Word on the street is it’s pretty awesome, so if you missed it, (or want to see it again,) you can check out the event video & presentation slides below….

January 2012

Health Innovation Summit 2012
San Francisco
January 18-20, 2012

Web Visions
New York
January 18-20, 2012

SXSW Interactive NYC Community Meet Up
New York City
January 23, 2012

iWorld
San Francisco
January 26-28, 2012

Seedcamp London
London
January 31, 2012

February 2012

Interaction12 Conference
Dublin, Ireland
February 1-4, 2012

In Control Web Design Conference
Orlando, FL
February 20-21, 2012

Usability Week NYC
New York City
February 26-March 2, 2012

March 2012

Agile UX 2012
Sidney, Australia
March 2, 2012

SXSW Interactive Festival
Austin, Texas
March 9–13, 2012

MITX Healthcare Experience Design Conference
Boston, Westin Boston Waterfront
March 26, 2012

April 2012

Future Insights LIVE
Las Vegas, Nevada
April 30-May 4,2012

May 2012

User Experience Lisbon
Lisbon, Portugal
May 16-18, 2012

Web Visions Portland
Portland, OR
May 16-18, 2012

Big Design 2012
Addision, TX
May 31-June2,2012

June 2012

An Event Apart
Boston, Boston Marriott Copley Place
June 18-20, 2012

July 2012

take a breather

August 2012

*UX Week 2012, Adaptive Path
San Francisco
August 21-24, 2012

September 2012

Future M 2012

October 2012

BREW 2012

November 2012

none yet

December 2012

Le Web
Paris, France
December 4-6, 2012

…a “call to action” (CTA) button, designed to incite user engagement on a website.

Brief: Traditional Call To Action Designs

Appearing on public-facing websites, CTA’s can make a big impact on site conversions when used effectively.  A homepage CTA is often the entry point to the most direct user path towards conversion.  A successful CTA consists of a lot more than a button; it involves the entire site design, structure, & layout.

AmericanExpress.com has a well executed design & structure that represents a traditional homepage call-to-action; it uses a formulaic design format that works one-and-the-same for two other completely different product CTA’s (see all three below.) It includes the following site elements: top navigation, a top right search bar, one main graphic image, a login box, and 4 call to action buttons.

Above we see clear and concise calls to action– colorful buttons begging to be clicked, one in the middle, three horizontally aligned across the bottom.  The top nav options are there but are overshadowed by the central call-to-action design. You’ll notice the four CTA buttons are arranged in a “Z” formation, which is a common approach since studies show this is the way our eyes scan a website (see marked up image above.)

Calls To Action Under The Influence of User-Centric Design

Whereas we used to see homepage CTA designs that gave users navigational freedom, like the ones above, today we see more and more minimalist CTA designs. (scroll down for examples.)

So why the minimalist CTA designs? The reasoning is derived from a user-centric design approach, one that anticipates user behavior and designs accordingly. With less navigation and fewer calls to action the number of user paths (through the site) are restricted. The idea is that by limiting the number of user paths, conversion odds are more favorable.

User-centric or user interface design is an approach we see more frequently in conjunction with web application design; but upon second glance, UX/UI design influences seem to be shaping some of the more progressive calls to action we see on the web.

What am I talking about? Let’s take a look at some examples…

The Latest In ‘Call To Action’ Site Design

iCloud.com‘s public-facing marketing website is designed more like an internal application page.  We’ve lost the traditional top nav items and layout. There are only 5 elements on the page, all images, the largest of which presents only two calls to action, overtly stated in metallic silver set against a dark gradient.  There we have it– new format, minimalist design, fewer but more overt calls to action.

Ironically,  fewer calls to action & less navigation actually enhances the user experience here; users are happy because they don’t have to think for themselves to use it. It’s intuitive.

Smart & Interactive CTA’s

I’ve seen two other new types of call to action designs that enhance the user experience & simplify the user interface, all by implementing a minimalist design that gives users fewer choices.

Imgur.com, an image hosting service, is a prime example of a public facing website that is designed as though it’s an internal page of a web application. This website pretty much only has two calls to action (upload images & view images,) and it doesn’t even require users to sign up or log in first.

Once logged into your imgur.com account, additional application features appear within this same interface. This website only has two calls to action (upload images & view images,) and doesn’t even require users to sign up or log in first.  The internal and external websites are almost identical; as a result, the calls to action become much more central to the site design & functionality.

37 Signals’ marketing site for their web applications also has a simple design with only four segmented calls to action.  These calls to action are hidden until the user rolls over each box, wherein the site design changes and reveals a call to action, leading down a specified user path. This design concept works well as a call to action because it keeps users engaged, and reinforces goal-oriented behavior.

(top: active CTA on roll-over)
(bottom: static page design)

Gilt.com is a web application, so you have to log in to access their service. Instead of creating a public page design with lots of different calls to action (like AmericanExpress.com,) the public-facing Gilt.com site takes the opposite approach; the only two calls to action are to sign in or sign up for an account, so the public facing site becomes just a portal into the application.

But it goes a step further– if, like me, you’re already a member of the site, you’ll only be presented with one call to action, to login. The ‘Join Now’ CTA is greyed-out because the website recognizes that I’m already a member, and so the interface reacts by reducing the calls to action down to just one. If a site visitor wants to find out anything about the gilt.com service, they have to create an account and experience it firsthand.  This slimmed down CTA homepage design forces the user to engage and progress through the first step of a user path.

The above example is a bit of an exception in that the Gilt.com is itself a web application, but I’ve witnessed the same “smart call to action” on public marketing sites as well.  (See Box.com example below; the same instance is circled in red.) Call to action designs are becoming much more keen & receptive to user engagement, by narrowing the scope of the user’s navigational path which also improves their user experience.

The Bigger Picture

As user-centric design becomes a standard practice across the web, calls to action are becoming more and more integrated into site designs.  CTA’s are an important element of any user experience design, so why not give them the same design treatment as the internal web application design?  I’d argue that this is all evidence of a larger-scale shift in web design, wherein internal & external page designs are becoming more integrated as a means of delivering a seamless user experience.  Especially now that so many brands & companies offer web and mobile application services, accessed via their public website, the line between  logged in and logged out is beginning to blur.

According to twitter, the goal of the new UI is to make the microblogging platform faster & simpler to use.  Another stated goal of the new design is to make Twitter’s UX consistent across all platforms, from mobile to desktop. That’s why they’ve also updated their mobile app UI to match, and released it simultaneously. Twitter feels that this will offer a more cohesive user experience.

The new interface has also introduced some new features for twitter users; most notably, the addition of 3 new navigational tabs titled “Home,” “Discover” and “Connect.” These new features make it quicker and easier than ever for users to stay engaged & tuned in to the “twittosphere”– the “Connect” tab, displaying all recent activity surrounding your account, is now a primary navigation element. (This “connect” tab tells you stuff like who has recently started following you and when a user adds you to a twitter list.)  Having the connect tab as one of three primary navigation items places a new emphasis on connectivity, making user interactions more central to how we use twitter.  Although it’s subtle, twitter is actually shaping our behavior with this new user interface layout– that’s what good UIs do.

The “discover” tab offers users an expedited way to consume the latest media in a glance, providing a summary of trending topics at any given time.  The discover tab delivers more relevant content to users by automatically filtering it to align with your interests. Pretty cool.

See some of the new twitter design below: