Call to actions that convert

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The most core landing page mechanic, in my opinion, is clicking.

Call to actions (CTA) come in different shapes and styles and you should learn how to optimize them and which one works best, based on your business need.

Call to actions are critical because it gives you the numbers for users’ intent and interest. Luckily, you can track clicks on call to actions extremely easily nowadays.

This is extremely important when building funnels, understanding the efficiency of your landing page, or simply for your own (vanity) conversion metrics*.

👉 * good marketing teaches that only because you have a high click rate it doesn’t mean you’ve actually acquired/sold anything.

Rules to create great CTAs

What’s the secret of creating a good Call to Action. How do you create Call to actions that works for your page?

It’s all about value earned

The truth is that short call to actions that HIGHLIGHT the value your service/product offers the consumer, vastly outperform the competition of CTAs.

Here’s an example:

ExampleSaaS.com is a platform to improve your sales process by using automation and best practices. Unfortunately, they haven’t optimized their CTA so it only says Sign-up

‼️ There is NOTHING in this CTA that makes me want to sign-up.
I am not convinced that the text above this button, nor the link to explore the pricing, will be very effective.

Let’s re-write this CTA using our VALUE system - answer truthfully these

  1. Identify how users get value: this is the most important tip.
  2. Be bold, be interesting: Use adjectives whenever possible.
  3. Got numbers? Use them to your advantage
  4. Remove objections: Whether it’s adding a risk-reversal sub-text, social proof, a data-point or some image/logo to increase trust. Do not skip this.

Using most of what I just listed, we can re-work the generic call to action to be look like this:

Another more creative option could be:

Secondary CTAs

🤔 Sometimes users have huge objections, and they ask themselves, internally: “Why should I Buy/Do/Click this”.

That’s when you create a CTA at the bottom of your page that’s aimed at answering the objection to convert. These objections can be sourced directly from chatting with customers on the live-chat widget (if you have one), or by asking people directly (for example you could post a thread on Reddit or Indiehackers asking people why they wouldn’t sign up for your service).
For example in the above example someone might consider objecting to using automation to increase sales as it would feel too “robotic” and “standardized”.
Thus your CTA at the bottom you could change the CTA’s text to say.

Header “Our sales automation processes feel 100% human.”
CTA: “See it in action”

Big companies don’t care

🔥 Careful. You’ll notice most BIG website have extremely boring CTAs. Unlike smaller companies that need to convert the small audience they have, bigger brands don’t have these problems as they get tons of extra value added by being a larger brand.
Take websites like Robinhood, Airbnb, Dropbox…Their CTA are super boring and usually just say “get started”, “start now”, “explore more”

Show me your CTA and I will tell you who you are

That’s all I got today. Thanks for reading this far!