5 Surefire Ways to Increase the Effectiveness of Your Call-to-Action Buttons

by | Nov 28, 2013

For businesses that have achieved the difficult goal of being found online, the work is just beginning.

Job One is to have your website found by prospects, but once they’re in your world you need to convert them. This requires optimizing your site to move them to the next step in your buying cycle. That may be signing up for a trial, downloading an information package, or scheduling a free needs assessment. Whatever that next step is, you must do everything in your power to ensure prospects are identifying themselves and opting-in.

A good call-to-action (CTA) helps encourage prospects to take a next step; it compels them to make an active decision. Unfortunately, people are not always logical, rational thinkers. Prospects are going to decide whether or not to take advantage of your CTA within seconds, often without deeply considering your convincing arguments or propositions of value.

So how can you influence that split-second decision and increase call-to-action conversion?

1. Make Your Buttons Stand Out

Draw attention to your CTA – humans are drawn to difference and novelty.

  • Use colours that contrast with your site colours for your CTA button; make it pop!
  • Do not design sections on your page to look like buttons if they are not buttons
  • Use a 3D effect to showcase that it is something visitors can interact with
  • Have it provide feedback upon hover (e.g. changing colour)
  • If you have multiple CTAs, make the most important one stand out more than the others (e.g. make the paid subscription stand out more than the free version)

2. Reduce Choice 

Too many choices can leave prospects feeling overwhelmed. They will be less likely to make a choice at all – and if they do, they’ll be less satisfied with the choice they made (check out this great Ted Talk on the subject).

  • Don’t provide too many CTAs on one page
  • Eliminate secondary CTAs during crucial moments (e.g. when a customer is in the checkout for their cart, do not provide an email subscription CTA on this page)
  • Help visitors with way-finding by keeping your homepage distraction-free and providing simplified options for next steps

3. Minimize Risk

Overcoming objections and helping prospects feel confident in their decision is central to lead nurturing. Adding reassuring messaging close to CTAs will make visitors more likely to click, just be sure to test which ones work best for your audience:

  • Testimonials
  • Statistics
  • Ratings
  • Low-price messaging
  • Guarantees
  • Free shipping or returns messaging
  • Payment options
  • Privacy reassurance
  • Messaging explaining what will happen if they click
  • Value propositions
  • Key product/service benefit

4. Speak to Your Prospects’ Needs and Goals

Always write your CTAs with your ideal prospect in mind. What are their needs? What goals will your product or service help them accomplish? It’s important to keep this at the forefront when writing effective CTAs.

  • Focus on the benefits rather than just the services (e.g. “Reach My Customers More Effectively” rather than “Learn More About Our Effective Emailing Technology”)
  • Do not use industry lingo that prospects may not understand

5. Write CTAs in the First Person

Following from the previous point, studies have shown that writing CTAs in the first person is the best approach. This may be seem counterintuitive (many CTAs are worded in second person, e.g. “Book Your Appointment”), but it can have a real impact on conversion.

  • Use “my” instead of “your”
  • Use verbs (e.g. “Start My Trial”, “End My Problem”, etc.)
  • Your CTA should be the end of this sentence (from the customer’s perspective): “I want to _________”

With effective CTAs, your website will have more visitors converting; and with more visitors converting, your business is on its way to sustainable growth. Well-executed CTAs are a must-have for any business that wants to optimize its online presence.

Like this? You might also like:
5 Real Reasons Why Prospects Aren’t Filling Out Your Web Forms
6 Ways to Influence the Sale
What is Important to Your Prospect

Ben Molfetta
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