Creating an Impactful Call to Action – All You Need to Know

What is a Call to Action (CTA)? 

Have you ever heard a pitch from any marketer who is trying to sell you a product or service? After they have explained the details of the product/service, they have to present an equally good final line that serves as a booster for their pitch to capture your sale. 

A call to action or CTA is that booster line or image or any other form of media, which serves the purpose of encouraging an “action” from the leads, visitors, and customers. Want a good example of a CTA? 

Read on to find more!

Why are CTAs important on a website?

CTA is a very crucial element for any webpage. It acts as a suggestive action path your visitors should take. A good website call to action should also encourage the visitors to understand the next steps they need to take in order to reach their desired destination.

For instance, a new website visitor might not know how to subscribe to your newsletter or make a purchase. A clear call to action button can clear their confusion and lead them directly to their desired landing page.

A website can have multiple CTA buttons, each serving a different purpose to reduce the friction that occurs when users navigate through the sales funnel. For instance, if you have a blog on your website without a clear CTA at the end, visitors might just close the webpage after they’re done reading. This is because they do not have any indication on what step to take next on your website.

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Want to increase conversion
rate on your website?

Enhance your website that drives users to complete a desired action to become your customer.

CRO Solutions

Common Call to Action Examples

• Sign up 

This type of CTAs serves the purpose of encouraging the visitors to sign up for your services or products. For instance, you can have a CTA on your website to invite the users to sign up for a free trial of your product.

• Subscribe for Updates

This type of CTA invites a user to subscribe or receive regular updates from your business. Subscribe CTAs are fairly common as ending lines in blogs to encourage the readers to engage with your brand more, and potentially convert to customers.

• Free Trials

Almost all businesses offer free trials of their services through universal or personalized CTAs that encourage the users to demo your services. This helps them make a final decision if your services are worth paying for or not.

• Learn more

This type of CTA is useful for redirecting users to the relevant webpage where they can learn more about your business or a specific product/service. This is especially important as well-informed users are more likely to make a purchase than users who are unaware of your products or services.

• Join Us 

This CTA type is particularly relevant for websites that rely on engagement or collaboration with their user base. For instance, if you manage online communities for your product/service catalog, then you might want to encourage potential users to join them. 

This CTA has a designated purpose of targeting users who are not a part of your community and encouraging them to engage with your brand. It brings in organic traffic to your website and increases the leads that can be converted in the future.

7 types of CTA’s you need to have on your website

1. CTA Button to Generate Leads

There are many purposes for CTAs, but one of the most important is generating leads. Converting visitors into leads is a hefty task and CTAs act as a catalyst to boost the reaction.

CTA buttons to generate leads are often found on blogs or on the footers of web pages. They can also be placed in the corner of the webpage as a floating or sticky banner. 

These CTA buttons should be compelling, concise, and attention-grabbing. They should also communicate their value and their purpose as accurately as possible. Visitors should be made aware of the exact thing that will happen when they click on these CTA buttons. For example, if you want to convey that the visitor can check the pricing for your services, a CTA button can contain a copy like “Click here to download quotes”.

2. Forms 

Visitors need to fill out a form with their required details and also click on the submit button to officially become a registered lead in your database.

A lackluster CTA button for submission will definitely drive them away and you would lose potential leads. Hence, it is imperative that your submit button has a compelling and actionable copy. It can be a marketing offer like a discount, which encourages them to fill the form. For example, “Avail 30% discount now” is a good eye-catcher, and will encourage the users to fill out the form.

3. ” Read More” Button 

Read more buttons are present in almost every section of a website. Since displaying an entire post would take up too much space on a webpage, a read more button serves the purpose of directing visitors to the relevant web pages.

A smart move here is to entice the visitors by displaying the first couple lines of content and then following up with a clickable “Read more” CTA button.

4. Your Product or Services 

Visitors who are interested in your services will most likely poke around your web pages to learn more about what you offer. You would want to ensure that their journey is as easy as possible for increasing the chances of conversion.

Simple prompts of CTAs which offer the visitors access to more information about your products or services play a crucial role in this journey. Simple CTA buttons like “Learn more about new features” or “Try a demo for free” will do the trick at this stage.

5. Social buttons 

Encouraging website visitors to share your content is the most organic way to grow your traffic. Social sharing is the most effective and low-commitment method to engage with your visitors, customers, and leads. 

Social buttons can be used on web pages like landing pages, blog posts, recent updates, and pillar posts. They make the most sense in places where there is shareable content or information about your business. A good example of a social button is “Like what you see? Share with your friends”, followed by social media buttons.

6. CTA buttons to Nurture leads 

The path from generating a lead to converting the lead is quite difficult. You have to entice and encourage them with your offering to take the next step and become a customer. A top-of-the-funnel offer is too common and unappealing. An offer that is aligned with your brand and products is a much more effective way to go about this.

CTA buttons about free product demos or a free 1-month trial do the job. This is called lead nurturing through CTAs. These CTAs should be organically displayed across your website wherever possible, especially on web pages which most of your leads visit. 

7. Event Buttons

If you are conducting an event, it’s a given that you would want all your seats to be filled, whether the event is online or offline. 

Event promotions are heavily dependent on an effective CTA to raise awareness, and bring in more attendees to the event. These should be short and direct. For example, if you are conducting an event titled Sambhav, then the CTA should be something along the lines of “Register for Sambhav 2021 now”.

How to write effective & compelling CTA for a website

Now that you know what is CTA in marketing and websites, let’s take a look at the best practices to create the most effective ones for your visitors.

• Keep CTAs Clear & Concise 

One of the most important elements of creating a CTA is to present the most with the least amount of words. Users, to be honest, are lazy. They want to be treated with the most amount of information in the littlest time possible.

CTAs are meant to entice the users to take action. Now, imagine if your CTA was a 50 words paragraph. Would you want to read that entire section just to take an action? Most will answer a resounding no to this question.

Your main aim while creating a CTA must be to ensure that it is direct, simple, and as short as possible. For instance, Uber has a very compelling CTA on its homepage to encourage users to download the Uber app. The CTA is “Start Riding with Uber”. This CTA copy conveys exactly what the user can expect after clicking on the CTA button.

• Try to evoke emotion through your CTA 

Evoking an action from visitors requires you to not only give them a reason to but also evoke emotion within them to take that action. If your CTA provokes enthusiasm or curiosity through words, chances are it will carry over to the audience.

Simple tricks like using exclamation marks, question marks, using explosive adjectives, and more to make your CTAs stand out. Let us take an example. “Subscribe now and get 75% off!” – This CTA is not only offering a good benefit to the users but also conveying the thrill of the offer through the exclamation mark.

• Persuade your users to take the desired action

What is in it for your users? This should be the first question you should ask yourself while creating the CTA. How will it help them? Will it tie into your USP? Answer this, and you have your fuel to create an outstanding CTA.

For example, a CTA like “Schedule your free consultation today” persuades visitors to schedule the consultation “today”, and increases the chances of conversion. 

• Create a sense of urgency

When your website visitors see that they might miss out on something if they don’t take quick action, they will be more compelled to jump on the bandwagon and make a purchase. 

Creating a sense of urgency is best utilized while you are running promotions, which are for a limited time period. For example, you must have received emails from big e-commerce brands like Amazon with a subject line like ‘Sale ends on Wednesday’. This encourages users to engage with your brand quickly, as they might end up missing out on the good stuff.

• Get acquainted with your devices

While creating an effective CTA is important, you must consider what type of device would best fit with the CTA. The UX of your website is different on a computer than on a mobile device. 

Moreover, users searching for things on a desktop are more likely to still be in research mode to make up their minds, while users searching on mobile devices are more likely to be looking for instant gratification.

Let us take an example. You are sitting on your bed watching TV and see a product ad that interests you. You would probably get your laptop to look up the product and make up your mind about whether to purchase it or not. But, if the ad was compelling enough, you will most likely just grab your smartphone and look up where and how you can buy it, or if there are any offers on the product.

Taking into consideration the search intent of users is imperative in ensuring that your CTAs are generating desired results. Hence, you must also consider where most of your web traffic comes from to draft your CTAs accordingly.

• Be creative with your CTAs

Creativity flusters your audience and encourages them to engage with your brand. The same applies to your CTAs as well. Fresh, new, and engaging CTAs will almost always generate more clicks for you.

You can try the A/B testing method to properly gauge how many potential clicks creative CTAs are bringing to the table. Traditional and straightforward CTAs perform just fine, but if your A/B test results indicate that the creative ones are outshining them, you should go for the creative option.

Let us take an example. One of the most common CTAs for online healthcare service providers goes something like “Register today and get a free checkup”. This is a very plain, but effective CTA. However, a leading healthcare company used the CTA “A healthier life starts now. Register for a free checkup”, which was much more creative, and generated better results than their competitors. 

• Use numbers if necessary

Numbers are a very effective tool to use in a copy to capture attention and get a response. Consumers usually like to see figures like discounts, prices, incentives, etc., to make sure shot decisions. It significantly boosts their willingness to make transactions or engage with the brand. So, whenever your can, use numbers in your CTAs/

You should try to include the pricing or discount information upfront to capture the audience and increase the number of clicks. This also decreases the bounce rates from your website since the visitor is already aware of the pricing or discounts and wouldn’t be surprised by what they see.

Using numbers in your CTAs is also a great way to make them creative and more engaging. For example, “Shop today for appliances under $100” is a much more attractive CTA than “Shop for appliances today”.

Make Good Use of CTAs

Now that you know what is CTA and how to make an effective one, it is time to put this information to use. Be precise, be creative, and grow/convert your leads with the tips mentioned above to generate fruitful results.

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