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CTA’s Best Practice: How to Optimize Your CTA for Higher Conversion Rates
- Zeina AV
- Sep 6, 2020
- 4 min read
In this post, I'd like to point you towards a vital aspect of marketing often overlooked, Call to Action (CTA). Most times, when marketers seek solutions to low conversion rates, they often turn towards making big marketing plans. While these plans may yield payoffs, such solutions are not always wise, and you could make more significant impacts with minor tweaks.
One of the minor tweaks that would give you significant results is optimizing calls to action. According to Hubspot, personalized calls-to-action perform 202% better than basic CTAs. Therefore, if higher conversion rates are what you seek, consider souping up your CTAs.
To show and not tell, I have created this guide to help you craft high-converting CTAs for your marketing campaigns.
1. What is Call to Action?
So let's take a step back for a moment and get back to basics!
In marketing, a call to action refers to a button, motivating, or propulsive phrase included in an advertisement campaign or sales funnel that tells your potential customers what precise action they should take by clicking the CTA button. CTAs can be on a website or an email For example, "Order Now", "Buy Now", "Learn More" etc.
Don't underestimate the power of an CTA! The more specific and informative your CTA is, the higher your chances of converting site visitors. Hence, designing your CTA in a manner that informs your user on what to expect is a proper CTA strategy.
Here is a good CTA example from The sill Email. A provocative green button and some hyperlink texts clearly tell the reader what action to take and what to expect.
2. Tips for Call to Action Copies
As I mentioned earlier, your CTA should motivate your audience to take action, give them reasons, and clearly state what’s behind your CTA button. Here are some copywriting tips to help you influence your website and Email users.
Start your CTA with clear imperative verbs.
To start your Call-to-Action, think about what exact action you want your audience to take for example Buy a product?, subscribe to your newsletter? After you have identified the valuble action, you then choose verbs that guide your audience towards the action (buy, subscribe, donate, etc.).
Ensure that your CTA matches what’s behind the click, avoid situations where your call-to-action reads Sign Up, but behind that are multiple pages of different fields. Instead, use “Fill in the form” where you need users to fill such forms.
A good example you can follow is BLOGLOVIN, their CTA, ‘find blogs to follow” is clear, starts with an imperative verb, “Find”, and tells the user exactly what to expect behind the button, “blogs to follow”.
Show the Value
If the action you want your users to take requires their time and effort, for example, you want to gather customer data for segmentation, and you want your customers to fill in lengthy forms. You must make them understand what’s in it for them if they give you a few minutes of their time if you want your CTA to convert.
For example, “Please take a few minutes to answer these questions for an improved and personalized customer experience.”
An excellent example of a brand that uses this tip is Rakuten; there’s an emphasis on the value behind their “call-to-action.” Invite a friend and get $25.
Personalize your CTA
Personalized CTAs convert 42% more visitors into leads than untargeted CTAs.
For effective CTA personalization, use segmentation results based on customer data. There are different ways you can collect customer data; product browser history, Google analytics data, or data from CRM tools.
Some examples of personalized CTAs are;
“Check out popular places in your location,”
“Download for Linux/windows
3. Call to Action Design Tips
We see before we read. True that! Now let's talk about visuals!
Your CTA design, to a large extent, will determine the kind of results you'll get. Let's look at design tips that will help your CTA convert better.
Design a Responsive CTA
There are 5.11 billion unique mobile users globally, which means that most people use their mobile phones to access the internet, open emails, etc. Therefore, your CTA must respond to all screen sizes and types.
Here is an example of a brand using responsive CTAs. Shine's desktop design is a large black button, as seen in the image below.
While its mobile design features a smaller text and a centralized call to action button that’s proportional to the mobile screen size.
Make your CTA Stand Out with the Right Colors
Yes, I said it, COLORS, while this advice might seem like it would hold no water, it has proven to be effective for different brands. SAP found that orange CTAs boosted their conversion rate by over 32.5%. Also, Performable found that red CTAs boosted their conversion rate by 21%.
Yes, color psychology it is! Different colors can mean other things; for example, red could signify urgency, and green could signify fruitfulness. Some brands test different colors before making a decision based on the best results.
Whatever color you choose for your different CTA, make sure it stands out. A good example is TunnelBear; they went for a shade of grey that compliments their page design and would stand out in a white background.
Final Thoughts
While the tips on this post have worked for many brands, remember that one size DOES NOT fit all. Don’t be afraid to carry out A/B testing. For example, If you’re unsure about what colors to use for your Email CTA, maybe between blue, red, and grey. Send emails with blue CTA’s to 20%, green CTA emails to 40%, and red Email CTA to the remaining 40% of your subscribers. Check which option provides the best results and send that in subsequent Emails.
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