A call to action on your website is where a user turns into a customer, a subscriber, or at the very least someone who trusts your offering and messaging. Every website is trying to guide its users toward a specific next step, and the CTA is the element that makes that transition clear, personal, and measurable.
What is a call to action (CTA)?
A call to action is an interactive element that tells users exactly what to do next. A call to action can be a button, a link, a form, or any interactive element designed to move a user forward. CTAs help to make your desired next step for the user crystal clear by following a few best practices and design patterns that we’ll discuss here.
Why Is a call to action so important?
Without a clear call to action, users are left to decide what to do on their own. Even strong content and design can fail if the action you are calling users to take is unclear. CTAs help search engines understand the purpose of your page, and they also help your users complete tasks more easily. Helping improve the user experience in this way directly impacts engagement, conversions, and overall site performance.
Benefits of a good call to action
A quality call to action improves user experience and business outcomes by aligning the intent, design, and messaging of your website with the intent of the user. When done properly, you will experience many benefits. Some of which we’ll dive into a bit deeper below.
Higher conversions
A well-designed call to action will improve page conversions by enticing as many users as possible to take the step being advertised by the call to action.
A well-designed and thought out call to action will stand out to your users, reduce hesitation, and make it obvious what their next steps should be, all while enticing them to take said next step.
Clear user direction
A good call to action will reduce confusion by making it clear what action the user should take if they want to move forward with your offer. More than this, a good call to action will also avoid drowning the user in decisions. If there are three or more actions you want users to take, it might be better to separate each offer on their own page.
Reduced decision friction
When you reduce the number of actions you want users to take, you help dial in their focus to your messaging. You will almost always have higher conversion rates by doing this. When call to action amounts are reduced, users will experience more clarity regarding your offer, and the action you expect them to take.
Improved engagement metrics
Pages with a strong call to action often see longer session durations, higher interaction rates, and more quality engagement signals.
Better funnel progression
One benefit of your call to actions are internal links. Using a CTA with descriptive and relevant anchor text you can build internal links that not only improve your ranking potential, but also your engagement and conversion rates. The reason you can improve conversions and engagement in this way is because you are building a helpful network for your users, so if the page they are on doesn’t align with their needs, you can point them to a page that does.
Different call-to-action types
Not all CTAs serve the same purpose. Different offers require different CTA structures and goals. While this isn’t a comprehensive list of CTA types, it will help you understand and become aware of the most common types, and their use cases.
Primary vs secondary CTAs
Primary and secondary CTAs represent the main goals of a page, website, or business. These are the most commonly used call to action types. Typically they will represent one of the main actions that most users will likely want to take when visiting the website.
Transactional CTAs
Transactional CTAs are focused on compelling users to do something that leads to a financial transaction. The action can be anything from purchasing a service or good, to booking a call, or requesting a quote.
Lead-generation CTAs
CTAs focused on generating leads typically collect information in exchange for value of some sort. The value might be a guide, a consultation, a newsletter subscription, or a variety of other informational promotions.
Micro-conversion CTAs
Micro conversion CTA types essentially focus a users attention to lead them deeper down your funnel. Whether that involves the user watching a video, reading a case study, or visiting your testimonials page, these CTAs are built around the idea of building trust in your brand or services.
Sticky vs inline
Sticky call to actions are used on certain page types like blogs, case studies, or other pages with heavy text-based sections. Sticky CTAs are used on these page types because normal CTA sections would look unnatural breaking up the text itself.
How to create a call to action that converts
You can create a compelling call to action by balancing message clarity, user intent, timing, simplicity, and design principles. If you ensure your call to action stands out on your page in a way that aligns with your design, speaks to the user’s pain point, and is incredibly easy to understand, you will improve conversions naturally.
Run A/B tests
A/B tests allows you to split your traffic in half where 50% will see one version of your CTA, and the other 50% will see a different version of your CTA. These types of tests allow you to see which version converts at a higher percentage. You can then pick the version that performs better, and continue to test and improve upon the winning variation. By doing this, you’ll end up with a CTA you have iterated upon that converts far better than your initial call to action.
Align copy with user-intent
Ensure that the language you use in your call to action align perfectly with the user intent of the page. By doing thorough keyword research, you can determine what your primary keyword should be for your page so you can craft an effective call to action that aligns with user intent, and the goals that matter most to your business.
Match CTA to funnel stage
Your call to action should mirror the current stage of your funnel. You should be guiding your user through to take the action you need them to take, and ensuring your CTAs match the current stage all throughout your funnel will improve conversions.
Use action-oriented & relevant language
Focus on creating outcome focused language that tells the user clearly what action the CTA represents. If you are too ambiguous your user will struggle to understand how they are to move forward with your offer, and if they struggle too much they will leave.
Add urgency
When used responsibly, urgency can help your users act sooner by emphasizing limited availability, timelines, etc. For example, in service based businesses we’ve noticed the highest increase in conversions by using phrasing like ‘Get Your Free Quote Today’. When worded in this way, you tell the user not only to act fast, but more importantly, that your business is professional enough to take care of them immediately.
Leverage visual hierarchy
One of the most important steps when designing a CTA that actually converts is to ensure it stands out in a way that aligns with your brand. The CTA color should be reserved almost exclusively for CTAs, and the call to action should stand out spatially from the other elements on the page as well. You also want to establish a certain design convention specific to your calls to action, so when users see it they instantly know (regardless of which page they are on) that this is an action I’m supposed to take.
Need help building quality calls to action?
If you want help improving your website’s conversion rate or crafting calls to action that actually drive results, our web design team can help you turn more visitors into customers.