Why No One’s Clicking Your CTA (And How to Fix It)

You’ve created your offer. You’ve got your pages built. 

You’re even getting some traffic… 

But no one’s clicking your “Book Now,” “Buy Now,” or “Learn More” buttons. 

The problem? It’s probably your CTA—and that’s great news, because it’s one of the easiest things to fix. 

In this episode, I’ll walk you through: 

• Why people might be ignoring your calls to action 
• What makes a CTA clear, clickable, and compelling 
• And small tweaks that lead to big results 

I’ll also share a fun before-and-after story where a client changed 3 words in her CTA and saw a 40% bump in signups—without changing her offer at all. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Why Your Buttons Don’t Get Clicks
• 1:46 What Makes A CTA Compelling
• 2:49 Clear, Action-Oriented, Outcome-Driven
• 5:34 Placement, Contrast, And Repetition
• 6:35 Tiny Word Tweaks, Big Wins
• 8:49 One-Minute Homepage Audit
• 10:16 Course Mention And Closing

Transcript

Carrie Saunders: 0:49

You've created your website, you're getting traffic, but no one's really clicking on your buy now, book now, or learn more buttons. And the problem is it's probably your CTA, which is your call to action. And that's great news because it's one of the easiest things to fix. In this episode, I'll walk you through why people might be ignoring your calls to action, what makes a CTA clear, clickable, and compelling, and small tweaks to lead to big results. And I'll also share before and after story where a client changed three words in her call to action and saw a 40% bump in signups without changing her offer at all. So let's dive in. Struggling to turn website traffic into real sales, you're not alone and you don't have to figure it out all yourself. Welcome to Smarter Online Business, the podcast for course creators, coaches, and e-commerce entrepreneurs who want their websites to convert visitors into buyers without the tech overwhelm. I'm your host, Carrie Saunders, a website strategist and conversion expert with over 20 years of experience. Each episode delivers simple, proven strategies to help you generate more revenue and make your website your smartest sales tool. Welcome back to the podcast. Today we're talking about why no one's clicking on your call to actions button and how to fix it. So, why do CTAs sometimes get ignored, even when you feel like you're doing everything right? First off, what is the language that's on your CTA? Is it something like learn more? If it's something like that, then it's not motivating. It's very vague. What are they learning? We need to have our CTAs very, very specific and very action-oriented. Your CTA also might be buried. It might be too subtle or surrounded by distractions. So usually when we have brand colors, we have say three to four brand colors generally. What you want to do is use that third or fourth brand color, the one you don't use very often as your CTA. That helps it stand out. You also want don't want to uh surround your CTA with too much other distractions. We want to focus on that next step or that next action. And our visitors need clarity and context and a reason to click, something that's compelling to them. Why would they want to click? So remember that people skim, and if your button doesn't jump out and specifically explain them what they're going to get when they click on it, they're going to scroll right past it and completely ignore it. So then we've touched on a little bit on what is, you know, great call to action elements, but let's talk on that a little bit more. So we want to make sure we're very clear with our button actions. We want them to know exactly what will happen when they click. We also want to be very action-oriented. Start with a verb like get, download, or start. And as I'm recording this episode, I'm going to interject here for a second. Um, I'm recording this just after the Christmas holidays, and our boy cat Mac has been missing us. And obviously, we stop by and check on them when it's a non-business day. But if you hear him in this episode, that's gonna be why he thinks it's time for attention. All right, so let's get back into what makes a high converting call to action. First, we said clear. We'll go back over that since Mac got up on my desk and kind of interrupted me a little bit. We want to make sure they know what they're going to get when they click. We also want to be action-oriented, start with a verb, get, download, start, you know, start your free trial could be the what you want to do. Also, outcome driven. We want to tie to their desired transformation. Get my free plan, you know, something that's going to tie to what they're going to get in the transformation statement. We were when we're shopping online and when we're browsing the internet, we're kind of really selfish. I mean, people in general, um, our human nature is to be self-preservation and self-preserving. And so we're going to want to preserve ourselves and our time and our energy. And so we want to make sure it's very, very clear, or they're just going to scroll and buy. We also want to have it well placed. Is it above the fold? Which is again, I want to remind everybody that if you're not familiar with that term, it's what you see before you scroll. And then is it repeated strategically? Let's say you have a really long sales or product page. Is it your call to action button, your buy that product or book that call or join that course sprinkled throughout the long sales page? And we want to make sure it's not hidden at the bottom or all the way at the top. Again, if you had to scroll a pretty long way to get to all the information. So think about what they want, not what you want. What do they want out of whatever you sell or whatever you provide? And then there's a few called action tweaks that may make a really big difference. So this is one of the things I like to look at when we're evaluating a website for a poor performance. We want to look at some subtle wording changes. So let's take, for example, if you are a coach or a service provider, book now. What does that truly mean? What if we use language something like let's talk strategy or something along, you know, the outcome that you're going to help provide on that call. Even if it's a free info slash sales call, what are you going to give them on that call? So make sure you're doing that to get more leads. So I'm going to repeat those words again. So instead of something generic like book now, we want to use something along the lines like let's talk strategy or whatever that action is that you're going to provide. And then another example, we all want people on our email list, right? So instead of the word subscribe, we could change the words. And I'm as I'm saying this, I'm like, I need to double check my website. Uh, get weekly tips to grow smarter. That gets you a lot more opt-ins. They see what they're going to get from it. They're going to get weekly tips to grow smarter. And they're going to assume it's a business, probably if I'm just envisioning this on our website. You know, you would be a business learner when you go there, so you understand it's going to be help grow your business. And let's target another one, another example, which is pretty typical. Start free trial. What does that really mean? Let's be a bit more specific. Try it free for seven days, no credit card required. That is a lot less friction than start your free trial. When you say start your free trial, you have no idea if you're gonna have to get your credit card out. You have no idea how many forms you're gonna have to fill out or what is going to happen after that. But if you say try it free for seven days, no credit card required, that is a lot less friction. So that client I mentioned, she changed learn more to show me the plan. And conversions jumped over 40%. Well, she just changed those words. Again, learn more, very generic. Show me the plan is very specific to her website because there is other context on the website that they knew what kind of plan she was going to show them. So if you're working hard to grow your business but feel like your site isn't pulling its weight, start with your call to action. Our website should be our best sales person. It shouldn't just be a brochure website and just sit there and be something you kind of hand out every once in a while. It needs to be working for you. You've either put your own time and effort into it or you've paid somebody for the website. So if it's not working for you, you need to get it fixed so that it's not just wasted money and wasted time there. And changing our call to action is one of the quickest conversions wins that you can make is something we talk about in our course, the converting website. If you want more information on that, you can just go to smarteronline business.com forward slash TCW. And then that bonus tip I wanted to tell you. I want you to look at your homepage and pick one call to action button. I want you to ask yourself, is it clear what happens if they click it? Does this sound like something they want? Is it visible without scrolling? i.e., is it above the fold? Try rewriting it today and track your clicks for the next 7 to 14 days. You don't necessarily need a redesign, you just need better buttons. Again, this is something we talk about in our courses. Many times we just need small tweaks to our website to get them to really perform and do a much better job. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the E commerce Made Easy podcast. I hope this gave you a quick actionable tip you can do today. And if you can't do it today, please schedule it on your calendar to make sure that your website converts much better and brings you more sales. We will see you next week.