If I see a call-to-action or a subscription form I hit the back button faster than Doc Holliday could draw his Colt.
As they say in Germany, "Bitte Keine!"
Seriously, the "call-to-action" that doesn't flow naturally from the content is a scourge of the web in 2021. There's the audiophile blog that pops up a dialog asking if you are "confused" and want to book an appointment (Pro tip: that's why I haven't been to a stereo store since 1999) There's nothing you can do that makes you look more inauthentic than that.
Maybe we’re not aligned on what a “call-to-action” is, but sort of tautologically a landing page should direct me to how I can try out / buy / learn more / etc. If it doesn’t do that, what’s the premise? I see a thing that looks interesting and then it’s my job to go on a hunt to figure out how to get it?
Collecting email addresses for the sake of collecting email addresses is a mug's game. (It's the royal road to having your emails end up in a spam folder.) Collecting email addresses of people who are deeply interested in your service or product is golden. Doing the first is the enemy of the last.
Of course you'd rather have good than bad lead qualification/generation. But you still need calls to action to collect those leads somewhere, which was the parent's point.
Does the front page not have links to other pages on the site? If not, then whoever built it fucked up. I don't want to be "directed". I don't want anything that resembles a hard sell. As far as I'm concerned, a website's front page should be a menu, not a "call to action".
> I see a thing that looks interesting and then it’s my job to go on a hunt to figure out how to get it?
Exactly, and what's wrong with that?
It’s entirely opposite to the whole field of good user interface design?
It seems pretty uncontroversial that the goal of a user interface ought to be making it easier for the user to do what they want to do. If I load up a site for some product, there’s basically 3 possible outcomes of reading the page:
1. I don’t want the thing
2. I might want the thing, but I need more info
3. I want the thing
In the 1st case, the close tab button works great. In the 2nd and 3rd case, I want to either get more info or get the thing. So a site with a good user experience will provide an obvious indicator that says “click here to learn more” and “click here to get the thing”.
Such pages tend not to be useful to people who have not already decided to buy, because the "learn more" links usually don't really inform you about the product, but instead lead you to another sales pitch.
Good for whom? Good by what standard? The older I get the more I've come to suspect that most UI and UX designers come from the Temple Grandin school. They seem to think that users, website visitors, etc. are just human cattle and that their job is to design better cattle chutes.
I don't want a "better user interface". I want web apps that work, and I have yet to find one. Even dict.org reports errors when run through wave.webaim.org.
- If your web app doesn't work in Lynx, it doesn't work.
- If your web app doesn't work on a 56K dialup connection, it doesn't work.
- If your web app isn't WCAG 2.0 AAA compliant, it doesn't work.
> If I load up a site for some product, there’s basically 3 possible outcomes of reading the page:
No, there are four outcomes. You forgot one:
4. This website is so obnoxious that I've forgotten why I bothered accessing it in the first place.
If even one of your users asks, "Why am I doing this to myself," when visiting your website or using your web app, you've messed up.
The only time it's convenient to have those buttons front and center, and the only time I click them very soon after first visiting a site, is when I already know what the service is and I'm at least 90% sure I'm buying it before I even load the site (tenth visit, already used the service at a previous company, buying a product/account for a family member, that kind of thing)
The problem is not having or not having calls to action, it's to figure out which call to action is relevant at what step of the funnel.
If you actually fill out the form or take whatever action is shown on the page, that's gravy for them but a savvy marketer knows it takes at least seven touches to a lead before they're ready to convert. Landing pages are very top-of-funnel.