Are you giving your customers a reason to click?

A potential customer has landed on your website and is reading your content. Great!

But what do you want them to do next? Contact you for more information? Download a helpful resource in exchange for joining your mailing list? The Call to Action, or CTA for short, is how you help your client take the next step.

People are often drifting through their days with too much stress or multitasking, and are at the point of not always wanting to think what to do next. By gently encouraging them, and asking them to act, you have a better chance of interacting with this potential customer.

While we’re bombarded with information overload, people have stopped fully reading articles and often simply scan them for the key points which is why you’ll see bolded sub-headers and bullet points.

Why you need a CTA:

• Encourages your potential client to act
• Helps you understand what spurns them to act
• It’s an obvious indicator that it’s something important or there’s more to do
• Helps move customers into the next stage in the buyer’s journey
• Helps you understand how people interact with your content marketing

Were your eyes drawn to those bullet points above when you opened this article? Skimming has become a natural process when we read. We’re trying to pull in as much information in the shortest amount of time.

From Harald Weinreich’s study, the Nielson Normal Group pulled out specific clips of information and wrote about them. Using eye-tracking, the researchers are able to show us the true picture of how the general population reads web content.

The conclusion? On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.

Astonishing, huh? If you manage a business with a website, that matters, and for many reasons. The most important one to the business owner is that we need to make things obvious, ask customers to act, and get our point across in a way that doesn’t make them guess what to do next.

In Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think,” a book about web usability (we’ve got a well-worn copy at our HQ…), Krug’s repeated refrain boils down to the same thing. Don’t make him think (duh). Make it obvious what your reader has to do on your page – that’s what a CTA is for.

What are the important elements of a CTA?

• Colour and shape
• The right words
• Image vs text
• Font size
• Location
• A/B testing your results

Let’s break each of those down to understand how a single element can lead to a multifaceted advantage for your business website.

Color and shape

You’ll hear me mention A/B testing a lot in this article, and that’s for one simple reason. When it comes to CTA buttons, you need to understand that the tiniest change – which might seem impossibly subtle – can increase your customer’s response.

An example you’ll often see cited on the web is how companies have, for example, changed their CTA from green to red and almost doubled their click-through rate. Take a look at Unbounce’s example of a few case studies along this vein.

What if you could get those same results for your business? Is it more important for you to use your design colours – or go a little bit wild and make your button ‘pop’ more noticeably from the rest of your page? This is something you’ll only truly know if you do an A/B split test – that is, a controlled test of how users respond to a trial version of each type of page.

There is a ton of A/B split testing software that can help you do that. Optimizely is one of our favourites. Or, you could do it the old-fashioned way, by simply changing the live version of your page in subtle ways, and then tracking the result.

So which is best, red or green? Black and white, perhaps… or how about an image? Marketers rack their brains over this stuff when they’re launching online campaigns…and that’s because with CTAs, the small details matter. You could experiment with a different button colour on your main landing page each week, and see if a noticeable difference on conversion and click rate occurs as a result.

What works for one industry might work differently for your field of work. Will curved corners get more responses than squared edges? What colour combination works best? Every industry will have different answers to this. Customers looking for legal advice, for example, might prefer traditional, trusted professional colours, whilst someone looking for creative work might respond better to funky, modern colours. You need to learn what works for you.

The Right Words

Do you remember the earlier days on the web when every button seemed to be the same shade of blue with the words “click here” on it? We were told what to do, because at the time, it wasn’t really obvious. We learned to recognise that button or hypertext in a shade of blue telling us there was a link.

Today, the words you choose are as important as any other element. Asking people to act by downloading a PDF in exchange for their email address and joining your mailing list, or asking them to contact you for a free consultation are some ways that businesses use to interact with potential customers.

Here’s a few examples of popular wording:

• Contact us now
• Click here (yep, the original…)
• Start your free trial
• Learn more
• Download here
• Buy now

Look, we’ll grant you that these probably aren’t going to win any prizes for originality.

But take a look at just how clear and informative this wording is. It’s unambiguous, and it’s urging, without being impolite. You want your reader to act before leaving your site. Those words can make or break your click-thru rate. Once again, A/B testing is the best way to narrow down what works (told you we’d mention this a fair few times).

Plus, it’s easy to forget that not every web user will intuitively know what a button is, or what it’s for. For younger generations, this stuff is all completely natural as they’ve grown up with the web and using computers. But if your business is targeting an older demographic, you might have to make it clear where they need to click. That’s another reason to think about clear, concise language when you write for your business website.

Image vs Text

Another element you’ll want to test is using an image vs text with your CTAs. We suggest using both. Just as it’s good to provide variety in the types of content you offer readers, so too is it worthwhile using different invitations to action.

Linked text feels less intrusive and may call quietly to those that are curious and want to know more but are avoiding that big call to action button you’ve placed at the bottom of your page in bright, bold red. Maybe they feel like they’re being sold to, so they’d rather click on a small link that was placed within the text of your content.

You have to consider both those people who like to read, as well as people who take in content better visually, whether through images or video.

While well-placed links are important, most rely on the familiar box or button that makes it obvious you want the customer to take the next step. Remember, we’ve been trained to click on buttons and know what they represent. Having a familiar CTA button is a strong signal that says, this is where to click to learn more, start a trial, contact us, or whatever your message is.

Font Size

By changing the font size or style on your button, you may increase your click-through rate. You obviously don’t want your button to look silly or break your design (large text can sometimes cause issues with your mobile experience, for example), but you do want your button to stand out, so it might be worth pumping up the size a tad.

Heck, even something as simple as changing from a regular sans font to a non-sans font may change your click-through rate, or increase the amount of time users spend on your site. It seems odd that something so small could have a big impact, but hey, that’s why you A/B split test and learn how your customers respond. Just ask Steve Jobs, who was adamant that part of Apple’s branding success was down to the course on typography he snuck into as a rebellious student… 

In the Unbounce case study we mentioned, a test was conducted to see if by changing an element of wording would make a bigger impact. The results are quite staggering.

There’s no doubt that testing things like placement, font, colour, and wording are all vital elements of getting the best response from your CTA.

Call To Action Location

Where on the page should you place your CTA? There are several spots which are known to generate a good response. Most people know to put a CTA at the end of their content. You assume the reader has followed along that far, and now you want them to act.

On our site, you’ll often find a CTA at the bottom of our blogs, usually inviting the user to collaborate with us (often, about something we’ve just been discussing in our article). That’s logical placement, as it allows us to address a highly engaged user who’s just read and (hopefully) learnt something from us. But did you know there are two other places you’ll want to consider?

Above the fold, or the part of the page that the customer sees first (before having to scroll) is where the most important elements in your site’s design should ideally go.

Not everybody is going to read your full landing page, and some people won’t even stick around for that long. Get their attention above the fold, give them an easy option to join your mailing list, contact you, or whatever other action you want them to take.

If your content is long form – like this article – consider placing a CTA in the middle of the content (hey, since you’re here, fancy some web design services? Just kidding.).

They may read the first half of the article, then their attention gets diverted. Hey, we live in an information age. Give them the opportunity to take the next step in the buyer’s journey quickly, by placing a smart CTA in the middle of your content. It can be something as simple as a text link or you with another image. That’s up to you.

Again, test to see which gets a better response. And of course, as we mentioned, don’t forget the CTA at the end of your content, wrapping it all up for the folks who really loved your stuff and read it to the end. Give them ample opportunity to know how to contact you or take the next step whether it’s to sign up for your trial, download a helpful PDF, or join your newsletter.

Wrapping it up…

We’ve mentioned the importance of A/B testing enough times that it should stick! As in some of the case studies shown above, one tiny change can have a big impact, so there’s no time like the present to start testing some combinations of the elements above and produce a cracking Call to Action. Combining well-placed Calls to Action with a honed blogging strategy can produce especially great results. 

Not sure how to get started with turning your business website into a conversion machine, or maybe fancy discussing a new web presence for your brand? We’d urge you to get in touch with us, as we might just be able to make it happen for you!