8 examples of CTAs that Should Inspire You to Assess Your Own and Make Some Changes

“If you build it they will click?” Not likely. Your visitors do not have some instinctive urge to click a button just because it is there. They have to want to click that button because there is some value in doing it. The questions to ask yourself are as follows: Have you created enough value or benefits? Is your CTA really “connected” to the conversion? Are you providing “no-risk” for clicking that button? Have you told the visitor exactly what to do? Have you established some form of urgency? Are your CTA’s taking advantage of the psychology of conversions? While no single CTA will probably meet all of these criteria, the more that can be incorporated, the better. Here are 8 example CTAs that are getting conversions, with an explanation of why they do.

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Why you should pay attention to microcopy on your website and how to make it work

The great majority of advice for digital marketers and content writers is about how to write incredible landing pages, engaging content and killer headlines. And those things are incredibly important - don't get me wrong. But, the good web marketers know that there's a third category of text that's so tiny (literally) that most writers ignore it, yet so significant that it can help boost conversion rates and customer loyalty. It's microcopy. Those tiny snippets of words that ask people to fill out a form or tell them that there was an error. For those out there that think that microcopy doesn't matter consider this: microcopy is sometimes the only actual interaction between you and your readers/customers. It's where you ask your customers to fill something out, explain to them what went wrong and guide them on…

Choice is a good thing, right?

Let us take you back to the grand old days of grocery shopping, when butter came weighed out in a scoop, the grocer knew your children’s names and your favourite cut of beef, and a brand was something you applied to a cow’s bum (not too different to shopping in Lidl today, one might imagine). Limited choice made shopping a simpler experience in those days ('You can have any colour as long as it's black'), but surely the huge array of brands, products and quantities available in today’s supermarkets make shopping a more satisfying experience? After all, what brunette with frizzy hair and split ends could argue against a shampoo product made specifically to meet her needs?

What's the impact of choice on consumer purchasing and ecommerce?

However, as previously demonstrated in our series of articles on digital psychology, the…

A summary of 7 principles of persuasion

There is increasing interest in applying the principles of Psychology to Digital Marketing. According to Kath Pay of Cloud.IQ, the benefits of incorporating consumer psychology into your marketing are two- fold: "First, applying the principles of the Psychology of Persuasion can assist your customer in their journey to achieve their objective i.e. buying a product or service from you, and secondly, you, as the marketer, benefits from facilitating more successful conversions". Kath has a new free download 'Leveraging Psychology in Digital Marketing' explaining how the relationship between buyer psychology and behaviour can help marketers optimise the online customer journey. It covers the principles and examples from landing pages and email marketing on how you can improve conversion efficiency as part of inbound marketing. This infographic is a taster of the book's themes to help you get under the skin of your customers through psychological techniques including those focussed on…

Examples showing why customer loyalty may be a self-fulfilling prophecy

We’re funny creatures, us apes. Take decision-making, for instance. Before we make a decision, such as buying an expensive item, we’re often beset by doubt and uncertainty. We might check out price comparison websites, ask friends and family for advice, or explore numerous models and variations of a product, all before committing to the purchase. But once we have committed… once we have handed over our credit card details and gone through with the transaction… suddenly all that uncertainty drops away like water off a duck’s back. You can almost feel the relief as you wallow in the glow of your choice’s superiority, even though, in reality, the products that you left sitting on the shelf were probably just as capable as the item you selected. It’s not just buying decisions that are affected in this way. …

Did gamification fail to live up to the hype or is there still  untapped potential?

It wasn’t long ago that leading experts were making a big fuss about it. In 2012, Gartner, for instance, predicted that by today the use of gamified services for consumer goods marketing and customer retention would become as important as Facebook. The research house also forecast that more than 70% of Global 2000 organisations would have at least one gamified application by 2015, and that the gamification industry would be worth US$2.8 billion by 2016. Big numbers. Big predictions. But also, as it transpires, a big miscalculation. It’s fair to say that the business world circa 2015 isn’t in thrall to gamification in the way that Gartner predicted, and the research house is now estimating that market penetration is a measly 5-10%. Indeed, an Infosys study into gamification in…

The essentials of writing excellent content

Are you beginning to wonder about how effective content writing is? Maybe you’ve written some outstanding pieces that received only a lukewarm response. All those long hours of research on problem solving for your niche, then writing, editing and polishing posts for a handful of shares. It’s a bit worrisome, isn’t it? That’s because there’s a popular misconception about writing great content. The actual writing of the content is only half of the formula for success. You can write absolutely brilliant posts that are on topic, providing top-notch solutions for your audience - but if you don’t have a strategy for how to consistently produce and market it, it’s not going to do you much good. So, today we’re going to focus on the entire picture, not just one segment of it. Let’s start with some of the primary elements of writing excellent content for small businesses, then cover…

Examples showing the value of social proof in boosting email subscriptions

If you’ve ever watched sitcoms, you probably have a good idea what 'canned laughter' is - it’s a track of 'people laughing played in the background' every time there is something funny on the screen. This way TV producers can alter our perception of a particular scene as its perceived to be funnier. It’s not a secret trick psychologists have been silent about, but one of behavioural patterns we all follow intuitively. It’s called social proof, and it can throw a whole new light on your email marketing operations. Social proof is a phenomenon occurring when people undergo a process of decision-making. Our brains are programmed to automatically follow other people’s behaviour. Once we notice a large group of individuals have made certain decisions, it is very likely that we will perceive…

 Best practice principles and examples showing how testing colour can boost conversion

In my previous post exploring research and examples showing the principles of Colour Psychology, I illustrated how colour choices can impact user engagement and conversion. There is so much to share on this topic, that in this follow-up I look into more detail on the use of colour for your Call To Actions (CTAs). When you want visitors to out-click your competition, some people suggest that you do things with big, fancy names like use conversion-centered design principles. It would be a whole lot simpler to say 'design your pages so people are unable to avoid clicking where you want them to.' One of the best ways to do this is to employ the proper combination of colour and contrast. The colour elements of a landing page work together to immediately capture the attention, and direct the visitor’s eye to that all…

Research and examples showing how the principles of Colour Psychology apply to Persuasion Marketing

Just about everyone has a favourite colour, (and a few not-so-favourite ones), and as such, most of us realize that colour has an unusual ability to influence how we feel.  Armed with the knowledge that colour can be a persuasive force in consumer decision-making, Professor Satyendra Singh from the University of Winnipeg asserts that retailers are always attempting to use the influence of colour to their benefit (Impact of colour on marketing, Management Decision, 44 (6), 783-789). This may involve techniques as simple as targeting consumers of a specific gender based on product colour, to using specific colours to subliminally entice consumers to buy: see Professor Okan Akcay in 'Marketing to teenagers: The influence of colour, ethnicity and gender,' from International Journal of Business and Social Science, 3 (22), 10-18. Available…