Is Ghost Button an effective UX design?

Ghost button may be one of the most used buttons that reached its peak around a year ago. But, this button is still popular to this day; you can find them across a wide range of websites. This type of button is usually used on minimalist or flat design.

If you are web designers, ghost buttons can be a good choice for creating an attractive design perspective. Their subtle design can give prominence to other design elements on the page. Moreover, it is also a good choice if you want to work well with responsive websites.

However, this makes it hard for people to see if their contrast with the background image is poor. Moreover, some people find it is difficult to spot the button, as they can be too subtle sometimes.

The Pros of Ghost Buttons

In the right context, ghost buttons will give a great look; they can give an elegant, subtle feel to a design. As a result, your pages will appear more minimal and lighter. Moreover, they can give you a deep visual hierarchy of a design when you can use them well. On the other hand, they will highlight an order of importance when you have more than one CTA on a page. This will give a more subtle effect to a secondary CTA.

The Cons of Ghost Buttons

While providing lots of benefits, in the other hand ghost buttons also bring some issues for users that affect in important page elements being overlooked. This has made Ghost buttons become a very questionable design decision since it often suffers from usability and accessibility issues. Based on the data available, it was clear that the ghost buttons were harder to spot during the tests.

Conclusion

Considering what impact you’d like your CTA to have is important. Only by this, you can decide which type to use. Even though, some experiments have shown that Ghost button grab less attention than solid CTAs. However, for some people Ghost button is still a ‘visually pleasing’ design.