Andy Black
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I came off a video call with a client this week.
I’d been building out their Google Ads campaigns to get website visitors more likely looking to give him their money.
Numbers are going the right way and he asked what the next low hanging fruit was.
I had a quick look and saw his conversion rate was a lot lower on mobile compared to desktop and tablet (for the visitors I’d been sending in the past couple of weeks).
“Hmmm... let’s see how your homepage looks on a mobile.”
(Yes, I’m sending visitors to the homepage, and yes, I hadn’t really bothered to look at it.)
So I open the page in Chrome, right-click, and select “inspect”. I can see the page (kinda) how it would look on a smartphone.
“The video on the homepage may be slowing things down. I’d get your web guys to check it’s as small as possible.”
“The headline matches what most of the visitors were searching for on Google, and the headline of the ad... that’s good.”
I scroll up and down the page from top to bottom.
“What’s the main thing you want people to do?”
He gets me to scroll up and points out three blocks that people can click on.
“Oh, I didn’t even see they were clickable. They don’t look clickable.”
“Ahhh.” he says.
“Make them look like clickable buttons.”
“Also... those headlines in each section. They read wrong.”
For confidentially let’s pretend the client was selling cruise trips.
The three sections that I didn’t realise they wanted me to click on had section headings (like):
I told him the first one was good, but the second two weren’t.
My advice to him (as well as making them look clickable), was to put “Click here to ...” before each section heading.
This would make them read:
That blatantly doesn’t read right does it?
Change it so it reads right:
Now remove the “Click here to” part:
Now they at least read right. This should work better already.
Now try and improve the middle CTA of “Get full service”. What does that actually mean? Can you rewrite that better in a handful of words?
So there you go - a mathematician’s guide to writing call-to-action statements.
(PS: Notice how I didn’t once mention clicks or traffic. Conversion rate optimisation 101 is to stop talking about clicks and traffic.)
I’d been building out their Google Ads campaigns to get website visitors more likely looking to give him their money.
Numbers are going the right way and he asked what the next low hanging fruit was.
I had a quick look and saw his conversion rate was a lot lower on mobile compared to desktop and tablet (for the visitors I’d been sending in the past couple of weeks).
“Hmmm... let’s see how your homepage looks on a mobile.”
(Yes, I’m sending visitors to the homepage, and yes, I hadn’t really bothered to look at it.)
So I open the page in Chrome, right-click, and select “inspect”. I can see the page (kinda) how it would look on a smartphone.
“The video on the homepage may be slowing things down. I’d get your web guys to check it’s as small as possible.”
“The headline matches what most of the visitors were searching for on Google, and the headline of the ad... that’s good.”
I scroll up and down the page from top to bottom.
“What’s the main thing you want people to do?”
He gets me to scroll up and points out three blocks that people can click on.
“Oh, I didn’t even see they were clickable. They don’t look clickable.”
“Ahhh.” he says.
“Make them look like clickable buttons.”
“Also... those headlines in each section. They read wrong.”
For confidentially let’s pretend the client was selling cruise trips.
The three sections that I didn’t realise they wanted me to click on had section headings (like):
- Build my cruise
- Full service
- Cruise finder
I told him the first one was good, but the second two weren’t.
My advice to him (as well as making them look clickable), was to put “Click here to ...” before each section heading.
This would make them read:
- Click here to build your cruise
- Click here to full service
- Click here to cruise finder
That blatantly doesn’t read right does it?
Change it so it reads right:
- Click here to build your cruise
- Click here to get full service
- Click here to find a cruise
Now remove the “Click here to” part:
- Build your cruise
- Get full service
- Find a cruise
Now they at least read right. This should work better already.
Now try and improve the middle CTA of “Get full service”. What does that actually mean? Can you rewrite that better in a handful of words?
- Get concierge service?
- Contact us?
- Let us build your dream cruise?
So there you go - a mathematician’s guide to writing call-to-action statements.
- Put “Click here to” in front of it.
- Write it so it’s clear and enticing.
- Remove the “Click here to”.
- Test it.
(PS: Notice how I didn’t once mention clicks or traffic. Conversion rate optimisation 101 is to stop talking about clicks and traffic.)
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