How to make Call To Actions that Convert

You’ve got traffic coming to your site. Your offer is solid. But… no one’s clicking that “Book Now,” “Buy,” or “Learn More” button.

If it feels like your website visitors are ghosting you at the finish line—you’re not alone. And you’re not broken. Today, we’re diving into why your CTA might be falling flat—and how to fix it fast.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Website Visitors Ghosting You
• 2:17 Mistakes With Vague CTAs
• 3:48 Make Your Buttons Stand Out
• 5:46 Building Trust Before Clicks
• 7:34 Practical CTA Improvements
• 9:49 Challenge and Episode Closing

Transcript

Carrie Saunders: 0:52

You have traffic, come to your site, your offer is solid, but no one's clicking that book now or buy or learn more button. It feels like your website visitors are ghosting you at the finish line and you're not alone and you're not broken. Today we're diving into why your call to action might be falling flat and how to fix it fast. Welcome to the e-commerce made easy podcast. I'm your host, Carrie Saunders. When we started this business, all I had was a couch, a laptop and a nine-month-old. My main goal To help others. Now, with over 20 years in the e-commerce building industry and even more than that in web development, I have seen a lot. I love breaking down the hard tech into easily understandable bits to help others be successful in their online business understandable bits to help others be successful in their online business. Whether you're a seasoned e-commerce veteran or just starting out, you've come to the right place. So sit back, relax and let's dive into the world of e-commerce together. Welcome back to the show.

Carrie Saunders: 1:47

So first off, let's talk about what is a call to action or CTA, and what's the role of it. A call to action or CTA is not just a button. It is a bridge between a curious visitor and a paying customer. Your website can't convert without a call to action. And yet most CTAs are either too vague, too aggressive or too buried to be effective. So how do we fix this? How do we make sure that our call to action is effective and that our website is being effective at getting our visitors to do the actions we want them to do? So one of the mistakes that I see a lot is that people's CTAs are way too vague. Learn more or submit doesn't spark actions. Or book now, that doesn't spark actions. We don't know what we're learning more about. We don't know what we're submitting. We don't know what we're booking. We need to don't know what we're submitting. We don't know what we're booking. We need to be a lot more action oriented and we want to use benefit driven language like get my free checklist or show me how it works or book a coffee chat with me. That's a bit more, you know, effective than just book now, because we know we're going to have a free coffee chat. We're going to be just talking to you and getting to know you a bit more about you. So we want to make sure that we are using effective, verb, action oriented and benefit oriented language, and it's okay to be a bit more wordy here, because we want to convey what's going to happen after they click that button.

Carrie Saunders: 3:18

Another mistake we see a lot is that the button is too hard to find. If your call to action is at the footer, your visitors won't see it. So we want to make sure that we use multiple call to actions, especially on a long sales page or a long product page and I see this a lot where many times let's take a traditional e-commerce and the add to cart button is at the top. But what if your visitor wants to learn more information before they add to cart and they scroll down? Well, now they have to scroll all the way back up to click on that add to cart. We want to make sure we have that add to cart button multiple times on the page if it's long, that way, when they made that decision, they can go ahead and click on it. They don't have to scroll up and rethink their decision. This is the same for a sales page that you might have. Maybe you're a coach or a course creator and you have a long sales page. We want to have that call to action button multiple times throughout the page to make sure that when they're ready and have made that decision, they can go ahead and click it.

Carrie Saunders: 4:10

And another thing that I have also seen, too, is it's too hard to find because it blends into the page. So we want to make sure that our call to action button is typically that third color that you're going to have for your branding and it's the color that you use when you have an action you want them to take, so it's a color that stands out a bit more from the rest of your colors. It could be your secondary color too, but many times it's a third color and you have two colors, like in your logo, so we want that color to stand out. Think about Amazon, for example. You know, when you see that orange button, it's an add to cart button and you don't really see much other orange on the on the page Other than that orange button. There's no other buttons other than add to cart that are orange, and that is a you know, a clear indicator that that is what we're going to do. We're going to be adding to cart, and you'll see this throughout other major websites too, where that button to add the product or add the service to their cart is a different color.

Carrie Saunders: 5:05

So we want to make sure it's a color that stands out, that you know isn't glaringly, you know works with your brand colors, but it still stands out and sticks out in their mind and they can easily skim and find it and see it and they're not trying to look through, you know, similar colored fonts or text or to find the button that they need. And what if you haven't earned that click yet? So another mistake I've seen is visitors won't click unless they trust you and understand your value. So we want to make sure that your copy your testimonials or your content above the call to action answers the question what's in it for me? So you want to build up to that call to action button. You want to get to a place where they have trusted you and they understand your product or service and they want to take the next step. So you want to make sure you have led them towards that next step. It's kind of like dating before we get married, right? You don't want to just say marry me right away, you want to, you know, have those dating steps before that. You know that commitment of buying something from you. So make sure that your copy your testimonials and your content above the call to action. Reinforce what you're going to get with that call to action button.

Carrie Saunders: 6:18

And there's some psychology between a great call to action button. We want to tap into emotions, urgency, curiosity and relief, and you want to do this obviously in an ethical way. But very likely your products or services solve a pain point or provide some sort of fun or value to the person's life. So you're going to want to tap into those emotions when you're creating your call to actions to help them really connect and feel that next step is important to them. Give them a reason to click now. Don't make it too vague. Tell them what they're going to get right away and the benefits they're going to get from your services or your products. So a call to action copy that uses first person point of view yes, I want this tends to perform better than a third person point of view. So consider that when you're redoing your call to actions as putting it in a first person point of view too.

Carrie Saunders: 7:11

So here are some simple call to action changes and tweaks that you can make today. So I want you to use contrasting colors for the buttons. Like we said, it's a really good idea to use that third brand color. It's special and it's meant for call to action buttons. Only for your call to actions, you might want to add microcopy or a little text underneath for reinsurance, like no spam, unsubscribe at any time, for example, if you're doing a newsletter subscription button, or we won't share your information with anyone else. We hate spam too. You know, use some re-encouraging kind of like you know, the whisper on the shoulder type of words underneath your call to action button too, and you can test different call to actions, like get started, save my spot, see pricing, take the tour. So these are some action oriented type of words that we can use on our call to actions and test them out. You know, try a specific type for a month and then you can switch it up. Or, if your software allows it, do A-B testing on it, where it presents half the people one way and the other half the people the other way, so that you can then determine what really speaks to your audience a bit more.

Carrie Saunders: 8:22

This is not a set it and forget it. This is something you're going to probably want to review pretty regularly. So I challenge you after you get done listening to this episode today, I want you to look at your website today and ask yourself would you click that button If you were a cold visitor, somebody that didn't know anything about you or your business, would you click that button? Better yet, you can ask a friend or colleague or somebody who's similarly in your space but doesn't quite know your business very well would they click that button? What questions come to their head before they click that button, so that you can make sure you've answered those questions so that they're ready to click that button.

Carrie Saunders: 9:01

Your website shouldn't be confusing, overwhelming or, worse, silent. Small changes to your call to action can lead to big changes in your conversion. So I challenge you to take some of these tips today and apply it to your website and see how much your conversion rate improves on your website. If you love this episode, I'd love for you to rate and review on your favorite podcast player and share it with a business friend who's stuck on their website and needs help as well. And we will see you next week.