How to improve your Calls to Action

This will always help clarify purpose, commercial outcomes, ROI and also lead us to understand how to prioritise the actual consumer journey on a website.

This journey will always have a Call to Action (CTA). It might be to fill out an enquiry form, place an order or perhaps make a subscription.

So the success of persuading / nudging the consumer towards the website owners objective is based on many things including supporting messaging, design or colour. What I want to do here is share some examples of increasing the conversion rates of calls to action based on A/B testing subtle changes in language. I'll leave the rest to another time.

Order Information and Prices v.s. Get information and Prices
Nearly 15% increase in clicks using Get
Because the word order is all about what you have to do. Whilst the word get is all about benefit

Add to Bag v.s. Buy Now
Nearly 17% increase in clicks using Add to Bag
Now there are lots of studies about this wording so I don’t want to suggest that this is the definitive wording. But this study came down on the side of Add to Bag because the phrase did not feel final - i.e. the final decision can be delayed to further down the cart process.

Always Explain why
If you want someone to do something it is more likely you will get a result if you explain why.
e.g. Saturday Delivery is more expensive, because it costs us more to ship outside office hours
e.g.2 Sign up to our newsletter, to get offers, news and freebies (see the latest one here)

Start your free 30 Day Trial v.s. Start my free 30 Day Trial
Nearly a 50% increase in conversions by swapping to My
It is not really the call to action that has been optimised here. It is the decision - or the clarity of it. It is the possessive that has been changed and people need to feel part of a decision. A similar lesson can be drawn when inviting people to create an account. Create My Account is far better than Create your Account.