Stop throwing your fish back. Designers often get excited about their design work, caught up in the aesthetics of their latest masterpiece. However, there are situations where a designer needs to take a step back and connect with their website design through a viewer level. Ask yourself, what would it take for you to stay on any given website? Most people would answer that question with “I want something free,” or “I want a good deal.” So I am asking you to give the viewer what they want. Reel them in, and they will bring a school of fish that could nibble for a lifetime. Throughout the course of this article, see by example, how Mozilla has prospered through many actions of giving.
Get your viewer hooked. It’s not likely that everyone will want to give something away for free and realistically it may not be extremely affordable to give your clients something for free. Oh wait, did I mention that the item does not have to be tangible? You can give your clients an educational PDF download, a monthly screen-saver, or if you are software company a free 14 day trial. Mozilla gives free add-on’s to a majority of their products. See, it’s easy to give freely. In fact we want to give you something free right now.
Beautiful CTA buttons: Freebies for your next major project, or as a gift to your web designer
Call to action. If you are going to give things away on a website, there should be an attraction to focus on these giveaways. That is why there are “Call to Action” buttons, the amazing eye attracting buttons that should be on every website. Unfortunately, not everyone knows the purpose of a call to action button so I will give you a short informative brief. Call to action buttons are used to evoke a visitor to react and do something on your website. Example CTA buttons: Download, add to cart, sign-up, Get a Free Trial, Learn More, and View a Demo. The difference between a CTA button and a regular link button is the way they are visually and strategically placed and presented. Also, good to know, you can have multiple call to action buttons on your website, but it is very important to make sure you have a defined primary call to action. For example: you want people to make a donation to your cause, so your primary call to action button should be "Donate to our cause." But not all users are going to want to donate, so you give them a secondary call to action, such as "not able to donate, that's okay...would you like to sign up for our free newsletter." This secondary call to action gives you an opportunity to ask them to donate again, through use of an e-newsletter.
Push the button. It should be simple right, but a button on the webpage and people click. Wrong, who knew it could take so much work to get a viewer to click on a button. It takes effort to entice the viewer to click on this button, and it’s not as simple as making it look pretty. Designers often work with marketing teams to come up with the perfect lure for their buttons.
Consider this QA’s. Here are some things to consider when planning out your call to action buttons.
1. What type of CTA button needs to be created?
3. What colors and icons that are going to differentiate this button from the rest of my site?
The ultimate goal. Always, the number one goal is to keep the user in mind. WWTUD, what would the user do? Because the user is your main target, they are the most important part of any successful call to action button. Be mindful of your viewers and give them something worth spreading the news about. Otherwise, they are just another fish lost at sea.
Was this article helpful to you? And, what types of design topics would be more helpful to you in the future?
Beautiful CTA buttons: Freebies for your next major project. Merry Christmas!
Get your viewer hooked. It’s not likely that everyone will want to give something away for free and realistically it may not be extremely affordable to give your clients something for free. Oh wait, did I mention that the item does not have to be tangible? You can give your clients an educational PDF download, a monthly screen-saver, or if you are software company a free 14 day trial. Mozilla gives free add-on’s to a majority of their products. See, it’s easy to give freely. In fact we want to give you something free right now.
Beautiful CTA buttons: Freebies for your next major project, or as a gift to your web designer
Call to action. If you are going to give things away on a website, there should be an attraction to focus on these giveaways. That is why there are “Call to Action” buttons, the amazing eye attracting buttons that should be on every website. Unfortunately, not everyone knows the purpose of a call to action button so I will give you a short informative brief. Call to action buttons are used to evoke a visitor to react and do something on your website. Example CTA buttons: Download, add to cart, sign-up, Get a Free Trial, Learn More, and View a Demo. The difference between a CTA button and a regular link button is the way they are visually and strategically placed and presented. Also, good to know, you can have multiple call to action buttons on your website, but it is very important to make sure you have a defined primary call to action. For example: you want people to make a donation to your cause, so your primary call to action button should be "Donate to our cause." But not all users are going to want to donate, so you give them a secondary call to action, such as "not able to donate, that's okay...would you like to sign up for our free newsletter." This secondary call to action gives you an opportunity to ask them to donate again, through use of an e-newsletter.
Push the button. It should be simple right, but a button on the webpage and people click. Wrong, who knew it could take so much work to get a viewer to click on a button. It takes effort to entice the viewer to click on this button, and it’s not as simple as making it look pretty. Designers often work with marketing teams to come up with the perfect lure for their buttons.
Consider this QA’s. Here are some things to consider when planning out your call to action buttons.
1. What type of CTA button needs to be created?
- Download
- Buy Now
- Add to Cart
- Demo
- Trial
- Sign-up
- Learn More
- Donate
- Other
- Ultimately, the CTA should be larger than all other buttons on the website.
- Location does matter, so try not to cram your CTA Button into a random space.
- Try to keep your buttons above the fold on the homepage, but no worries if you can’t make this happen, about 90% of people do scroll.
- Give your button some breathing space around it to draw more attention to it in a subtle manor.
3. What colors and icons that are going to differentiate this button from the rest of my site?
- Try to stay within complements of your current color scheme, nothing too intense that screams “look at me,” but you do need good contrasting colors.
- Icons can be a great asset to your CTA button. For example, you have a pdf download, use a little pdf icon along with the button. Maybe you want the viewer to take a tour, put a small clip of the tour with a play button on top.
- Also, make sure any icon used represents the proper importance of the button. Example, Download now might have an image of an arrow pointing down.
- Watch your language. Keep the text simple and to the point.
- Be specific and clearly define the action you are seeking. Ex: Buy Now, Sign Up for 30 day risk free trial.
- Evoke users to do what you are asking through text that requires an immediate response, but be careful not to deceive the viewer.
- Remember, you want the viewer to react without hesitation
- If Yes, it is time to choose which CTA will be your primary focus, and the logical order you would like your viewer proceed if the primary CTA is not of interest to the viewer.
- If the main goal is to get the visitor to "buy now," make that the obvious choice.
- Secondary CTA's provide an alternative for the visitors who are not ready to act on the primary CTA yet.
- So your main focus is getting the user to "buy now", if that is not interesting to the viewer maybe there is a secondary "10 day trial," and maybe their is a third that says "Learn More."
- When designing multiple CTA's, color separation is beneficial for each button, it does not have to be a bold difference but it should be noticeable.
- If color separation is not desired, a simple icon or image added to the CTA will have the same effect.
- The goal is to separate each CTA enough so that the user takes time to choose an action.
The ultimate goal. Always, the number one goal is to keep the user in mind. WWTUD, what would the user do? Because the user is your main target, they are the most important part of any successful call to action button. Be mindful of your viewers and give them something worth spreading the news about. Otherwise, they are just another fish lost at sea.
Was this article helpful to you? And, what types of design topics would be more helpful to you in the future?
Beautiful CTA buttons: Freebies for your next major project. Merry Christmas!