Design Tips on Call to Action CTA Buttons

A good website or landing page consists of small elements for effective interaction system of a digital product like CTA Buttons. To make the system sufficient, it’s important to pay attention to all the details.

Buttons at a webpage are core interactive component of user interfaces which play a major role in the quality and the conversion matrix of websites and applications. UI buttons can be divided into different types according to their features. This article is majorly focussed on the Call-to-Action i.e. CTA buttons and covering their essence, its role in intuitive navigations and its importance in the business conversion goals. Let us see the best practices for the CTA Buttons.

What’s a CTA button and why is it important?

On a user interface a call-to-action button is an interactive element in mobile and web both. It is majorly to induce the visitor to take certain actions that present a conversion for a screen or a particular page, like purchase, contact or subscription, etc.

In general, CTA buttons are easily noticeable and designed intentionally to attract the people to click on it. Usually, bold buttons containing microcopy with a particular call-to-action (e.g. “Learn more” or “Buy it now”) which encourages us to push it.

Lead generation and rise in the purchase are the basic business goals for which calls-to-action can be created. When a button design is compelling enough to immediately attract the attention of potential clients, it can entice them to click and go to the next stage such as filling a short contact form or making a preorder of a product.

Call-to-Action CTA Buttons sometimes connects the best part of any website and in this way, the website visitors and app users can be guided through a complete sales funnel from starting stage to another helping component to learn them the details about the products and services. Without CTA Buttons people are more likely to scan the content quickly and just skip it untouched. Even professionally worked out content may not guarantee the high level of user engagement is not properly managed with the call-to-action buttons.

Some may think that a sufficient call-to-action button design applies only a big size and bright color to accomplish all its objectives. Still, there are much more aspects ensuring the effectiveness of CTAs. Let’s see what they are along with the practical examples of their appropriate usage.

Generally, designers thought that a sufficient call-to-action design can build with big size and bright colors to accomplish all its objectives. There are much more various aspects to ensure the effectiveness of CTA Buttons. Here are some aspects of the example or their appropriate usage.

What makes a powerful CTA button?

Button Size

At most, the bigger the element is, the more visible it becomes. Since the prime goal of CTA Buttons is to draw users’ attention, designers usually try to make them stand out from the other buttons located at the webpage or screen, especially using a noticeable size.

Big size buttons having high chances to be noticed and clicked but still, you have to keep it under some limits.  A compelling call-to-action button is big enough to be easily found but not such big so that visual composition and hierarchy of the layout shouldn’t be spoiled. Market experts recommend on the effect sizes of buttons in their guidelines. For example, Apple says that CTAs in mobile UI should be at least 44Х44 pixels, while Microsoft recommends 34Х26 pixels.

Color and shape of CTA Buttons

Visually attractive size is only one aspect of a powerful CTA Button. To make the buttons even more noticeable it’s important to choose adequate color and shape. The thing is that human mood and behavior highly relates to the visual surroundings. Our mind reacts to colors and shapes while we usually do not notice it. The moment our eyes perceive color, they connect with the brain which gives signals to the endocrine system releasing hormones responsible for the shifts in mood and emotions. Psychology science has specific branches devoted to the influence of different colors and shapes on our consciousness.

Here are brief guides on the common meaning which colors and shapes generally have,

Color Meanings:

Red– Confidence, youth, and power.
Orange– Friendly, warm, and energetic.
Yellow– Happiness, optimism, and warmth.
Green– Peace, growth, and health.
Blue- Trust, security, and stability.
Purple– Luxurious, creative, and wise.
Black– Reliable, sophisticated, and experienced.
White– Simple, calm, and clean.

Color choice depends on various aspects which make the process more complicated. Designers need to consider such factors as the basic color of the composition as well as potential preferences and psychological peculiarities of the target audience. There is one condition which is vital to keep in mind while choosing colors for CTA: buttons and background colors should be contrasting enough so that CTAs would stand out from the other UI components.

Shape meanings:

Squares and rectangles meanings: discipline, strength, courage, security, reliability.
Triangles meanings: excitement, risk, danger, balance, stability.
Circles, ovals, and ellipses meanings: eternity, female, universe, magic, mystery.
Abstract shapes meanings: the duality of meaning, uniqueness, elaborate.

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Traditionally, CTA buttons look like horizontal rectangles since people got used to perceiving this shape as clickable buttons. In addition, it is recommended to design CTA Buttons with rounded corners because they are thought as they point inside of the button drawing attention to the copy.

CTA Buttons Placement

The placement of CTA buttons is crucial for their capability. If they are located in the areas where users’ eyes can’t catch them, other visual aspects such as color and size might not work efficiently. But how to understand what placement is more prosperous?

Lots of studies have shown that before reading a web page people scan it to get a sense of whether they are interested. Considering this fact, designers may learn the most prominent scannable areas and place call-to-actions within the user’s path.

According to different studies, including the publications by Nielsen Norman Group, UXPin team, and others, there are several popular scanning patterns for web pages, among which “F” and “Z” patterns.

F-pattern is the most common for web pages with a big amount of content such as blogs, news platforms. A user first scans a horizontal line on the top of the screen, then moves down the page a bit and reads across the horizontal line which usually covers a shorter area. And the last one is a vertical line down on the left side of the copy where they look for keywords in the paragraphs’ initial sentences.

Z-pattern is a typical model of scanning for landing pages or websites not loaded with copy and not requiring scrolling down the page, which means that all the core data is visible in the pre-scroll area. A user first scans across the top of the page starting from the top left corner, looking for important information, and then goes down to the opposite corner at a diagonal, finishing with the horizontal line at the bottom of the page, again from left to right.

These patterns allow designers to place CTAs in the spots of highest attention, such as top corners and put the other points requiring attention along the top and bottom lines. Also, it is a good idea to place CTA buttons at the center of the layout, especially when it isn’t overloaded with other UI elements.