Ghost buttons in design: Pros and cons for your website

Visual cues are essential in web design for guiding users, with ghost buttons offering a minimalist and subtle approach to enhancing visual hierarchy and usability. Unlike traditional call-to-action buttons that use bold colors to attract attention, ghost buttons have a transparent background and are designed to guide users toward secondary actions without dominating the interface. They have three main states: rest, hover, and pressed. In the rest state, they are plain and may not have an outline, requiring careful attention to color contrast to ensure visibility. During the hover state, changes in text, outline, or background color make the button more noticeable and indicate interactivity, though this is not applicable to mobile devices. The pressed state provides feedback by changing the button in some way, such as altering the background or adding an animation, to confirm that an action has been initiated.