Are Your Call To Actions Not Working?
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Use A/B Tests To Boost Your Click-Through Rate
One of the easiest ways to tell if your website, content and ad strategy are working is to look at the click-through rate (CTR). Basically, it lets you know how many people are visiting your website, blog or social media ad and clicking through to the landing page.
It’s a great way to see if your potential customers like what you’re doing and are engaged enough to learn more about you by downloading more content or filling out a contact form.
So what if you check out your CTR and it’s low? How do you go about fixing it?
Set Up A Targeted A/B Test
Improving your CTR starts with setting up an A/B test. You want to pick two clear variables to test and then set up a randomized test over a set period of time. It’s important to only change ONE variable at a time in order to best discern which element of the ad/post/page is underperforming. Most website platforms have features that make this easy or you can work with a marketing company to create a custom feature for your site that randomly places different color CTA buttons on the site.
It’s best to set up your A/B tests for at least two weeks so you can enough data to analyze and act on.
Make A Color Connection With Your CTAs
One of the best things to test is the color of your call to action (CTA) buttons. You’ll find CTA buttons at the bottom of webpages, blogs, social media ads – anywhere you want to encourage your prospects to take the next step in the buying process.
As humans, we all respond subconsciously to different colors. Blue gives us a cool, soothing feeling and is a great fit for a CTA button for HVAC services. Red makes us think of hunger, so you’ll often see it on restaurants.
Using the right color can help give your prospects the push they need to click the CTA, boosting your CTR.
Here’s a quick example of how to A/B test using different colors on a CTA:
Let’s use a landscape company that wants to boost their mulch sales and service. Right now they have a plain black button that says “Buy Mulch.” For the A/B test, the second CTA uses a bright, vibrant green that says “Mulch My Yard”.
The green connects with the lush healthy landscape your prospects want, enticing them to click-through and fill out a contact form.
Want proof color choice matters? Software maker SAP found that using the color orange in their CTAs boosted conversions 32.5%, while marketing automation company Performable found that using red in their CTAs improved conversions by 21%, according to an article on quicksprout.com.
Choosing The Right Words
The other thing to think about when A/B testing is the wording of your CTA button. While it may not seem that difficult to pick out three to five words, it can be surprisingly hard to get the right message to encourage people to click through.
Let’s take another look at our landscape company example. The first button says “Buy Mulch.” But this isn’t really clear. Is the company just selling mulch? Who’s putting it down? Can you get more than just mulch from this company?
By making it seem like the company just sells mulch, they’re missing out on the opportunity to sell their full range of landscaping services.
By testing a new CTA button that says “Mulch My Yard,” the company is promoting their landscaping services, a much more lucrative sale than simply selling mulch.
Personalizing your CTAs also makes a huge difference in conversion rates. According to an article on protocol80.com, ContentVerve improved their conversion rate by 90% when they used “Start my free trial” vs. “Start your free trial.”
What If My CTR Is High But I’m Not Making Sales?
While it seems like all you need is a high CTR to boost your sales, it’s not really that simple. You can have a high CTR but once prospects are landing on that next page, they may not be following through.
Often you see this when a prospect clicks through to a contact us page but doesn’t fill it out. There may be too many fields to fill out, a required comments section or other deterrent. Just like you tested your CTA buttons, you can A/B test your landing pages.
Taking the time to A/B test and fine tune your CTAs can dramatically improve your CTR. Test on your own or talk to a marketing professional to ensure your website, blog or ad campaigns are optimized to deliver the results your business needs.
February 2, 2018
