Call to Action Best Practices (including Buttons)

Call to Action Best Practices (including Buttons) : by Jason Li 2013 ©

Call to Actions (CTA) are really important...

In fact critical...

Whether it’s on a web page, sales letter, or email...

Get this wrong and sales conversions will be low...

Get good at it and your enquiries and sales conversions will allow your business to grow.

How else does Call to Action affect business?

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·         Call to Action affects how many enquiries you get.


·         Call to Action provides better qualified leads.


·         (It’s unusual – but yes, Call to Action) Reduces labour costs. You see, sales people spend lots of unprofitable time cold calling or visiting prospects at the very earliest stage of the sales cycle with no idea if the prospect is ready to go all the way to conclude by making an order; especially in business-to-business and complex sales. This means working with a prospect at the low interest/enquiry stage leads to low response rates and makes the business inefficient.


·         Call to Action brings forward interested buyers because they are not sold to. Buyers can sniff out a sales pitch all day long... because they get pitched all day long. But after reading your copy, prospects that contact you have decided they want to seriously consider working with you. Otherwise, why would a CEO of a business with legal, operational, human resource, turnover, logistics, product, brand, Inland Revenue issues, and so on make an enquiry?


·         Call to Action provides your sales people more productive time on working on seriously interested prospects.


·         A good Call to Action can determine whether a prospect makes an enquiry today or in 6 months. (However, you may need to provide an incentive to bring forward an enquiry.)


·         A good Call to Action motivates interested prospects to consider if they are ready to take action now (or very soon after assessing their own situation on the spot.)

Case study: Email Campaign business-to-business using Call to Action

I manage an email campaign to certain businesses. Many businesses that receive emails from this campaign usually have a professional gatekeeper (I call them pro gk’s – I imagine if they had goalie gloves they would be brilliant because nothing would get past them). Therefore by telephone the owners are always out of reach. (It’s like trying to contact Richard Branson you would think sometimes for some sales people due to well trained gk’s.)

As the email is genuinely targeted at business owners (or directors as a minimum decision making level), the emails have to be excellent in getting their attention and them to read it (and we can’t use Meercats because they don’t work for this campaign).

Criteria for success from the email campaign:

·         Business owners get 100s of emails... so they must be very interesting to get read... I can’t emphasis this enough.


·         Ensure owners see the value of the product and services.


·         To drip feed value over a series of emails.


·         Ensure the whole offer is of better value and differentiated from competitors.


·         The email is viral enough to get passed around.


·         Different decision makers see value in the email (this allows the buyers to assess the email content and if the products and services really are compelling enough for the board room to make it a priority).


·         Generate enquiries from serious prospects (The general buying and thinking process of buyers will be to go on the website, look at competitors, speak to friends – even the wife), and carry out internal investigations.


·         Get the company in front of decision makers at an early stage and build up a relationship... even if the prospective buyers already have long standing relationships or in a contract.


·         Be a means to build up a relationship with decision makers where cold calling and sales reps can’t due to little success leaving messages and voice mail with admin staff.


·         The sales staff earns more commission and have better holidays as they are spending time on closing not speculation.


·         Sales staff are travelling less miles and in better health as time is organised with serious buyers only... bordering on order taking as much as possible.


·         After all this... the call to action must draw out interested buyers to call this company, not another, and to call sooner rather than later.

So here are some Call to Action observations:

Due to writing direct response sales copywriting, and taking part in a number of marketing communications campaigns, I have gathered some interesting titbits of knowledge about Call to Actions which may be of interest (Please note your own A/B split tests can give different results):

WIIFM Value: Your Call to Action should answer why your prospect should take an action. Remember, humans are inherently selfish. Your Call to Action must answer “What’s in it for me?” better than any other competitor.

It’s easy to do: Even if your product or service is complicated. Simplify the starting process so that prospects can get up and running in a matter of seconds. (If you struggle, some tips are in the beginners guide book ‘The Goose Bump Effect’ in the top left above Services.

Urgency: Create a time limited offer. Such as 40% discount or a free matrix/chart worth £20 if you register by X date.

Bigger is better: Generally, if your Call to Action is larger than the surrounding copy and designs... your Call to Action has a better chance.

Easy navigation: Prospects who are interested will want to get going now. If they’re sat on the fence, making it so simple to start now will also help you persuade the ones who are just “so close to registering.”

Remind them what to expect: Ideas include: download a file, request information, add a product to shopping cart, subscribe to a newsletter, navigate the next page, download a trial, submit form, request a call back, register for prize draw, and so on.

Stong guarantee: Humans are risk averse because they don’t like change. We’re programmed to avert being hurt. A strong guarantee reduces this worry.

No links, ads or cluttered text (on web pages) next to the Call to Action: Humans cannot multi-task. Humans cannot focus on two complicated things simultaneously.

F-shaped Call to Actions: Humans start at the top left (in the Western world) and move the eyes to the right, then down a bit, then across again, and then down again. If your Call to Action can mimic this, if will catch the prospects eye.

Simple Products have Call to Actions above the fold: You can have the Call to Action right at the top if it is a very simple and universally known product. Many prospects won’t need to read the copy or look at the pictures to ‘get it.’

Complex products have Call to Actions delayed: The more complex and more you have to educate, add value and differentiate, the further down you should have your Call to Action. Putting your offer and what you want to be paid too early reduces your chances of success because prospects can’t understand how you are worth the value.

Colour: Orange or Red against a contrasting background can assist conversion rates. Red colours generate a feeling of aggression and increased heart rates. This is where marketing consumer psychologists will tell you that many people make decisions based on emotions. You can use red for strong actions such as ‘buy’ and soft actions such as ‘request contact’ (and use a blue colour for trust).

Copy: The wording makes a big difference to response rates. If you just have a simple ‘buy’, you are risking leaving this open to the 100% convinced only to buy this product, and from you, and right now to take action. Sometimes an 80% convinced prospect is ready to go to 100%, and your copy has to take them there.

Of course... if you’re just another HR payroll software, plumber, interior designer, or tax accountant who provides great service or other commodity out there, a Call to Action alone won’t help you too much.

Spend a bit of time improving the product so that you are more helpful (of value) and differentiated than other competitors, and your conversion rates will naturally improve.

My call to action to you: Share this with another person who likes business articles about sales conversions right now. 

Time to do this: only 30 seconds so start right now.

Karma points: plenty (and you’re friend might be delighted you thought of them too.)

Further reading:

How a counsellor like Oprah Winfrey will outsell a salesperson: trust and buying psychology

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Good website design can help with on boarding lots of prospects better than sales people

Good website design can help with on boarding lots of prospects better than sales people: by Jason Li 2012 ©

Of course, its common sense and we all know that clever websites with the best websites designed on being focused on being a sales machine can help with on boarding prospects needs, but better than sales people?

How the best sales people on board prospects

It is fair to say in fact that in a one-to-one challenge, an excellent sales person can possibly outsell most websites at a quicker conversion time. What I’m saying is that given both methods to on board a prospect, an excellent sales person will no doubt move a prospect through the sales process further through the sales funnel, and possibly quicker than the website too!

A sales person will spend quality time learning about meeting the needs of prospects so that they move to the next stage of the funnel. Sales people are laser sharp and look for the quickest way to help the prospect move to the next stage.

The sales challenge verses ecommerce website design strategy

However, if you have a very good ecommerce website design strategy that can move prospects through the sales funnel, then a good website can beat many excellent sales people. Why is this? Well a good ecommerce website that has been tested and brings in good leads on a regular basis just needs help in systematically getting more prospects to the website. Once this is done, a website will systematically take a whole lot more prospects (and decision makers) through a sales funnel then a sales person that is doing this one-at-a-time.

Let’s look at some numbers, which I’ve made up. Let’s say the excellent sales person has 300 prospects every month at stage one in the sales funnel and there are five stages to an order. Consistently they have twenty prospects who reach stage four ready to order each month. This includes being flat out with talk time, admin like emails, answering queries, objection handling et cetera.

Now the website that is also a smooth running function can take prospects through the funnel, either with one prospect or a million. Yes, but the website is not proactive in any way you may say. Yes, you may also point out that the website is likely to be much slower at moving prospects through the sales funnel. But if you feed it prospects, a good website will give out a greater output. What are the chances of the website handling 10,000 prospects as well as 500? You’re right; the website will do this mechanically over-and-over again just as efficiently and effectively.

If we were to say to the excellent sales person to take on say another 100 prospects, so 33% more, oddly enough the conversion of prospects to being on board may reduce. This is due to a number of factors such as: quality of talk time being less with prospects, not answering to queries quick enough, or being too brief, and so on.

A good website designed to be a sales machine is a long term investment

It takes time to create a good website that takes people through a sales process. You might say ‘well I don’t have time to put into it. I just want one to put up on the web and it is done with'. In that case is it worth it?

Here is my answer: “By the way, doesn’t it take months or years for sales people to get used to your industry, prospects, customers, and competitors to move prospects through the sales funnel?” What’s to say that a website can be developed and launched first time round and generate results? Or even second or third time around?

Yep, you guessed it. You will have to keep investing time every week in understanding and fine tuning your website until it is a good website designed to be a sales machine. That means a bit more work than creating one that looks really cool; uploading it and then telling prospects you have a website. Just like sales people, a website has to try new ideas and change the presentation.

Latent needs

A latent need is a need we have but not seen as important. Good sales people are able to help prospects see that they have a need or problem and make a decision to take action.

Again, the best websites designed as a sales machine can do this too. See “How to generate more leads for my business” article. This is where a good website can help a prospect consider their latent needs. I have at times seen it where people have taken it as far as possible with a prospect and passed the lead to another sales person because the other sales person just hits it off better, or plays “good cop-bad cop” to try and re-motivate the prospect to have another go through the sales funnel. This is what a website can do. Be the other sales person that hits it off with the prospect.

Top-of-mind-awareness

In advertising this is one of the Holy Grail’s of marketing – for the customer to keep your brand in mind when they are ready to buy. That’s why big brands spend millions advertising everywhere possible whether it’s on television, or at the cinema, or on radio, newspaper, online and so on.

With a targeted website, your website is both an advert and sales funnel vehicle. Adverts gain interest or trigger latent needs. Your website can do this with the right information initially. Then as the prospect keeps coming back, you can use tactics to move them through the sales funnel, automating the sales process.

You still need sales people to close deals.

That’s not to say that you won’t need sales people anymore. Excellent sales people are still the difference between some businesses. People still buy from people. People still need to speak to people about queries and have a human touch.

You might even find in a funny way that a good website is generating enough good leads that you might even need more excellent sales people. If your company does better because of the website and additional sales person, then this can only be good in the long run.

So invest in the best website designed as a sales machine with content that takes prospects through the sales funnel to gain more orders over the long run.

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