I am working on a government web application. We have specified in the style guide that buttons will be used for primary actions and other secondary actions within the page will use hyperlinks. There are also navigation links withing the page.
In the application, almost every page has several secondary actions and one or more "primary" actions that may warrant a button. The reasons we decided to use links for secondary controls are:
- Draw focus to the primary actions
- Avoid cluttering the UI with buttons thus making it look busy.
My questions are:
- Do you think it might confuse users to use hyperlinks for navigation and action controls on the same page?
- Would it avoid the confusion if they are labeled clearly enough?
- Would it solve the problem if we use a visually less prominent button for the secondary actions (secondary buttons) and leave the links for navigation ONLY?