Call To Action: The Revenue Trigger

What do you think is the most important aspect of any website? At the top of your mind, the answer would surely be UI/UX. Right? I agree to that. Let me ask you another question. What is the most important part of a website on which the growth of the company depends? There can surely be a lot of answers, but there is one that would surely stand out and once I tell you, you’ll surely be in agreement. That stand out part of the website are the CALL TO ACTION (CTA) buttons. Call to action or CTA as you might remember better, is a piece of content intended to induce a viewer, reader, or listener to perform a specific act. Most of the time these acts include buying a product on an e-commerce platform, scheduling a demo for a product on the company website, signing up for newsletters or blogs and the list goes on. Are you still wondering how the growth of the company depends on the CTA? 

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Well, call to action buttons hold a lot of importance because these buttons lead the website visitors to do the intended action on the website through which, more often than not, the company gains revenue. For an e-commerce company, the intended action for any website visitor is to buy a certain product. Similarly, for a SaaS company the intended action for the website visitors is that they submit their details so that they become prospective leads and for any financial or educational website, the intended action would be to apply for loans or admissions, respectively. The list is endless and there is no one intended action on any website as well. Ever wondered how your website would look without a CTA? Honestly, just like a car without a steering wheel. No steering wheel in the car means that the car is useless and that would be the same word you would use to describe your website if there were no CTAs. When a CRO consultant starts to work on the conversion rate of the website, he/she basically is working on ways to increase the click-through rates of each of the CTA, in order for the user to reach the last stage, upon which the user/visitor is considered converted. With a/b testing doing rounds, and companies investing more time and money in cro, people are now realizing the importance of the call to actions on their website. 

Wondering why your click-through rates are not on the higher end? The simple question that you should ask yourself is: Am I placing my CTAs well? There are some pointers that business owners, marketers and website designers should always remember when working on CTAs.

Call To Actions (CTA) should be noticeable:

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The likeliness of any website visitors doing the intended action on your website depends on how well placed your CTA is. It’s a very basic understanding from our day to day life that the more noticeable a particular thing is, the more attention it attracts. The size of the CTA matters a lot as well. You might have the best design in the world, you might have the best color palette, the best transitions, and the best copy/content but if you do not have a CTA that is noticeable, all your efforts will go for a toss.

Let’s take 2 instances into consideration here.

E-commerce: For an e-commerce website, the intended action for the visitors is to buy a product. Imagine if the person is on the product page, and that particular product has a high dollar value, but the Add To Cart or Buy Now CTA is not visible. In such a case, the visitors would just get not required frustrated and exit, only to go to some other website to find the same product and place the order. Just because the CTA was not noticeable, you just lost yourself a good prospect.

SaaS: Let’s say that for a SaaS company, the most important action is that someone comes on to the website and asks for the pricing. The user visits the pricing instead quotation page, fills in the details but doesn’t know where to click to go ahead and know more about the pricing. The user would just leave the website, browse your competitor’s website and submit the lead there. Just because of the CTA not being prominent, a deal was lost here as well. 

Pro-Tip-

Try to make the CTA big and noticeable. Now that doesn’t mean you make the CTA so big that the website aesthetics are compromised. Your CTA size should be such that it’s easily visible to the users and doesn’t compromise on the aesthetics of the website as well.

Noticeable CTA yet the conversion is less?

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The reason behind this kind of a situation may be a few but primarily it would be because the visitor is not able to foresee the obvious next step. they click the CTA to understand the next step which, if not catering to their interest, could lead to their exit. Make it a point that your CTA is complimented by a good copy and image around it. With a good copy around the CTA, a user would get some clarity of what would happen when the CTA is clicked. More so, the CTA copy also matters a lot here. If the intended action that you want your users to take is to schedule a demo and your CTA copy reads Start Now, there would be a difference in the intent of the person when he/she clicks on the CTA. You want the people to fill the form to schedule a demo and they are clicking the CTA thinking that they are about to start a trial, both of which are poles apart. People say copy is the king and it’s absolutely true. With a good copy your website in general and the CTA, in particular, would do a miracle for your website. 

Pro Tip- Your CTA tells the users what to do but your USP convinces them. Use both of them wisely. 

Amidst all of this, make sure that the users see value in the next step. If there is no value that is being added to the user, why would they even consider clicking and going ahead? Each and every step should be crystal clear. If the users start to think too much, you would lose too much in terms of business. While working on your CTA, remember the Fitt;s Law. It states that the amount of time required for a person to move a pointer (e.g., mouse cursor) to a target area is a function of the distance to the target divided by the size of the target. Thus, the longer the distance and the smaller the target’s size, the longer it takes. Understanding this law makes things easier for people trying to optimize their website. You as a business owner need to understand that you need to use the right amount of white space in the CTA copy so that the copy is not cluttered and the meaning is not lost. Try to leave some room around your CTA because that would make it stand out from the other elements of the website. If your CTA gets mixed and lost eventually, then you would end up losing a lot. We have spoken about the size and the copy but another important part is the color of the CTA. Try to use a slightly different colour than your brand color so that the CTA is recognizable and would not get lost in the background. 

A lot of people talk about CTA copy. Wondering what’s the trick to an amazing CTA copy? It’s simple. Just keep it specific, convey the benefit and make use of trigger words. Understanding the importance of your website's CTAs will surely lead you to a better conversion rate. 

Pro Tip- Do not use Submit as your initial CTA copy. In the first step, if you tell people that they would have to submit something, you’ll compromise a big chunk of your audience because people are very hesitant in sharing their details. 

What’s your viewpoint about website CTAs? Feel free to ping me to talk more about this. Wondering where to read more about this? CXL would be the best place to do so.