Recently my boss Adam has been pushing “Call to Action” as the thing we need to be doing. If you don’t know what a call to action is, wikipedia says it is “an organization that advocates for a variety of causes within the Roman Catholic Church.”
We will not be using that definition, rather we will define it as “An element that deviates in design from its surrounding elements in order to draw attention to a specific instruction”. That specific instruction is usually to click or type something in order to get something.
I can’t argue with the logic of it. It is easier to get people to do things by telling them exactly what to do. A child is more likely to clean his room without being told the benefits of it than a web visitor is to sign-up for a newsletter without knowing why.
So remember you can’t just say “Sign up for my newsletter”, you should say “Sign up for my newsletter and receive great information”. If you are still confused about the call to action, you can check out Attitude Design’s appropriately titled article “Calls to Action - Click Here“. It contains actual examples that are being used across the web of Calls to Action.
DO IT ALREADY!