What is a call to action (CTA)? A call to action is a button that promotes an offer and links to a landing page. Creating a great call to action is not as easy as it may seem. What you think might be a great CTA may not be enticing enough or speak to your targeted audience/buyer persona. It is important to remember that your CTA kicks off the conversion process and it is imperative that you make your CTA is action oriented and tells your audience what to do. That brings us to what makes a great call to action and our 5 best practices. Be sure to join the conversation and comment on this post below and don't forget to subsribe to our blog updates!
Great Call to Action Best Practices
Your CTA's kick off the conversion process. You need to get them right.
1. Make your CTA action-oriented.
It is important to make your CTA action-oriented. Don't make your visitor think too hard about what they need to do next.... JUST TELL THEM! Use action oriented terms such as "Download" "Click Here" and be sure to make it clear what you are offering the visitor. Be sure to use wording/lingo that your visitor would use. Again, don't make your visitor think to hard! Make it easy for them to click on your CTA.
2. Include keywords consistent with offer & landing page.
Using consistent keywords and phrasing for the entire conversion process helps your visitors understand what they are going to get. Familiarity and sameness are big contributing factors to great call to action buttons and links. By using keywords consistent with your offer and your landing page, you will solidify the message that you are delivering to your visitor and will increase the chances of the visitor converting.
3. Make it attention-grabbing.
Your CTA needs to stand out so that visitors know to click on it. Most likely you will be including your CTA on Blog posts and pages with other pictures and graphics so make sure that your CTA stands out among the other content. Obviously, we don't want it to be obnoxiously obvious and in the visitors face, but there is definitley a happy medium that can be reached. Be sure to use attention grabbing colors!
4. Use strong and appropriate on-page placement.
Use strong and appropriate on-page placement. CTAs should seem like they belong and are not forced onto the page. Place CTAs at the end of your blog posts. CTAs in the sidebar should be general offers. This way, they are applicable to the widest variety of people reading your blog.
Be sure to place your CTAs in emails! Try placing CTAs at the end of one of your marketing emails, and be sure to place them at the end of paragraphs and or sentances. Also be sure to try using text CTAs towards the top of the page as research has shown these to be some of the most effective.
5. Test changes and anayze results.
Test changes and analyze their results: 1-2% CTA click-through rate goal. 10% CTA clicks to submissions goal. If you can get a 20% CTA click to submission, you are a CTA/landing page master. It is also important to remember, when making changes to your CTAs/Landing pages, make one small change and see how it performs. This will allow you to analyze how that one change effected the pull through of your CTA/landing pages. Trying to continously improve the results of your CTAs is an important factor in creating great call to action buttons and links!
Conclusion
Remember, your CTAs kick off the conversion process. You can't get leads without a refined and effiencient conversion process and it starts with creating great all to action buttons and links.
Thanks for reading this post! Interested in learning more about how continuous improvement and effective CTAs relate to your approach to web design? Be sure to DOWNLOAD our eBook, An Introduction to Growth-Driven Design by clicking the link below.
