I recently finished up an un-moderated usability test; I usually ask open ended questions after every task. Part of the fun and the madness is making sense of the all the juicy comments. For this particular study, I was taken aback by how many respondents mentioned that the website task longer took because all of the” good links” were on the bottom of the page or some were confused by the links themselves.

This got me thinking about Seth Godin (The Big Red Fez) helping users find the banana in less than 3 seconds.

What the website needed were call to action buttons (CTA) above the fold, and the links needed intuitive labels names (“read more” wasn’t cutting here). Calls to action in web design are meant to make people take an action and in user experience they are meant to make a task easier. Creating effective call to action buttons that grab the user’s attention and entice them to click can be challenging. This post will share some quick effective techniques. (For best practices read Smash Magazine’s post on design awesome CTA’s)

Location, Location, Location,…

Just like real estate, placing CTA’s in a prominent location such as the top section of a web page can lead to higher return of investment because users will likely notice it or remember it later, after they have looked at the site’s content. Another way, that CTA’s can be utilized is within the content itself. Why would a user want to read and scroll through the whole page if they have enough information and ready to proceed?  Call to actions buttons within the content in my experience result in user taking action because  they have already skimmed enough content. If you need more than one page to convince your visitors to take action, feel free to repeat yourself. If you offer a product tour or use several pages to explain complex features and options, place your call to action in a consistent position. This way visitors will know where to go when they are ready to take action.

Language

Having a great call-to-action buttons is not as easy as just designing one from the best practices CTA guide (i.e. using irregular shapes, color contrast, larger sizes),  a great design  with the right language will help  guide users to follow a particular path and get to the valuable information they seek.  Labels on the buttons includes everything from simple things like “buy now” or “add to shopping cart”  and if you’re in the B2B vertical to  ”Download This Whitepaper”  or more specific wording.  A big pink button is pretty hard to miss but the example used design to catch the readers eye but the language of the offer  helps the user make the descions on whether or not they should download this software.

Have you been testing your call to actions? What combination has worked for you, would love to hear your experiences.