Stop using phrases like “Click here” and “Learn more”. Here are some tips, tricks and great ideas for a call to action phrases that drive sales.
Call To Action (CTA) keywords and phrases are words commonly found in links, buttons, and headlines that are used by a website in order to entice an action from a visitor to the site. A CTA can span a range of behaviors a website marketer may want to elicit, including visiting another page, adding an item to a shopping cart, signing up for an email newsletter, downloading a pdf, making a phone call, etc. If you want your website visitor to do something, then you will use Call To Action buzzwords on your site.
Unfortunately, many website marketers don’t spend enough time thinking about what their Call To Action says, and never bother testing one CTA against another to see which one is more effective. Ultimately this can result in lost sales opportunities.
Take this Call To Action for example:
Add to Shopping Cart
That CTA buzzword isn’t very enticing. It doesn’t offer the website visitor any incentive to click that link or button. In addition, this text is used on almost every website out there. Nothing differentiates this website and this CTA from all the others. Now here is an alternative that is more exciting:
Buy The Book!!
This Call To Action buzzword emphasizes the action. It says to the visitor, “you checked out the book, you read the reviews…NOW GO AND GET IT! ” It grabs your attention.
There are many different businesses and I cannot provide better alternatives for every Call to Action, but here are a few examples to help you start thinking about how to improve your current CTAs.
- Sign Up changes to Get a FREE account – One just asks you to sign up, the other tells you what you will get.
- Click Here changes to Want Free Music? – The first CTA doesn’t provide any insight into why you would want to click. The second CTA creates a desire.
- Buy Now changes to Download for $19.95 – The first CTA sounds like the start of a normal checkout process. The second gives you the exact price and action that the CTA will provide.
- Watch Video changes to Take The 2 Minute Tour – How long is the video? What will I learn? – The first CTA doesn’t give you info, the second not only tells you what the video is about, but it also says how much time commitment you will have.
Those are just a few examples. When examining your own website think about what you are trying to get your visitor to do and what might be enticing to them. Once you have some ideas, replace those worn-out Calls To Action with your new keywords. However, don’t stop there. Call To Action Buzzwords need to be tested. You will never know if Sign Up In 30 Seconds works better than Try It For Free unless you test your CTAs. This can be done a few different ways. The easiest is the A/B test. Run one CTA (maybe it’s a button) on a landing page for a fixed amount of time (let’s say a week). Then switch the CTA out for the other one. Then compare results. Whichever one created more conversions (button clicks) is the winner. This is the simplest method. Alternatively, if you want something that is a little more statistically valid, build two landing pages using one CTA on each. Split your traffic so that half goes to each one. Then compare results after a few weeks. The more you test, the more you can optimize your website. Should you get really into this, there are a number of products available that can automate this testing process (A future version of BoostSuite, coming soon will allow you to do this as well).
In conclusion, make sure your Call To Action speaks to your customers. Don't use worn-out slogans and sayings. Be creative, and whatever you do, test your ideas to see if the actual work.
Do you have a Call To Action you really like? Let us know below.
