Great guide, but I wonder what is the authors' philosophy on rendering in plain anchor tags the call-to-action to follow them on Twitter/sign up for email?
Is it to differentiate it from the visually-distracting call-to-action buttons? I suppose a follow on Twitter/email is less important than an actual download
The purpose is call-to-action buttons is to visually guide the visitor into doing the main what you want him/her to do (the action).
By giving the visior multiple prominent call-to-actions, you're essensially destroying the effect of the CTA buttons, which is to guide the visitor into doing the one thing you want him to do. He won't know what you really want him to do and may not do anything at all since he's confused over what button he should click on. With too many call-to-action buttons they're essensially degraded to just being big buttons.
They're using large buttons in the post contents above their Twitter/email blurb (and do so in previous posts), so yet another large button saying "Follow us on Twitter" would just get lost in the mix.
So, in this case, a smaller link with a nice yellow box around it is likely a better call to action as it's different from the rest of the content.
Comments
Great guide, but I wonder what is the authors' philosophy on rendering in plain anchor tags the call-to-action to follow them on Twitter/sign up for email?
http://imgur.com/BXIxG
Is it to differentiate it from the visually-distracting call-to-action buttons? I suppose a follow on Twitter/email is less important than an actual download
The purpose is call-to-action buttons is to visually guide the visitor into doing the main what you want him/her to do (the action).
By giving the visior multiple prominent call-to-actions, you're essensially destroying the effect of the CTA buttons, which is to guide the visitor into doing the one thing you want him to do. He won't know what you really want him to do and may not do anything at all since he's confused over what button he should click on. With too many call-to-action buttons they're essensially degraded to just being big buttons.
I agree, I rarely see more than two large CTAs on a page. Usually it's just one large CTA with smaller CTAs sprinkled on various parts of the page.
They're using large buttons in the post contents above their Twitter/email blurb (and do so in previous posts), so yet another large button saying "Follow us on Twitter" would just get lost in the mix.
So, in this case, a smaller link with a nice yellow box around it is likely a better call to action as it's different from the rest of the content.
You are right: to give more prominence to the content as opposed to the callouts (follow us, and give us your email).