5 CTA best practices to increase your click-through rate

Call to actions (CTA) are an important part of your digital marketing campaigns and can make all the difference in who visits your website, how many clicks you get and more importantly, who converts to a paying customer. You need to provide your audience with as much information as possible in a clear and concise way to let them know why they should take your call to action seriously, and what the benefits will be from doing so. Here are our top five CTA best practices that you should consider for your next marketing campaign which will help to increase your click-through rate, and ultimately result in higher conversions.

1. Stick to direct communication

Whilst it’s essential to use industry-specific terminology to communicate directly with your audience, you can couple this with some general advice and tips to help give your potential customers that extra encouragement. However it’s best to get straight to the point and be clear and concise with your call to actions. Being direct and informative with your choice of wording makes it immediately obvious to your audience what you want them to do, which in turn results in a higher click-through rate. If your call to actions are too wordy it becomes less enticing and more confusing for your audience to understand what to expect when clicking the link.

2. Try to motivate your audience

You want to try and motivate your audience by letting them know what they’ll gain by clicking your CTA. This can be by telling them they can save money in a sale, or how you can increase your company’s value proposition to the customer. Whatever it is, you need to make sure they know the reason they should take the action. A good way to achieve this is to incorporate your company’s unique selling point (USP) into your message. Another call to action tip to motivate your audience is to create a sense of urgency. By placing a timeframe on a sale or promotion, it can help persuade the consumer’s decision. It will encourage them to not miss out on a deal, and so the sense of urgency will help sway them towards clicking on your CTA.

3. Don’t be afraid to use numbers

Pricing and discounts are a valuable way of encouraging consumers to click through to your site. It’s a great way of enticing your audience in, and because the user has already expressed an interest in your product at the advertised discount or price, this has an increased chance of generating a conversion. This can also be used in conjunction with our previous call to action best practice by creating a sense of urgency on a promotion and including a time limit.

4. Tailor your CTA across multiple devices

It’s extremely important that your call to actions work across multiple devices, including desktop, tablets and more importantly, on mobile. In a mobile-first world, you need to consider how your CTA will look on mobile over desktop and tablets. For example, you’d want to ensure your CTA stands out and is responsive to all types of mobile devices. It’s also important to make the number of clicks to checkout as minimal as possible. Implementing a checkout service such as PayPal, can help to speed up and simplify this process and makes a user more inclined to purchase right away.

5. Always test your CTAs

Whilst it’s important to make your CTA direct and clear, this doesn’t mean they need to be boring and predictable. The best way to find out if they need to be improved is to test them. Performing an A/B split test is a good way to see how your audience responds to your call to actions, and how they are impacting on your click-through and conversion rates. Testing will allow you to make decisions on what needs changing in your CTA. For example, you might learn you need to change the colour of a button, or improve the wording as well as change the placement of your CTA.

Do you need help with your call to actions?

We hope our top five CTA best practices will help increase your efforts in improving your click-through rate on your call to actions. But if you find you need further expert advice or you’d like to learn more best practices, be sure to get in touch with our team today.