Of course an email message contains a call to action. And therefore we certainly have to implement a big button. Survey found in the past that a CTA based on a button increases the click through rate with 28 percent in contrast to a CTA presented in the shape of a link. Reason enough to spend some more attention to this.
A button clearly shows the reader of an email message what the next step is. A human is used to clicking on these things. As an old expression says: “familiarity feeds usability”. After all, people are creatures of habit. That is the reason why we still move our files on our computer to an image of a dustbin when we don’t need it anymore. And that is also the reason why we continue to click on buttons.
Both recent examples clearly respect the rules of the game for a good button. Let’s sum them up once more:
- The shape : When you design a CTA as a button, try not to be too creative in the shapes. It still has to appear as a button. So confine the button to circles, squares and rectangles.
- The size : A button that contains an important or the main CTA should be quite some bigger than the regular text in the message. Certainly if you compare it to a link beneath a piece of text. A button should simply attract the attention of an eye in scanning modus.
- The design : A button that is implemented for the CTA contains a series of formatting elements that text links don’t have by purpose. A shadow, gradients in the color fields, extra figures, everything is fine, as long as they stand out and have the look of a real button such as in software. A typical link feature on the other hand, namely the line under a text is something a button doesn’t have.
- The color : A button that contains a CTA is not embedded in the design. On the contrary, their color is even contrasting to the background and the rest of the text in the email message. Catching the eye is the goal after all.
- The whitespace : A button with a CTA should be differentiated from the other elements in an email message. It certainly cannot disappear to the background of the text. That is why whitespace is often foreseen around the button. This does obviously not have to be white. The distancing space can also be in line with the background color. Of course this is more difficult when the CTA is embedded in an image. Here the first three bullet points are a little bit more important.
When you see all these aspects in a row, then you realise that the button is created in the first place for the scanning reader. And that is what your contact is doing when he starts reading his inbox. But next to the format, the place in your message is also of interest. Of course the button should be as close as possible to the piece of text it is about. But equally important is that the email message has been constructed in a repetitive way. By repetitive we mean that or the message – and thus the button – or the button itself should be spread out even several times over the full length of the text.
