A short guide to button and call-to-action design

Most teams know this matters. Fewer have decided who owns it. Everything we would tell a client about button and call-to-action design in the time it takes to drink a coffee.

The measurable part of design is whether people can find what they came for and act on it without hesitating. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

What is actually at stake

Buttons should say what happens next, not "submit". This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.

How to approach it

One primary style, used sparingly, keeps it meaningful. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

The mistakes we see most

Touch targets under 44px cause mis-taps on phones. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

What this looks like day to day

Consistency is the quiet half of design work: it rarely gets complimented, and its absence is noticed immediately. 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
• One primary style, used sparingly, keeps it meaningful — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Pick the one that would hurt most if it failed, and start there.