Creating a Compelling Call to Action — Fix My Website

Have you ever been to a terrible networking event?

Many of you have.

Picture this:

You walk in and look around.

Surveying… surveying… still surveying…

Your fingers start to fidget, then get awkwardly crammed into your pockets.

“Professional acceptance and growth are sure to come from this event”, they said.
”All the important players in our field will be there”, they said.
”You have to go”, they said.

Well… where the hell are “they”?
You don’t know anybody here!

A bead of sweat forms on your forehead.
”Man… they sure do have the heat up and running, ‘eh?”

You say to nobody.

You look for a table with nametags, a table with drinks, a table with free knick-knacks… dear God - just give me a table - why are there no tables?! What am I supposed to DO?!

If only there were a clear Call To Action somewhere near the entrance that told you quickly what your next move ought to be. Something that spoke to you in simple terms that made it very easy to understand what you could expect, and the next step you should take.

Truly, this would be extremely valuable.

The same is true for your website visitors. The last thing you want - is confusion. You have an average of 3 seconds to make a good impression when someone comes to your website. You would be well served by a good call to action (often called a “CTA”)… but… what makes a good one!?

There are all sorts of articles, rules, books - tons of resources on this topic alone… so let’s boil it all down and start with this concept:

In order to market your goods or services effectively, you need to have a very clear understanding of who your are trying to serve. You can’t serve everyone, and trying to do so will lead to frustration… believe me… I know from experience (dude).

Do you know who your product or service will best serve?
Do you know your ideal customer?

That comes first.

Once you know this, you can figure out the best possible way to speak to them.

Please Note: your ideal customer may very well change over time. You might not “get it right” the first, second, or fifteenth time. Don’t let that stop you, don’t let it discourage you - define this to the best of your ability and move forward!

Now, a CTA can (and should) be present on both the ad that is driving traffic to your website, as well as the website or landing page itself. They may be the same thing, and they may be different.

Let’s say you’re running a Facebook ad. You will have the opportunity to select button text that says something like “Learn More”, or “Shop Now”, or “Sign Up”, etc. These are not especially creative CTAs, but they don’t necessarily need to be. They are clear and concise, and that is more important that being clever (remember, we’re always trying to keep it simple - right?). So the CTA on your ad is present within that button text, and possibly within the ad copy itself. The goal here is to get someone to click over to your website, to learn more and possibly purchase your product or service.

Once they hit your site homepage - or better yet, your landing page - you want to pull them deeper into your website, or to take an action like adding something to their cart, so your CTA is going to be a bit different for this next step of the buying process.

(Considering where your customer is at in the buying process will help you create better CTAs.)

One other critical thing to remember is this:

You must know who you are speaking to (your ideal customer) and who you are trying to attract so that you can write effective CTAs that attract quality visitors, but also dissuade viewers that wouldn’t be good customers. People that wouldn’t be a good fit.

It does you no good to attract the wrong traffic. You may as well just burn your money.

A Call To Action is usually something that is clearly clickable, like a button or a form field. Clicking it will lead your customer one step closer to conversion - and once you know who your ideal customer is you can create a great CTA while considering these practices.

Start with a verb, or text involving an action or task
Focus on words that tell your visitor what to do:

“Shop Our Spring Collection Now”
“Start Your Free Trial”
“Download My Free Chapter”
“Reserve Your Copy While Supplies Last”

Don’t be afraid to get creative - stay away from boring words like “Enter”, or “Start”, and make sure to avoid words with negative meanings like “Submit”. Nobody wants to submit in any sense of the word.
Use first-person text if it makes sense
Studies have found that changing button text from general to targeted towards the visitor can increase Click-Through Rates (CTRs) dramatically. This can be a simple change, but it doesn’t work in every situation. For example:

“Start My Free Trial Now” vs. “Start Trial”
“Request Your Discount Code” vs. “Reveal Code”
“Schedule My Free Consultation” vs. “Submit Information”
Create scarcity, urgency or a feeling of missing out
Don’t be deceptive, but place a time limit on special offers. Limit the number of free copies that you will give away. Only allow a certain number of people to join your webinar. Let people know that this offer is great, but it won’t be here forever. Even adding simple words like “now” and “today” add a subtle dash of urgency. You want people to know that their failure to act will result in the loss of the offer, item or service!

“Buy 1 Get 1 Free - TODAY ONLY!”
“Take 30% Off Now Just For Sharing Your Email”
“CLEARANCE: Save Up To 75% While Supplies Last”
Consider your colors
Stay on brand with your color choices, but consider this: there are many instances, where green means go, and red means stop. Blue is often seen as trustworthy or professional, while yellow is associated with sunshine and happiness. Don’t obsess over colors, but do a bit of research and see what subliminal effect they may have on your audience. Making sure to test complimentary colors is also a GREAT practice when you are adding buttons to a landing page. So if the page is primarily blue, consider adding an orange button - it will be complimentary and provide great contrast.
Think about shape, size and location
If you are trying to get people to click on a button… does it look like a clickable button? If you are trying to get people to notice said button… is it designed in a color that contrasts the other colors around it? Does the button have enough white space around it to really stand out?

If the CTA is critically important (and they usually are, otherwise why have a CTA?) make sure you keep it above the fold. This just means that the CTA displays immediately, without the user needing to scroll down the page - you want to minimize the amount of interactions required to get the user from point A to point B.

This is where testing your website with heatmapping can really shine. It can help you find page elements that your users are clicking on, and also the things that they are NOT clicking on. In some cases, you’ll find elements that people think they can click, but… maybe it’s just a static object… things like this are frustrating to your customers - fix them! Use heatmapping to find the things that people are clicking on, and not clicking on, and adjust accordingly.
Make your CTA easy to read, and easy to understand
In addition to making sure buttons look like a clickable buttons, stand off of the background, and are easy to notice - we also want to make sure that the text on (or next to) your CTA is super easy to read, that it is big enough to be seen but not so large that IT SEEMS LIKE IT IS SHOUTING AT EVERYONE AND SCARING THEM OFF. Oh, also make sure it is concise and easy to understand. Avoid run-on sentences and paragraphs - K.I.S.S - Keep It Simple, Sasquatch.
Minimize
If you want to maximize the amount of button clicks you get from new visitors - present them with ONE button. I read something from a copy writer one time, and what she said was “do your first draft, write everything down, then go back and reduce the size of the article by 50%”. What this does, is allow you to brain dump and get everything out on the page so that you don’t feel like you are “missing something”, but it then forces you to ONLY FOCUS on the most important information. This rule will serve you well in website design, copy writing, and many other areas of marketing and communicating in general - this is also a great way to up your email game with business associates and customers alike!

Shoot - minimizing even helped me become a better fisherman!

If you need multiple buttons or CTAs on the same page, make sure that the ones deemed NOT primary are muted, and unobtrusive.
Present something of actual value to the customer
before you can create a CTA that has any sort of impact, you must first make sure that your product or service will solve an issue. It must provide something of actual value to your customer. Believe it or not - this is a step that many people skip! They jump straight into “designing their album artwork” before they “learn to play their instruments”. We’ve discussed this a bit in the past when we have gone over reasons why your website platform doesn’t matter.

Don’t place the cart in front of the horse. Spend some time really figuring out your value proposition, then use words that will excite people. “Free”, “Bonus”, “Popular” and “Award-Winning” are just a few words that can really get people riled up… but only if they are referring to a product or service that can actually deliver real, genuine value!

NOTE: “value” is a tricky term to understand and use because the customer defines what value means to them. Some customers will place more value on the look of a product that costs thousands of dollars over a more economical offering that boasts more functionality, simply because they see owning the more expensive object as a status symbol. Other customers will place more emphasis on the functionality, or the savings over any sort of status. Not every product or service will appeal to every buyer - and trying to be all things to all people is a losing battle. Know what your product or service brings to the table so you can find (and then speak to) your ideal customers.
Bust objections with trust indicators
Sprinkle real customer testimonials all over your page like fairy dust! Release visitors from the pains and anxiety of sharing credit card information and let them know they can sign up today with “no credit card required”! Plop some cool looking stats from real-world case studies to reassure them that OTHER PEOPLE have already taken on the risk of buying from you.

Also, make sure to include a fantastic About Us page that shows that you are a real person that really cares about customers. This is so important and it is advice that gets thrown around a lot these days, but it really does matter. Take some time and give people an inside look, bare your soul a bit, be genuine and show people you care about quality service and delivering on your promises.

These elements will make clicking on that CTA so much easier.
Have fun
Creating CTAs is serious business - but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have fun and be creative. Your users will reward you if you can get some sort of emotional response out of them, and the best way to do that is by being creative (or hiring someone to be creative for you). Approach their pain points from a different angle, provide a different perspective and I guarantee you will generate more clicks on your ads and website CTAs.

These 10 tips are a rough outline of things that you should keep in mind when working on your CTAs. They will dramatically increase the effectiveness of your CTAs and your website overall. If you are using this strategy with paid ads, you will get more clicks and more traffic per dollar spent.

Take the time to understand your value, and create CTAs that will clearly guide your new visitors and customers towards a destination that is best for you AND them.

We are here to serve, after all.

🍻 Cheers, - AJ

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I help website owners like you turn window shoppers & tire kickers into paying customers. I’m also a partner and Senior Design Lead at The Hauser Design Group where we focus exclusively on premium website development.