The sidebar of your website is quite prone to include the CTA. The user is accustomed to meeting them there and not become something intrusive that could be offensive. As with fixed call to action in the header, it would be a good place to be a generic CTA on the theme of your website.
Ready to instantly improve your conversions? A call to action is the decision-making step. It’s either a sentence or a button that causes the reader to respond (either by providing their contact information or purchasing). Let’s assume you’ve written a persuasive copy on either a website, email, or ad. Add call to action, improve on your website information flow for better conversion, live leads and MORE SALES! ALSO OUR PIMP WITH CONTENT 15,000 words! I don’t even need to change your websites programming, I can take your current ideas and add fresh artwork and changes to make your handicapping website wow your visitors.
There are two key elements to marketing. The first is to drive traffic to your website, and the second is to get the traffic to convert into customers. You can have a million visitors going to your website, but if you can’t convert them, what’s the point?
Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about improving conversion rates.
One of the easiest ways you can boost your conversion rates is by optimizing your calls-to-actions (CTAs). Here are 11 ways you can improve your CTAs:
Tactic #1: Test button copy
So, what button copy should you use? Click here, buy now, add to cart, purchase now, and order now are a few call-to-action texts that you see around. I’ve found that generic phrasing, like the words above, don’t really impact conversion rates by much. If they do, then there are other elements on your webpage that need to be tested.
Copying other people’s tests, e.g, 37 Signals’ call-to-action “see pricing and plans” because it boosted their conversion rate by 200%, won’t always work for you.
We tested that same call-to-action on Crazy Egg over a year ago and learned that it decreased our conversion rate by over 10%. But what did increase our conversion rate by over 20% was the CTA “show me my heatmap”.
Lesson learned: calls to action that are related to your product or service tend to convert better than generic calls to action. Try testing button text that is highly related to what you are offering or selling.
Tactic #2: Color matters
Gmail once tested 50 shades of blue for their call to action color and found the highest converting shade. The end result was a boost in signups. You probably won’t be able to test 50 shades of a color, but you will be able to test a few different colors.
SAP found that the color orange boosted their conversion rate by over 32.5%. Performable found that the color red boosted their conversion rate by 21%.
Lesson learned: different colors have different meanings. For instance, red can sometimes create a sense of urgency. The main goal with your CTAs is to make sure they stand out. You can accomplish it by creating a strong contrast between the color of your button and your website design.
Tactic #3: Location, location, location
Just like with any business, location is one of the most important factors. You should test adding CTAs above the fold, below the fold and anywhere else you think makes sense.
I tested the call-to-action placement on NeilPatel.com and found that placement had a big impact on the conversion rate. I tried adding one above the fold, but it didn’t perform as well as placing it right below the fold.
Through surveying I quickly realized that people wanted to read a bit more to learn what I had to offer, before seeing a call to action. For this reason having a call to action above the fold caused a decrease in conversions by 17%.
Lesson learned: don’t assume that placing your call to action higher on the page will boost your conversion rate. Make sure your visitors know what they are getting before you present them with a call to action.
Tactic #4: Design matters
I ran an A/B test on the Quick Sprout Traffic System to test the overall design of the call to action. The original call to action was just a button that said “add to cart”.
Through surveying I found that people were a bit confused on what they would get with the system. So I decided to make a quick tweak with the CTAs.
The new button also contained the text “add to cartâ€, but it also contained an image of the product. The end result? A whopping 28% increase in conversions as a result of modifying the button design to include an image of the product that was being bought.
Lesson learned: just because everyone else uses simple buttons that may contain a few words and round corners, it doesn’t mean you should do the same. From testing different sizes, to using round corners, to even including an image of your product within your CTAs, you can boost your conversions by being creative.
Tactic #5: Timing is everything
You would think that showing a call-to-action button on your site would boost conversions versus not showing it right away, right? Kimberlysnyder.net recently did an A/B test in which they required you to watch a sales video before showing you a call to action button.
The video was 30 minutes long, so you would assume that it dropped their conversion rate, especially because you couldn’t fast forward through the video or skip to the end. But because they delayed the button from appearing, it forced people to watch their video, which increased their conversions by 144%.
Lesson learned: by forcing people to understand what you are selling and the benefits of it, you can increase your conversion rate. A great way to do this is to not show users your call-to-action button until you get them to read what you are offering. This helps pre-qualify potential customers and get them excited on what you have to offer.
Tactic #6: Be creative
CTAs don’t have to be buttons. We recently tested something unique. We added a call-to-action button within a video on our KISSmetrics blog. Once you are done watching the video, within it we show you a call to signup for our analytics service.
That call to action gets 380% more clicks than our normal sidebar call to action. And it drives 65% more clicks than our call to action within our Qualaroo survey.
Lesson learned: don’t assume that the standard call to action converts the best. I would have never thought that placing a call to action within a video would cause more clicks than a simple button.
Tactic #7: Tell people not to click
Can you change your call to action text to “don’t click here” and expect to boost your conversions? It doesn’t work for everyone, but it may work for you.
For example, on TimothySykes.com we recently tested a call to action that stated “don’t click here if you’re lazy”, and it performed 39% better than “click here”.
Ramit Sethi from I Will Teach You to Be Rich uses a similar concept, telling people to NOT click here.
Using reverse phycology can be an effective way to get people to do what you want. Test different variations of this tactic and try to tell people why they should click by using negative language. For example, if you run an ecommerce site, your call-to-action button could be “don’t click here unless you want to save 10%”.
Lesson learned: by using call-to-action phrases that are the opposite of what people are used to seeing, you can potentially boost your conversion rates.
Tactic #8: Special effects
Another great tactic that sites like TimothySykes.com use is that they add special effect to their CTAs. From making the call to action scroll with the user to having it wiggle to draw attention, you can do many things to boost your click-throughs.
The call to action “next big pick” on TimothySykes.com has 21% more clicks because it scrolls. The call to action in the sidebar of Quick Sprout of the Michael Arrington ad gets 218% more clicks and 159% more conversions than the Ben Huh ad.
When I tested the call to action in the Hellobar, it converted 3x higher when I chose the “scroll with the user” option than the optionp of not scrolling with users.
Lesson learned: little effects can bring more attention to your calls to actions, which can cause them to get clicked more often. This doesn’t mean your conversion rates will go up; it just means you will gain more clicks.
Tactic #9: Exit calls to action
One type of call to action that isn’t used a lot is an exit call to action. I recently did this through BounceExchange, where you only see the call to action when your mouse moves towards the back button on your web browser.
BounceExchange detects when someone is about to leave your website, and it shows them an offer to try to grab their attention. The end result was a 46% increase in conversions.
At first, I was a bit hesitant to try it out. Luckily, no one has complained yet, and the conversions definitely make up any small complaints that I could potential receive from an exit call to action.
Lesson learned: you may feel that tactics like exit calls to action are a bit spammy, but others may not feel it is spammy. You won’t know if something works or if it bothers your visitors unless you try it out.
Tactic #10: Whitespace
A great way to make your call to action stand out is to place nothing around them. Whitespace can be your friend as it can help make your button stand out. You can do this through the following steps:
- Reduce the number of elements within your web design.
- Reduce the number of bright colors in your design.
- Don’t place too many things around your CTAs.
I tried using more white space on my Traffic System landing page and saw a small increase in my conversion rate. The increase was 8%, but I didn’t have statistical significance. It would take 30 to 60 more days for the test to end, so I stopped it. Perhaps you will have better luck with testing this method than I did.
Lesson learned: Putting too many elements around your calls to action can be deadly to your conversion rate. Use white space to draw more attention to your CTAs.
Tactic #11: No call to actions
Would you dare to remove your calls to actions? Tim Sykes did this with his site on his store page and found something interesting. He didn’t do this because he wanted to run an A/B test. It happened because his developer didn’t finish his ecommerce store.
His products weren’t connected to a shopping cart, so he removed the call-to-action buttons on the page and learned that more people were interested in his products because they felt that they couldn’t buy them anymore.
By removing his CTAs and by adding an email address on his store page, he got more inquires from potential customers than what he used to get when he had CTA buttons in his ecommerce store.
Lesson learned: flooding your website with call to actions isn’t always good because it may cause people to feel that your only goal is to sell them something. Removing your calls to action can potentially have a reverse effect on people who may want something they feel they can’t have.
Conclusion
What worked for me and other websites above may not work for you. And what didn’t work for them may work for you. In the end, you will have to test your calls to action if you want to find out what’s best for your user base.
The big takeaway from this blog post is that you need to run A/B tests constantly. If you don’t try to improve your conversion rates, they won’t go up. Don’t be afraid to test!
In what other ways can you improve your calls to action?
Discover all the possibilities you have at your disposal to attract more traffic to your landing pages. Find the locations for your CTAs that work best for your target audience. Test, measure and analyze your results to increase the number of leads!
We know practically everything about CTAs. What is a CTA, what is the anatomy of the perfect call to action and the best practices to take into account when creating calls to action?
We know the theory, we apply it, but we do not get the results we expect. Where is the problem? The first thing is to stop for a minute and think, do we really know what is working and what is not? The answer is to measure continuously. It is the best way to determine which CTAs work best for you. Try different texts, different styles, and different locations.
PERFORM A / B TEST TO FIND THE BEST LOCATION FOR YOUR CTAS
Call To Actionimprove Your Site Conversions Site
It is this last point that we are going to focus on this post. We, after trying different positions, we have seen how the best performance we have achieved in calls to action that are displayed below the main content of a post.
This makes all the sense in the world if CTA is related to the content that comes, what better to hook to a visitor with information of interest that will encourage you to call the action to take you to a related offer.
But there are more alternatives!
Call To Actionimprove Your Site Conversions Across
Also Read: 3 TIPS TO MEASURE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS
DIFFERENT POSITIONS FOR YOUR CTAS
Where to locate our CTAs to get the best results? We will present you with various alternatives we recommend you try. There is no clear rule, each user has their own preferences and you have to find out what your target audience is.
CTA FIXED AT THE HEAD
It is about including a call to action that is present at all times on your website, regardless of the page you are viewing. The header is used because it is usually the first thing you see when you visit any web page and it is easy to get the user’s attention.
What would CTA make sense in the header? Surely one related to the service you’re offering. For example, if you devote yourself to Digital Marketing, good CTA would be announcing next year you will be offering.
CTA IN THE SIDEBAR
Call To Actionimprove Your Site Conversions Worksheet
The sidebar of your website is quite prone to include the CTA. The user is accustomed to meeting themthere and not become something intrusive that could be offensive.
As with fixed call to action in the header, it would be a good place to be a generic CTA on the theme of your website. But you can also try dynamic CTAs that vary depending on the main content of the page.
CTA IN POPUP
Surely everyone on more than one occasion has encountered something like this.
Usually, it becomes visible when you access the page or when you are going out of it.This alternative is, without doubt, the most intrusive of all. The user does not expect and in many cases can become annoying.
It is therefore important to consider every detail. For example:
- What it offers. If it is related to the content that the user sees.
- When it appears. Whether or not it appears without taking into account the time the user has spent on the page.
- The appearance of the popup.
Everything counts when it comes to obtaining the expected results.
CTA ON YOUR HOME PAGE
Possibly your home page is the most visited on your web. Seize it! Nurtures your home contents: information of what you do, the last entries of your blog and why not to add a call or action button. Get more visibility to everything you do. And without being intrusive.
CTA AT THE END OF THE CONTENT
As discussed earlier, this is the best alternative that has worked for many. Place CTAs at theend of each content associated with a related offer.
CTA in THANK you pages
It is one of the places where they have served us better. Thank you for giving us information about what content is appealing to our users.
Call To Actionimprove Your Site Conversions Free
If a user subscribes to your newsletter or weekly content is downloaded, you know that they are interested in what you are offering. Take advantage of that interest or need to place the call to action to other related content.
CTA IN YOUR NEWSLETTER
Also, take advantage of the newsletters as a point of contact with your users. Include a call to action on them, they will make themmore complete and allow you to get leads on another channel.
Know the interests of your users, so you can segment to everyone a CTA as needed.
CTA IN YOUR SOCIAL NETWORKS
Knowing that social messages have a very short life, have you tried the publications posted with a call to action? This is an easy way to make sure your social profile visitors see your CTA.
One option is to take advantage of the very button that includes Facebook at the top of the company page. Design a header image that highlights that CTA and improves the conversion rate.
Another interesting recommendation is to use the Twitter Cards (if they are fixed, better yet).Other channels also you can try and take advantage of them.
These are the alternatives that I tried and I encourage you to experiment it. It is not about choosing one and discarding others first. I encourage you to try and stay with all in order to get better results.
Also Read: HOW TO DESIGN AN EFFECTIVE CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY FOR BUSINESSES