What to Name the Action Button
Feb 26 2009
One would think that the words used on a button are a no brainer. Things like: “Buy Now”, “Shop Now”, Learn More, “Read >>”, “See It”, and like this example “Go Now” would not matter much. But I want to advance the idea with all of you that they do. They must.
Now I cannot here tell you what is the best, but it has been eating at me lately to try to understand what verb combination would perform best in different emails? Would one phrase work better than another with Business to Business Vs. Business to Consumer? What about in social media? Do we want to hear something different in all of these case OR am I just giving this too much thought?
I would love to hear from some of you on this as I am sure that you have experiences with your email marketing programs that could support a best practice. Now here is the hard part. Maybe it works for you, or maybe you have not experimented with this button language idea enough yet to know.
Does it make a difference not only in the click, but in the conversion? Is there a way to properly set expectations from the click of a button with that individual clicking the mouse? I think that deep down inside we are setting expectations on both sides here.
Sound off and let me know your thoughts please.
- Posted by Dylan Boyd
- @dtboyd
- at 8:00 AM
Published in Behavioral Marketing, Best Practices, Conversion, E-Mail Marketing, eMail Marketing Optimization
(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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February 26th, 2009 at 10:48 am
A demo I saw from 8seconds.be showed some interesting results of some a/b tests he had run on many types of email and web content.
On one site being tested, e.g.:
“> Get it Now” converted twice as well as “Get it Now” in a case.
blue button converted better than orange.
there were a lot of other cases but i can’t remember them all right now. i think the most important thing he showed me was that you really have to do a lot of testing to ensure high validity of the results. aka it’s not a fluke.
i don’t know about you, but im not in the game to gamble.
February 26th, 2009 at 11:28 am
I’m inclined to use call-to-actions that indicate the actual thing that’s on the other side instead of the means of getting there.
In the example above, I’d go with “See the shoes” or “Buy the shoes”
Mechanical instructions always strike me as meeting notices that would say “Turn Door Handle” instead of “Attend”
February 26th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
I think it really depends on the creative, both copy and design. The CTA should have the same tone as the email. And the design should provide enough real-estate for the button to contain a meaningful CTA, like Chris mentioned above “See the shoes”.
February 27th, 2009 at 7:20 am
Agree with Tim – I think that good CTAs tie in with the rest of the email’s creative.
However, they should *not* be dependent on the creative, because not everyone will read/the creative. So if your CTA makes no sense to the subscriber unless s/he has read the creative, you’re going to cut some people out.
A good CTA should be able to stand on its own *and* complement the rest of the creative.
February 28th, 2009 at 5:10 am
I didn’t test this, but in 1 particular mail, I had the impression that preparing the clicker for the action we wanted him to take on the next page for receiving a reward (it wasn’t buying something) was more successful then just mentioning the reward.
March 2nd, 2009 at 2:32 am
I love CTA discussions, there’s always so many different opinions about them. Probably because there’s no “real” Good Practise for them since it often depends on the audience and subject matter.
I think in your example, colloquial language would probably work really well. “Check it out”, but not too friendly obviously (Check it out, dude!).
However, you’ll never EVER get to the answer unless we test our emails more. Christ knows nearly every ESP has the ability to test your email sends. When questions like “which CTA will work best in this email?” are raised, the answer should always be “test it!”.
March 8th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
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