Call-to-Action (CTA)

What is call-to-action (CTA)?

Call-to-Action (CTA) is a marketing term for encouragement for potential perspective, lead, or customers to perform required action. In most cases, CTA contains the most important value, a strong argument or provoking words to trigger people’s interest, curiosity, desire, resentment, or other senses that keep them engaged and make them go down the funnel to the purchase.

Most frequently used CTA types in ecommerce

• Subscription — used to persuade visitors to subscribe to newsletters and share their emails.
• Share — motivates to distribute information across social media platforms.
• Read/learn more — offers to open a required page or go down the page to discover more details on the topic this CTA is connected with.
• Try — usually, it’s an invitation to taste a free version of a product or service.
• Buy — the most straightforward CTA pushing potential customers to close the deal.
• Emotional connection — this type can be rather called a slogan, as it’s used on banners and images that represent something metaphoric, like an idea or vision. It aims to create an emotional connection with the audience and build loyalty through common values. Widely used offline advertisement, political activities, and main banners in online stores.

The rules of a good CTA

• Start with an action word: call, buy, read, push, click.
• Specify a timeframe: today, now, immediately.
• Give people a hit what they can miss if they don’t take action: 50% off, $100 coupon, free month.
• Use blue, green, or red color for CTA buttons if it doesn’t conflict with the color scheme of your store.
• Make it visible not only with color, but with layout. The CTA should lay separately from the main content and be easily distinguishable.
• Fight the fears. Add short small-print text that neutralizes the strongest fears of the audience: no credit card required, 30-day money back guarantee, takes 3 minutes to complete.