Designing Call-to-Action Buttons that Customers Click

For most businesses, online customers are critical. Any optimizations you make on your website are more valuable than those you make to any individual marketing efforts because all of your campaigns eventually lead visitors there. Calls-to-action (CTAs) are the elements that you want your visitors to notice and click on in your business website and landing pages. To that end, we need to understand the psychology of visitors to effectively design and place CTA buttons. There are some universal facts that can guide you.

A CTA button has four important items to consider: size, message (text), placement and color.

Keep the CTA buttons to an appropriate size

The size of an element relative to its surroundings indicates its importance. Decide the importance of other web page actions and size your CTA buttons accordingly. Your CTA buttons will definitely get more attention if they are larger than the other buttons on the page.

This Skype website page clearly distinguishes its CTA button with the large size and different color from the surrounding environment. The logo could be placed higher on the page, but visitors’ eyes will be drawn to the CTA button because of the size.

 

Answer critical questions with the CTA text

CTAs are a critical part of your landing pages and, subsequently, conversion funnels. That’s why paying close attention to the smallest details makes sense. Your CTA buttons are like signs with directions that should answer the question “why should I click this?” It is better if the button text makes sense as a stand-alone element without the aid of the page content. Vague text buttons like “click here,” “download now,” “book now” are of very little use. Instead, the CTA button text should be specific. CTA buttons with clear and crisp directions contribute to better understanding of the audiences. For example, you can say, “Order your yearly subscription here”, “Book your theater tickets now” or “Click here to subscribe to our blog posts”. This Hubspot page does a good job of highlighting the free guide offered in their CTA. The buttons can also be designed by around the primary benefits of your services or products. Be sure to keep text short though. For the Firefox button, text can be “Browse with Firefox 3.6,” while other specifications can remain the same.