Have you ever landed on a website and had no clue as to how to explore it or what actions to take? If so, this would mean that the website’s user experience and interface design has failed to guide you through its landscape. Indeed, poor usage of shapes, colours, text or hover effects can easily confuse the user. Where such poor design can be especially evident in, is that of user buttons.
How Poor Design of User Buttons Kills Websites
Since the invention of the web, designers have chiefly used two tools to enable users to explore a website. One being the scroll, and the other being the clicking of buttons. However along the way, as designers have pushed for ever more fancy designs and layouts, the fundamental needs of good button design have at times being forgotten.
Where users are unable to recognise a button as a button, its chief purpose is thus defeated. Forget marketing funnels, without users recognising buttons, they are likely to grow frustrated and bounce from your website.
Text Buttons Are Simple But Limited
Text buttons are as the name implies, simply text that have hyperlinks attached to them. No further design elements are introduced, leaving their sole differentiating factors as colour, text and possibly white space around them. This makes recognition of them difficult and easy to be missed out on. Furthermore, their problems are further exacerbated in mobile formats where users’ fingers easily cover the entire button, thus reducing the feedback that a user would receive upon clicking.
While text buttons perform poorly as key buttons in a marketing funnel, they are still useful for tertiary actions such as providing users with supplementary information. For example, if there are terms that need further clarification, embedding links to their respective pages within a piece of text allows the user to attain the information without disrupting their journey.
Use These Alternative Buttons
Outlined buttons have grown in popularity, especially amongst mobile web designers. Their clean cut appearance prevents a page from getting cluttered while offering enough indication of their function to the user. By placing a boarder around text, users have a larger area to hit, while the lack of solid background makes this button ideal for secondary actions. This prevents competition with primary buttons.
When it comes to creating primary buttons, consider using light shaded buttons, or even buttons with more visual weight. Their solid colours make them stand out against any background and thus immediately grab users’ attention.
Designing A Strong User UI/UX Web Experience
Planning a consistent and well thought out UI/UX experience for users is essential to attaining a converting website. This includes the designing of buttons and the usage of design elements to guide users’ eyeballs. A professional websitedesign service can help you in this area, providing expert insights into what is needed for a strong digital presence. Their skills could be what is needed to take a good website belonging to you, and turn it into a truly converting site.
