Button labels

Buttons signal important calls to action (CTA) and help people quickly see what’s the most important action they need to take on a page. Treat buttons like important or primary content, and prioritize their placement on pages as you would essential information.

Use links for secondary or less important actions on a page. Likewise, for simple navigation to lead people between pages, use links instead of buttons.

• Use sentence case for button labels.
• Make button labels as short as possible.
• Use “trigger words” that people recognize and clearly signal what will happen when they click the button.
• Keep the character limit for button labels to 35 characters. Button labels should be as short as possible with “trigger words” that your users will recognize to clearly explain what will happen when the button is clicked (for example, “Back” or “Continue”).

• Make it an action.

• Always take users to the right level of access for the CTA.

  ​ Like this: “Explore VA health care” button should take you to a general health care benefits landing page like va.gov/health-care.

  ​ Like this: “Apply for VA health care” button should take you to an application page like va.gov/health-care/apply.

  ​ Like this: “Compare GI Bill benefits” button should take you right to the comparison tool, va.gov/gi-bill-comparison-tool.

Related

• Button
• Button pair