What to ask your agency about button and call-to-action design

We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. If you are briefing an agency or a freelancer on button and call-to-action design, these questions are worth asking early.

Consistency is the quiet half of design work: it rarely gets complimented, and its absence is noticed immediately. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

Questions worth asking

• Who will actually do this work, and have they done it before?
• How will we know afterwards whether it worked?
• What happens if it needs changing in a year?
• What are you assuming that we have not confirmed?

What a good answer sounds like

Buttons should say what happens next, not "submit". In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

Touch targets under 44px cause mis-taps on phones. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

What this looks like day to day

The measurable part of design is whether people can find what they came for and act on it without hesitating. Three things worth confirming about button and call-to-action design before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Buttons should say what happens next, not "submit" — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.