A ‘call to action’, or ‘CTA’, is the text displayed on your buttons to urge your prospects to take your preferred action on any given landing page.

What makes a good CTA?

A good 'Call To Action' should not only tell the prospect what to do, but also provide motivation for them to do it.

Examples:

‘Click Here To Join Now And Start Transforming Your Body’

• Tell them what to do - ‘click here’
• Motivation - ‘transform your body’

‘Get The Fast Track Course Today And Get 25% Off Your Plan!’

• Tell them what to do - get the course today’
• Motivation - ‘get 25% off your plan’

'Join Free For A Month’ ( As Seen On Netflix )

• Tell them what to do - ‘join’
• Motivation - ‘free month’

You get the idea right?

So, let’s look at some other ways in which we can supercharge your CTAS.

Take Advantage Of ‘FOMO’.

‘FOMO’, or ‘fear of missing out’, is an extremely effective call to action.

When people think they’re missing out, they’ll be much more likely to hop on the bandwagon.

Examples:

‘Join Now! 50% Off Deal Ends This Sunday!’

‘Only 3 Left In Stock, Order Now!’

‘Don’t Miss Your Chance To Grab The Early Bird Price! Course Starts Monday!’

Or a different example of this can be seen on the booking.com website, where they have carefully placed text highlighted in red to say there’s only ‘X’ rooms left at that price.

And I don’t know about you, but I can personally recall multiple times where I’ve booked through this site simply because of this message!

Simple - but hugely effective!

So how could we implement that into our own sales process?

Using Button Subtext

Using subtext beneath our call to action buttons can help further emphasise urgency or scarcity.

Just look at the examples below.

Having this allows us to shorten and nail down our main Call to Action, whilst leaving the scarcity to be emphasised in the subtext.

Next, let’s take a look at the button itself.

Make sure your button stands out!

Always ensure your button is a different colour to everything else on your sales page to maximise conversions.

Choosing Your Colours:

The colours you use can play a huge role in asserting authority, trust and connection with prospects. With each one communicating unique characteristics about your brand before your prospect even pays attention to the content on your page.

Just take a look at emotion guide below.

And that’s not all.

A study by Joe Hallock also found men and women to favour different colours.

Source: joehallock

My Advice?

Go blue. Second to that red or green.

Note: These are only recommendations to get you started. Testing different colours with your specific audience and demographic and collecting data is the only surefire way of knowing what works for you.

Place your buttons where people click

A study by the Nielsen Norman Group in 2017, showed that when prospects visit your pages, the first thing they do is read in a horizontal movement, left to right in an 'F' pattern.

Source: Neilson Norman GroupThis can also be observed on the following heatmaps.

Source: Neilson Norman Group

To compliment these findings, adding your CTA buttons on the left hand side of the header will prove beneficial when wanting to maximise the conversion opportunities of your sales page.

Some good examples of this can be found on the following websites.

Source: OneYearNoBeer

Source: shepper

And lastly - Never make your prospect have to search for a button!

When looking at maximising conversions, having a consistent button layout and style is paramount.

Never - EVER. Make your prospective leads or customers have to search for a button to click to take them to the next phase of the customer journey!

A good rule of thumb?

Place a CTA button every 2-3 scrolls of the mouse, using a consistent colour and style.

And there you have it!

Easy to implement strategies you can apply today to maximise the effectiveness of you CTA buttons.