As we continue our journey through the ‘Convert’ section of inbound marketing, we’re working towards turning visitors to our website into leads. In our last blog, we talked about the use of forms on your web pages to capture their all important email address. Here, we’re going to explain how the use of call-to-action buttons can help you even further. It’s not as straight-forward as you might think.
As the name suggests, a call-to-action button is an actionable button, on a website, that has been encoded with a link that visitors to your website will consciously click to move to the next step in the sales funnel, on their journey towards becoming customers. It’s usually located on a landing, or a conversion page, but it does so much more than merely add to the aesthetics of the site. It shows you that this particular visitor is actively interested in learning more about your product or service.
Most buttons you see on websites are quite docile. They don’t immediately inspire you to do anything, least of all click on them. That isn’t what a call-to-action button is for. A CTA button is there purely to illicit a favourable response. It exists to drive prospective customers further on their journey. It’s also the link between your regular content and something of higher value your potential customers have shown an interest in. It should inspire them to take action, hence the name.
So what form should this action take? Well, that’s entirely up to you, but options that tend to work well within the inbound marketing sphere include things like ‘Download a Free Ebook Now’, ‘Make an Appointment’, ‘Start a Free Trial’ or ‘Get a Free Consultation’. This isn’t an exhaustive list by any means, but you should hopefully be able to see that the button needs to create a sense of enthusiasm to encourage the visitor to click it. Whichever action you choose, make sure that it speaks in the first person and includes trigger words; verbs like ‘Get’, ‘Register’ or ‘Download’ work particularly well.
It’s not just the wording of the button itself that should be memorable. Designing a compelling CTA button involves a little aesthetic flair. Of course, the wording of the button is vital, but it’s equally important to make the copy that precedes it appealing too. It needs to play to the visitors sense of self-interest by clearly stating what they’ll receive by clicking on it. Once you have the wording ready, which shouldn’t be more than five words ideally, it’s time to address the size, position and colour of the button itself to really make it stand out.
The design of your CTA is a visual clue for perspective customers. It should be designed to answer their mental question of ‘where do I click?’. It might sound obvious, but buttons come in all shapes, sizes and colours and not one design is going to work perfectly every time. The button should work well in the space that it exists, either on your landing or splash page. It needs to stand out to be able to answer the question visitors are asking themselves.
With this in mind, choose a colour that contrasts to the rest of the page, whilst ensuring it fits with the overall style. You may want to do some testing internally before deciding on a specific colour for your page. Once you have that, then it’s time to look at the size of the button.
Again, there isn’t a hard and fast rule to obey. The button needs to be large enough to stand out and draw attention, but not too large that it appears to be intimidating them into the choice, or detracts them from reading the copy on your page too early. As for the position of your CTA button, it should flow naturally within the context of your page. You’re looking for a design that enhances, rather than detracts from, the page itself.
It’s amazing how much work can go into designing one button. Let’s not forget though that one small call-to-action button can hold so much power within your inbound marketing strategy, so it’s important to get it right! If you need any help or advice on utilising the power of the CTA button, then the team at Whitehat are here, ready to press into action.