Here are some real life examples of awesome calls-to-action (CTA) that can inspire your own designs. Take a look at what some popular B2B B2C and ecommerce brands are doing to entice their visitors to click through to landing pages shopping carts or just to interact in a more meaningful way with their site.
Jetsetter
Jetsetter is an invitation-only travel community offering access to exclusive travel deals.
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Many calls-to-action suffer poor conversion rates because despite following design best practices the writing doesn’t clearly display the value of clicking through to the next page. This ‘Plan a trip like this’ CTA rocks because it so simply displays that oft-sought after value. This CTA capitalizes on the positive feelings surrounding taking such a trip and gives the visitor the opportunity to do just that — plan that trip.
Another wonderful but easily overlooked detail in this CTA is the language on the button; the inclusion of the word ‘like’ implies that the trip doesn’t need to be exactly the same as the one described above but can be customized to fit the visitor’s needs.
Intuit
Intuit is a software company that provides financial software and services for businesses and consumers.
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It looks like orange is a popular CTA button colour. That button stands out from the rest of its site’s design and calls the attention of the viewer to the free trial. The effectiveness of this tactic is compounded as the language on the button aligns with the language in the headline.
The headline is also action oriented making it clear what you can do on the page. The three bullet points then clearly explain the value of the free trial so visitors want to click and there’s one image aligned with each point of value — another call-to-action best practice.
One creative trick Intuit is also employing is the use of extra white space around the call-to-action. This tactic along with the fact that it’s the biggest CTA on the page helps draw attention to the free trial and simultaneously attract and instruct visitors on what they should do next.
Yapta
Continuing the travel theme Yapta helps people track changes in flight and hotel prices and get refunds on airline tickets.
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When it’s not clear what actions can be performed on a page and there’s no perceived connection between the CTA copy and CTA buttons site visitors quickly go rogue trying to find what they’re looking for. These calls-to-action solve for that common contextualization problem. Notice how the copy images and buttons all work together to guide the visitor:
- The parenthetical phrases provide a chronology – Am I in the pre-purchase or post-purchase stage?
- The images give a theme – Am I here for flights, hotels, or a refund?
- The copy explains – What can I do on this site to track flights, hotels, and refunds?
- The buttons instruct – Click through to find what you’re looking for.
Every call-to-action aligns with the proper stage in the sales process, and makes it very clear what actions can and should be performed on this page. Yapta gets bonus points for keeping these calls-to-action above the fold and using the contrasting colors orange and grey to draw attention to the right places.
Zynga
Zynga is a developer of browser-based games intended for social networking sites.
Either way, Zynga makes up for any distraction by making it crystal clear what action they want visitors to perform. Here’s how:In the game of most prominently positioned call-to-action, Zynga wins by a landslide. And it also gets an honorable mention for successfully shirking some call-to-action best practices, namely that this is not the traditionally de-cluttered CTA for which many marketers strive in order to decrease bounce rate. But, they know their audience, and I’d venture a guess that this type of imagery is not distracting to gamers.
- The ‘Join The Fun’ button is the last thing to load on the page, so your eye naturally settles on that area of the page.
- The white backlight behind ‘Times Square’ is the brightest part of the page, drawing your attention to the CTA button.
- The Times Square text effect brings the text towards the visitor, again, right by the CTA button.
- If you’re worried the ‘I Love Play’ button in the top right would be a distraction, don’t worry; it’s not clickable!
Like Intuit, Zynga is also making use of lots of white space around this image (not pictured) to emphasize this ‘Join The Fun’ CTA. And finally, notice how small the social media follow buttons are underneath this banner. While Zynga’s call-to-action isn’t what we traditionally encounter, it does effectively display an important CTA best practice: have a defined purpose for your visitor, build your page around that purpose, and make it easy for your visitor to execute that purpose.