How To Boost The Conversion Rates Of Your Call-to-Action Buttons

It is possible to lose sales because of a poor call-to-action button. Even if your call to action button is not off-putting, it may still tip the balance against a sale. Below are six tips that explain ways to boost your conversion rates by simply getting your call-to-action buttons correct.

1 – When pixilation is a problem

A vital part to any online purchase is trust. People are unlikely to buy from shops in the street if they do not trust them. They are certainly going to avoid buying from places online if they do not trust them since the online world is far less stable. People always feel that they may walk into a real store and demand their money back, whereas online people are aware there is nothing they can do if the seller does not hand over the goods.

How does this factor into pixilated call-to-action buttons? Basically, the quality of a website is a big factor in how trustworthy it is. If a website looks poorly made, looks rushed or looks old fashioned then people will not buy from it. Even very simple designs such as the one used by Amazon are trustworthy just so long as they do not look cheap, poorly made or old fashioned. You must keep this in mind when creating your website as a whole.

Things such as a pixilated call-to-action button send out the signal that the website is very poorly made. It suggests that the image it uses has been incorrectly sized and that the web master has not bothered to fix it or get a better one. It is very off-putting and very likely to cost you the sale.

2 – When your button does not appear

We all know how images may not appear on a page, as that is why we add ALT text, but few people consider the fact that their call-to-action button may not appear. It may only happen once every fifty page-loads but if you get 500 people visiting your website per month then that is ten people you are putting off before they even have chance to purchase. That is 120 sales you are potentially losing per year.

3 – Smaller and subdued is better

People who put big call-to-action buttons on their website are mistaken. They think that it makes them eye-catching; when in-fact it just makes them offensive to the eye. People are already looking at the screen, so there is no need to catch their eye (they are not looking at the screen from a moving bus). A small subdued button is all that is needed.

4 – Keep it simple

Overly complex graphics and buttons are a mistake. A bigger mistake is to have overly complex wording. ‘Buy now’€ works far better than ‘€œSave money by buying and clicking here.’€ Keep you button simple and more people will click on your call-to-action buttons. It is unlikely that the text on your button is going to ‘€œconvince’€ anyone of anything; it is a call-to-action not a persuasive point.

5 – Recognizable colors work better

You will kick yourself when you realize it, but have you noticed how common call to action colors are? How many ‘€œact now’€ buttons have you seen that are in red? Or ‘buy now’€ buttons that are in orange, yellow and even blue? Have you ever noticed how a shopping basket or checkout symbol is rarely purple, brown, black, etc? Surely if color did not matter then we would be seeing all the colors of the rainbow, and yet color choices seem to have a common theme.

The reason you keep seeing the same color is because people can trust colors they are used to. If you want to give people something they can trust then give them something they can relate to or recognize. This may be done by sticking to the usual colors. For example, the PayPal yellow and blue colors are now perfectly acceptable if you want to add a ‘but now’ symbol. Just be sure to use orange, yellow or blue. This is because if you try different colors then you will lose sales as a result.

6 – A recognizable graphic works better too

This works on the same principle as point number five and you can test it quite easily. Let’s say you offer a PayPal payment system for your products on your website. Try a page using the usual PayPal ‘buy now’ graphic on the call-to-action. Then try another page with a call-to-action symbol you invented yourself. You will find that the page with the self-created graphic is the one that sells the least. You can even use the same PayPal ‘buy now’€ colors if you like, and yet people will favor the pages with the PayPal symbol/graphic they recognize.

Give people graphics and symbols that they recognize on your call-to-action buttons and your call-to-action buttons will convert a lot better.