Day 20: CTAs as we call them in the website design, development and writing business. My fellow Chicagoans, I know, to us the CTA is something else. My fellow music lovers, I know, to us the CTA is something else, provided you were around back then.
In general terms, I applaud the success of Hubspot. I think what they do yields them a lot of ink. That being the old way of saying impressions. But in one or two of their publications about calls-to-action, they were overstating the obvious when educating the reader about CTA buttons being colorful, large enough to see, and being located in an easy to find spot. Price of admission. But they really lost me when they wrote, ”Action oriented: Begin with a verb like ‘Download’ or ‘Register.’” Really? I think we can do better than that.
A CTA button is prime real estate to show web visitors that you know how to blend salesmanship with creativity. Download, Register, Learn More, Click Here, Read More just don’t cut it. Sure, I understand that once in a while you might need to default to these, but please, not with any degree of regularity. And speaking of real estate, I once wrote a CTA button for a wonderful property management and real estate development company named Avante Properties. They were promoting a new community called Uptown. Because one of the owners is named Scott, who happens to be a great guy, I was left with little choice but to use the CTA Beam Me Uptown, Scotty.
The point is, people appreciate and recognize when you go the distance with your CTAs, and that means mixing them up. I like to have a CTA on every page, but I write the lead-in copy differently for each as well as the CTA button. A few of my other favorites from Avante Properties include Take Me To A Better Space in their commercial property search, and More About Land, Less About Singing when the lead in copy about land development referenced the classic Woody Guthrie tune, This Land Is Your Land.
Go after those calls-to-action. Make them great and make them memorable. It’s worth the extra time and effort, and you’ll see a difference in your conversion rates.