea of huge, garish buttons that were out of keeping with the design were doing my head in. I’ll send this on to him so he gets how it should really be done.

Great write up and impressive work on gathering all those great examples.