Tired of running conversion rate optimization experiments that barely get you any results? Wish you could find out which type of CTA would work best for your Shopify store and get you the most sales? We’re helping you pick the most effective Call-to-action for your store right here!
What is a CTA?
A call to action (CTA) is essentially something on your site that tells your visitors and shoppers what you want them to do, what they should click on, and what they should purchase. It’s basically an invitation to gain value from you and turn into leads or customers.
The whole point of the CTA is to turn a visitor into a customer in the fastest way possible. They minimize friction in the buying process, guide shoppers towards taking the right action, reduce cart abandonment, and help in closing the sale.
The CTA generally has very short ad copy along with a graphic that urges visitors to click a link that takes them further down the buyer journey.
What makes a good CTA?
Okay, it’s time to hit you with our CTA best practices. Here we go:
Make your CTA stand out
Your CTA won’t be too effective if your shoppers can’t see it in the first place. If you don’t want them to filter it out as an ambient element, you need to use contrasting colors that make your CTA pop and catch your shoppers’ attention. You might even want to leave some extra whitespace around your CTA and ensure that everything on your webpages guides your shoppers towards the CTA.
Display urgency
If your customers feel like they can put off a purchase indefinitely, that’s what they’re going to do. And when they do that, there’s a pretty high chance that they’ll never end up making the purchase at all. You’d want to play on the scarcity and urgency principles here, showing your shoppers that a product is low on supply or that you’re running a limited-time offer.
Use the right CTA phrases
Not all call to action phrases are equally effective. You’d want to use the ones that have been proven to work.
A phrase like ‘Learn more’ could be used when you’re selling something new that your customers don’t know much about yet. It’s a soft CTA to pull your customers in before the you go on to ask for the close.
If you’re asking them to sign up for a loyalty program, you could use a phrase like ‘Join for free’ since the word ‘free’ is an eyeball magnet.
‘Add to Cart’ is a powerful CTA because it asks your customers to do something that feels natural to them. It’s also useful since it doesn’t ask for an actual commitment like making a purchase just yet.
‘Buy now’ is a CTA that you’d want to use after the shopper has understood the benefits of your product and would be ready to make a purchase.
Always be testing
You want to keep experimenting with different CTA texts, colors, and types. You’d also want to experiment with the copy before and after the CTA to change the context that the CTA is in and find out what’s most effective for your Shopify store.
7 types of CTAs to use for your Shopify store
Simple buttons
These are your basic CTA buttons that appear next to or below your products. They could have text along the lines of ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Add to Cart’ and are very straightforward. These are some of the most essential CTAs for your Shopify store… and they’re really easy to build too.
Banner CTAs
A banner CTA can be used to pull your visitors’ attention towards, discounts, promotional offers, new releases, etc. and get them to take action on these offers or check out your new (range of) products.
But if the design of the banner does not go in line wiht your overall store’s design and color palette, you run the risk of the banner coming across as a random display ad for another site and your customers ignoring your banner CTA because of that.
If you build these CTAs well, you can use them pretty much anywhere; on your homepage, your blog, your product pages, landing pages and even your blogs; and it won’t even affect your visitor experience negatively.
Pop-up CTAs
Pop-up CTAs are a good way to get your users’ attention, but you might find yourself getting something extra along with their attention - their frustration. They interrupt your users while they’re trying to do something… and when they take up the entire screen, they could even be very effective at getting your visitors to cuss at your website… not the best thing for a CTA to do.
Conversion triggers
These are CTAs that you get when you deploy an Engati chatbot on your Shopify store. The chatbot essentially shoots out a promotional message with a discount code and CTA when your visitors land on a webpage, scroll through it, spend a certain amount of time on it, are about to exit the page, or even when they add or remove a product from their carts.
These CTAs capture your shoppers’ attention in manner similar to pop-up CTAs due to their dynamic nature, but they aren’t annoying since they are less intrusive and do not get in the customer’s way when they’re trying to do anything on your store.
They’re possibly the most effective CTAs since they hit your shoppers with a bit of temptation at the right time when they are considering making a purchase.
Sidebar CTAs
This is exactly what it sounds like, a CTA located on the sidebar of your store. It’s a bit like a banner CTA in that it isn’t in the main body of your webstore, making it possible for you to use them all across your website without it interrupting your users and getting in their way when they’re trying to do something.
But there’s a downside to such CTAs - they’re essentially ambient CTAs on the periphery of your online store. This means that your visitors won’t really focus on them too much and might just filter them out when they’re focusing on whatever they’re doing on your website.
To combat that, you’d want your sidebar CTAs to stand out so that they can catch your visitors’ attention. You’d also want to consider the fact that most people read in an F formation, starting from the left, so if you position your sidebar CTA to the right of your webpages, they might just end up getting ignored by your visitors. If you’re going to use a sidebar CTA, keep it to the left, and try making it stand out (without being too loud… you want it to stand out, but not scream in the visitors’ faces).
CTAs backed with social proof
Social proof is one of the biggest drivers of purchase decisions. People trust the opinions of their peers and other customers far more than they trust the claims made by a company. That’s why placing a testimonial along with a CTA can be extremely effective at driving sales.
But you got to make sure that the testimonial looks real. Customers have enough trouble trying to differentiate between actual testimonials and cooked up ones that companies just publish to make themselves look good. You want to make sure that your customers can see that your testimonials are the real deal. Mention the customer’s name and, if relevant, their job title along with the testimonial. You should also ask your customers whether they would allow you to display a picture of them along with the testimonial. Giving the testimonial a face makes it feel real and more believable.
Sneaky CTAs
These are CTAs that show up in places where your readers don’t expect to see them. But you need to make sure that the CTA is relevant to what they are doing at that time. For example, you could have your CTA placed strategically on your products page along with your other products, so that while they’re looking for a certain type of product, they see that you’re running a promotional offer for a very similar product or that you’ve just launched a new one.
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