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.
Nice, but when I see something that's labeled "Only 3.5 MB" or worse "Only $29.99" I'm actually less likely to click a given button. This is probably because this kind of language gives me doubts about the intentions of the site owner, since it's marketing speak. And it challenges the viewer's brain to think twice about whether the price tag actually deserves the label "Only". A better alternative would be to just present the facts and leave the hyperbole out entirely.
- http://pixify.com/blog/increase-conversions-with-call-to-act... (Call to Action)
- http://pixify.com/blog/use-os-x-lion-to-improve-your-ui/#dem... (OSX Lion Theme)
- http://pixify.com/blog/use-google-plus-to-improve-your-ui/#d... (Google Theme)