Mar­ket­ing efforts are suc­cess­ful if they bring true val­ue to a busi­ness. Mar­ket­ing cam­paigns should attract, keep and con­vert vis­i­tors into customers.

Your busi­ness web­site is the best place to focus on when it comes to increas­ing web­site traf­fic and mak­ing online sales.

Stim­u­late your tar­get audi­ence to fol­low the buy­er’s jour­ney and reach the end — pur­chas­ing a ser­vice or a product.

There are dif­fer­ent strate­gies that can help you improve your web­site con­ver­sion rate. One of those strate­gies is to incor­po­rate call-to-action buttons.

In order for them to work right, they need to be done right.

What is a CTA?

CTAs (calls-to-action) are but­tons used through­out a web­site to nav­i­gate vis­i­tors to the actions they need to take, where to click, what to read or what to buy.

A CTA is a com­bi­na­tion of words and adver­tis­ing mes­sages that encour­age sales.

A CTA mes­sage must be clear and straight-for­ward. Peo­ple need to know what will hap­pen after they click it before doing so.

Check out this exam­ple from the Ergo­Er­go web­site.

What do you think would hap­pen if you click the “BUY NOW” button?

You’ll prob­a­bly be direct­ed to a prod­uct page, where you can pur­chase the prod­uct, or a list of retail stores that are offer­ing that product.

In any case, it will take a cus­tomer to the next step in the sales funnel.

Plac­ing the right CTAs in the right places can keep your cus­tomers engaged with­out jeop­ar­dis­ing the rela­tion­ship you’re build­ing with them.

There is no right way to make your CTAs more effec­tive. You need to spend time test­ing phras­es, colours, and place­ment to see what res­onates best with your audience.

Here are some best prac­tices you can incor­po­rate on your web­site that are proven to have a pos­i­tive effect on the con­ver­sion rate of a website.

Consider the CTA intent

The actions your CTA entices your cus­tomers to make should be aligned with their interests.

For exam­ple, some­one on a prod­uct page is inter­est­ed in buy­ing, some­one on a blog page might be inter­est­ed in sign­ing up for a newslet­ter, some­one research­ing your ser­vices might be inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about what you’re offering.

Use CTAs that entice them to learn more about your services.

Here is an exam­ple from our own website.

Some­one on a con­tact page is inter­est­ed in mak­ing con­tact with your busi­ness. Add a way to call or send a message.

The CTAs must help them achieve their goal, rather than mov­ing them away from that goal.

Peo­ple are often hes­i­tant to click but­tons on web­sites, so you need to make sure you con­nect the action with the cus­tomer’s intent.

All this requires you to know who your audi­ence is, what their prob­lems and desires are, and how they got to your page.

For exam­ple, if you place a “BUY NOW” but­ton on edu­ca­tion­al con­tent such as a blog post, you can be sure that nobody will click on it. That type of CTA will work bet­ter on a ser­vice or prod­uct page.

Work on the CTA copy

Words you use in CTAs are important.

There are cer­tain action words that are proven to improve conversions.

Some of these words are “Buy”, “Down­load”, “Get”, “Join”, “Start”, “Explore”

The copy of the whole land­ing page is impor­tant when it comes to con­ver­sions. No mat­ter how well you craft your CTAs, they won’t work if peo­ple do not have all the infor­ma­tion to make an informed deci­sion. You want the web con­tent to sell your CTA.

Keep things sim­ple and scannable.

Make the CTA per­son­al to your audi­ence. The more per­son­al you can make it, the bet­ter your con­ver­sions will be.

On the pur­ple­plan­et home­page, we use “Choose your goal” instead of “Ser­vices”.

This way we not only use an active verb and entice the peo­ple to take action but we also con­nect it with the main rea­son they land­ed on our web­site — to improve their web­site presence.

Keep the copy short and sweet.

Sus­pend­ed Cof­fees uses short but­tons such as “Find a Café” to dri­ve cus­tomers to a list­ing page where they can explore dif­fer­ent cof­fee shops.

Set clear expec­ta­tions of what you want your clients to do, and what you will deliv­er when they com­plete the actions, to improve your chances of conversion.

If your goal is to get vis­i­tors to learn more about the ser­vices you offer, place a but­ton that says “Browse our ser­vices” instead of a sim­ple “Learn more”, sim­i­lar to what Fel­low Health Part­ners are doing.

CTA Design and colour

When it comes to CTAs, design is crucial.

CTAs need to be con­sis­tent with the over­all look of the web­site, but they also need to stand out.

• Use con­sis­tent CTAs through­out the whole website

You can­not use a big bright red but­ton in the nav­i­ga­tion and then use a blue or green one fur­ther down the page. This will con­fuse your vis­i­tors. You should fol­low brand guide­lines regard­ing colours, shapes, and forms.

Incor­po­rate con­trast­ing colours in the but­tons and make them look click­able, like Fel­low Health Part­ners do.

• Use big, bold CTAs

Use big­ger CTAs to attract vis­i­tors’ atten­tion. Big­ger but­tons are hard to ignore.

Look at this CTA from Com­mon Sense Advi­sors, for example.

Big CTAs are also mobile-friend­ly, as they are eas­i­er to click.

It’s hard to miss the Com­mon Sense Advi­sors but­ton, even on mobile.

If you don’t want to use big CTAs you can still make peo­ple pay atten­tion to them by dis­tin­guish­ing them by using dif­fer­ent colours or by using a lot of white space around the but­ton to make it stand out.

Just like Health­a­lyt­i­ca are doing.

• Use loud colours

Peo­ple often scan the con­tent on a page instead of read­ing it, so if the page has a lot of text, make the but­tons stand out by using bold text, high­light­ing the text or with a bold back­ground colour.

You can also accom­pa­ny the but­ton with attrac­tive illus­tra­tions that excite the user, to dri­ve more clicks.

See how we’re doing that when pre­sent­ing our services.

Place the CTAs strategically throughout the page

Grab your vis­i­tors’ atten­tion the sec­ond they land on your web­site. It’s a good prac­tice to place your main CTA above the fold on your website.

“Above the fold” is the first sec­tion a vis­i­tor sees on a web­site with­out hav­ing to scroll down the page.

To fig­ure out where to place the rest of the but­tons, think about the sales fun­nel. For exam­ple, a great place­ment for a “Buy Now” but­ton is after a sec­tion where you explain the prod­uct benefits.

Include a secondary CTA

Using a sec­ondary CTA is a great strat­e­gy for a web­site that has a lot of infor­ma­tion to explore or ser­vices to browse.

Keep the empha­sis on your main CTA.

There’s a main CTA “Choose your goal” and a mut­ed CTA “Get a free consultation”

Both are click­able and action­able but we want to high­light one over the other.

The sec­ond CTA is with­out a colour­ful back­ground, to make the main one stand out more.

The but­tons also tar­get peo­ple from dif­fer­ent stages of the fun­nel. The first but­ton is for peo­ple who are already con­vinced what types of ser­vices they need and want to explore more. The sec­ond “mut­ed” one is for peo­ple who know they need to improve their web­site pres­ence but are still unsure of how they can do that. Hence, we pro­vide a free con­sul­ta­tion to help them fig­ure it out.

Incor­po­rat­ing mut­ed CTAs is a smart strat­e­gy when tar­get­ing dif­fer­ent con­ver­sion points.

Be care­ful when incor­po­rat­ing a sec­ond but­ton, you want to make sure that one of them is tru­ly mut­ed, as you don’t want them to com­pete for the user’s attention.

CTAs can make or break your con­ver­sion rate.

You need to spend time craft­ing CTAs that will res­onate with your audi­ence. If you need help cre­at­ing and apply­ing the right CTAs on your web­site, feel free to con­tact us.