One of my favorite topics is addressing how users interact with a webpage because there is so my psychology behind it as well as artistic input. This episode deals with buttons specifically, and how to craft the ones on your site so they are appealing the best to your visitors, helping with conversions, and standing out on a busy page. If you're looking for some direction on how to handle buttons on a landing page, or a general overview, this broadcast is for you. Show Notes for the CreationDepot Podcast #001 The Science of Buttons Intro: Welcome to the CreationDepot Podcast, where we discuss web and graphic design and the why behind the dos and don’ts of the marketing world. I’m your host, Wendy Litteral. Today’s Topic: Today we’re going to be talking about buttons, yes buttons. Buttons have a variety of reasons for being on a website, but they all have one common function – to compel a visitor to action - to click on them. First up, size does matter. Not just the size of the buttons themselves, but the size of the font and the size of the layout around them. A huge button in a normal-sized layout would look awkward and jarring, but conversely a small button would be easy to pass over right? So there is a trick to finding that happy medium. One tool you can use to draw more attention to a button without increasing its height or padding is to simply make the button’s language a call to action. In other words, make the language compelling, like “Click here to go to this great page.” Instead of “Buy Now” try “Purchase today to get this great deal!” Of course that last one doesn’t work if you’re a shopping cart (in which case you already know they are there to make a purchase), but if you’re working on a landing page for your product sometimes putting that trigger language inside the button not only draws attention to the button, but can actually help the user make the purchasing decision depending on how it’s worded. Ok more on size – the size of the button should complement your layout, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get creative with it. The size of the fonts within the button also matter. Be sure to use a sans serif or plain font and not any scripted or cursive font. The reason is the last thing you want when trying to persuade someone to buy from you is something that is potentially hard to read. Next rule – simplicity. It’s just a button folks. As nice as it is to have grunge effects, gradients, fun shapes, and so on, you’re on some level clouding the path to purchasing. Make sure your user isn’t going… “is that the button?” It’s going to be obvious to you – you made it, and if you’re not sure run it by your coworkers or friends. They’ll be happy you asked them, but don’t direct them. Just plop the site down in front of them and say “start shopping.” I’m doing user testing, you’re John Smith and you want to purchase that new snowboard. Go for it. Don’t give them any instructions. If they can’t find the buy now button you’re doing something wrong. Save the crazy cut out designs, the off the wall graphics for your headers and footers. They just don’t have a place in the content where the real purpose is straight up communication. Which brings up the next point. Code your buttons, don’t make them images. It’s really easy to make a cute, simple little button in Photoshop then pop a link onto it. The main reason you don’t want to do that is depending on how mobile-friendly your website is, that image can look distorted or even not like a button on smart phones and tablets. The way to go is to use CSS and just use straight code to create your button. Bootstrap 4 does a fantastic job with this. It’s a bit like taking a vector graphic of a logo. Looks awesome when you blow it up or shrink it down really tiny because the code is using math to make the image and not relying on stretching and shrinking pixels and guessing at what you want it to look like.
Welcome to the introduction of the CreationDepot Podcast! My name is Wendy Litteral and I'm here to give you a quick overview of what to expect in upcoming episodes. CreationDepot is a web and graphic design company by trade, but we're largely focused on where we came from - the design, development and production community. We look at both digital and print design, and really try to convey what good design is and how to pass that experience onto your customers. So in upcoming episodes we're going to have a few guests on going over some amaaaazing topics like: The ins and outs of logo design from a technical POV. What should you provide to the client, to an end-user, how to format your final artwork, and how to present it so you look awesome to your client. In another episode we'll go over what sales funnels are, AND we'll go into how to build one. Along with what milestones to look for to see if you're doing it right. In another episode we're going into how to use quizzes to build a customized experience so you can build your e-mail list. There's a big market for providing a unique experience to users, and quizzes can be done in a way now that makes them not just a series of questions like a Facebook quiz, but something that users really want to be involved with. It's pretty cool. And last up, we're going to do a throwback episode - and I'm particularly excited about this one. I've been designing since 1998 and things have seriously changed. When I started, Photoshop 2.0 was installed using floppy disks on Macintosh Performas, and now we're cloud-based on software's on everything from PCs to smart phones. We'll talk about how styles have changed too, and give some tips on how to ease clients from an older look into something more modern. So I'd like to really encourage you to sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter at creationdepot.com/subscribe because that's where all the goodies are. The show notes, the downloadables and links are all going to be in that bi-weekly newsletter. We'll put them on the blog too, but this way you'll get a notice instead of having to remeber where everything is. Alright I think that's it for this intro. Please remember to subscribe through your podcast player for the next episodes and we'll see you next time! Have a good one. This is going to be fun. Wendy