I found myself in a loop the other day.

Our tax preparer sent us a tax document to sign, so I jumped in to sign it. Seeing the prominent gold NEXT button and I clicked it, then the NEXT, the NEXT, the NEXT.

This had been going on for a little while when I started to wonder.... Gosh, how many signature fields ARE THERE in this document?

D'OH! I was actually going in a circle, and had looped through the document at least a couple of times. I was supposed to click the Signature Field, not the NEXT button.

I tell you this not to reveal my intellectual inferiority — though you can take away what you wish. :)

The reason I was confused is a UI design mistake — one that we see OFTEN.

Here’s the thing: Users tend to click the most prominent button, sometimes without thinking too much about it.

This can work well for you if you’ve got a key call to action to which you want to drive traffic.

But, this is easy to screw up. If users click that big hold button hastily, do they realize what is happening?

Case in point:

• We’ve seen users skip the company’s pitch entirely, and pop into a “find an agent” flow when they didn’t actually want to find an agent.

  • The metrics actually looked stunning for this — so much clickthrough on the call to action! A poignant example of why you need both qualitative and quantitative insights to understand what’s happening.

• We’ve seen users arrive at retail sites without knowing how to claim the discount they were seeking.

• We’ve seen users loop around signature fields as though they were on a depressing income tax carousel. (OK, OK, it was me.)

Today’s lesson: Examine the prominent buttons in your UI. Where might users just click the most prominent button, sometimes without thinking too much about it? Do they realize what is happening?

If you’re not sure if your buttons are properly prominent, a UX audit can help identify opportunities based on the best user interface principles.