Create an Action Button in Photoshop

In This tutorial I am going to show you the basics when creating a Call to Action Button and learn you how to design one in Adobe Photoshop with some basic techniques you can put into practice in future projects.

Call to action buttons are the buttons that you want all your users click on when they are on your site. Normally they’ll link to free stuffs, rss subscriptions, signup or sales pages.

How to design a great call to action button

Your call to action button needs to be obvious and well place so the user should see it in the first five seconds, when scanning your pages, before even think to left the site. Here’s 5 characteristics of a good call to action button.

1. Place

It should be place where the user would expect to find it easily. In the header, beside a product, navigation bar, wherever you place it, it should be not hard to find.

2. Colour

The colour should grab the eye of the visitor and become an interesting point on the page, usually you get this with brighter or contrasting colors.

3. Action verb

The word you use to communicate with your user is really important. Verbs like free (one of the most used), sing up, download, subscribe, etc. Try to use short and active words so the visitor can easily read and make what it says, with out thinking to much. If you have a button with a 3 line text, that is not a call to action button is a text box.

4. Size

This is the most important button on your site and the objective is to have as more clicks on it as possible, if you make it bigger than any other button and give the user a great area to click on, the chances can get bigger, but dont forget, not always bigger is better, have always in mind the design of your site.

5. Clear

Your button shouldn’t be full of text, images or elements. The text needs sufficient padding so it can be read easily. Also put it in a simple place where it can be distinguished form the elements around.

Once we know that, we can easily create our Call to Action Button

Now Let’s Start The Tutorial

Start a new document 300 x 200 px. Use your prefered background color, I’ve chosed a gray gradient background.

Pick #181818 as background and #343434 as the foreground take the gradient tool and select radial gradiet and starting from the middle of your canvas drag towards one of the edges either left or right, top or bottom. You should have something like this.

Select the rounded rectagle tool from the sidebar. (You can also use a custom shape if you want).

Make a rectangle in the middle of your camvas the size you want.

Go to Layers, and make right click on you shape layer (in my case rectangle), then select Blending Options.

Now add these Layer Styles.

You click OK and now you should have something like this.

Create a new layer, name it bright, and make an ellipse over the middle top of the button, using the Elliptical Marquee Tool in the sidebar.

Then fill it with a withe color like this. (Don’t worry if it looks ugly)

Now holding shift, make right click over your shape layer for grab the rectangle as a selection, then go back to your bright layer and now,  go to Select > Inverse or (CTRL+SHIFT+I)

Press the delete key and set the layer opacity to about 15%. You should have something like this.

Now write your call to action phrase, something like: Download, Free, Sign up, what ever you want. Fill it with any color then add these layer styles.

You should have something like this. A Call to Action Button.

Then you can ad a small element like an arrow or a plus it depends on you, to give it more value to your button.

Thats all, now you have a Call To Action Button, in some simple steps.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.  If you like this tutorial just let me a comment bellow with your thought or suggestions.