What is a CTA and why should you care? A CTA is a clickable image or text that prompts visitors to do something next. Calls to actions urge or solicit a user to take an immediate action. And a call to action is not just limited to ecommerce sites. Every website should have a call to action.

Examples include “subscribe to a newsletter”, “view a webinar” or “request a product demo”, “Like us on Facebook”, “Download”, “Buy Now”, “Click Here” or “Learn More.”

A call to action provides:

• Focus to your site
• Direction to your users
• A method in measuring success

CTAs, when clicked, should perform an action or direct people to landing pages, where you can collect that visitors’ contact information in exchange for that valuable offer. In that sense, an effective CTA results in more qualified leads for your business.  And that, after all, is what we all want, right?

Here are some best practices when creating a successful CTA.

1. Draw a user’s attention with size.  The size of call to action button should be large, versus its surrounding elements. This is something you don’t want potential customers to miss.
2. Draw user attention with prominent positioning. The placement of the CTA should be above the fold, in a prominent area.
3. Use whitespace: Enough space within the button and surrounding it is important as well. The more space around a call to action the more attention is drawn to it.
4. Use highly contrasting colors: Color contrast is an effective way of drawing attention to elements.
5. Offer secondary alternative actions:  Displaying secondary actions beside the primary action.
6. Convey a sense of urgency:  “Buy Now”, “Subscribe”, “Donate” are all great language, but don’t use an excess number of exclamation points or caps.
7. Tell users that taking action is easy: Be precise.
8. Tell users what to expect: Tell them what it is that they’re doing and getting. Or, tell them how long the trial is, the more explicit you are, the more results you get.
9. A/B testing: A great solution to see what kind of button are performing is A/B testing. Design a few variations on your button and see which perform better.

Here are a couple examples of great call to action buttons:

Resume Baking

This CTA is neither traditional nor boring. This retro shaped button is creative and eye catching. The bold red color of the button against the lighter blue background helps the button pop. The wording and design draws you into click through to their landing page.

EventBright

The text outside the call-to-action button creates the incentive. If you’re offering a free service or product, make sure to bring attention to this offer. The lack of exclamation points and caps make it a softer sell and the contrasting color calls attention to the button.

Calls to actions need to be clear, obvious, and visible. They should echo language of your landing page, have a clear offering and value proposition, and ultimately answer “what’s in it for me?” A good call to action compels people to act with an enticing offer.

Want some guidance with your CTAs? We can help.

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 12th, 2013 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Search Engine Optimization. It was written by Erin Peters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.