A lot of graphic designers don’t like using buttons to design a website. They believe buttons can look ugly if they are too large, too colourful, or too in your face. What they can’t ignore though is the fact that these kinds of buttons work.

Buttons are also known as a ‘call to action’. We’re calling the customer to take an action. Adding buttons or calls to action on not only your landing page but throughout your website can help increase conversions and conversion rates exponentially.

Launched in 2000, Rightmove.co.uk was the first property website in the UK to introduce paid advertising on properties for sale. They decided to plan a simple experiment using Google Website. Optimiser to test how changing the ‘Contact Agent’ button and removing the ‘Request Details’ link would impact the conversion rate of email leads to Estate Agents.

Using their existing Google Analytics account, Rightmove set up a multivariate test to experiment with different colours and wording for the ‘Contact Agent’ button, resulting in 16 button variations. Website Optimiser ensured that any changes implemented on the site would be based on actual user preference.

They found that by testing changing a single button they drove 33% more leads.

Now who’s saying buttons aren’t important?