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Call-to-Action Examples that Really Work

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source: HubSpot

Think about all the times you’ve signed up for things in your life. Did you once download Evernote? Dropbox? Spotify? Maybe you’ve even taken a class on General Assembly. Each one of these signups is likely a result of an effective call-to-action (CTA). It’s really important to guide your visitors through the buying journey using strategic CTAs.

Think about it: If you hadn’t been drawn in by the copy or design of the CTA, or been guided so eloquently through your sign-up process, you would probably use a lot fewer apps and websites than you do now.

Here are a few different actions an audience can get called to carry out:

Sign up.
In this type of CTA, the audience might be invited to sign up for a free trial, an online course, a future event, or even a software product. It all depends on the CTAs context on an ad or website.

Subscribe.
This CTA doesn’t commit a person to a purchase. Rather, it invites them to receive updates from the company. “Subscribe” CTAs are common to company blogs, for which the business wants to develop a readership.

Try for free.
Nearly every company website has a free trial offer today. Each of them are CTAs of this variety, and they allow people to demo a product before deciding if it’s worth the cost to them.

Get started.
This CTA can drive a variety of behaviors for a company, from a free trial to virtual reality experience.

Learn more.
Sometimes, all you want is to give your potential customers a little more information so they’re prepared to buy something. That’s what this CTA is for.

Join us.
Do you manage an online community. Is your product built on collaboration between users? You might find yourself placing “join us” CTA somewhere on your website.

The above types of CTA all serve a designated purpose, but keep in mind the language they use can vary. And today, marketers everywhere have put some creative spins on their calls to action to generate the leads their businesses depend on.

These call-to-action examples are broken out into three categories:

  • Simple and effective CTAs
  • CTAs with great call-to-action phrases
  • CTAs that balance multiple buttons on one page

1. Evernote
CTA Button: Sign Up
“Remember Everything.” Visitors can immediately understand that message the moment they land on this page. The design on Evernote’s website makes it super simple for users to see quick benefits of using the app and how to actually sign up to use it. Plus, the green color of the main and secondary CTA buttons is the same green as the headline and the Evernote logo, all of which jump off the page.

evernote-cta

2. Dropbox
CTA Button: Sign up for free
Dropbox has always embraced simple design with a lot of negative space. Even the graphics on their homepage are subtle and simple.

Thanks to that simple design and negative space, the blue “Sign up for free” call-to-action button stands out from everything else on the page. Since the CTA and the Dropbox logo are the same color, it’s easy for the visitor to interpret this CTA as “Sign up for Dropbox.” That’s one effective call-to-action.

dropbox cta

3. OfficeVibe
CTA Button: Subscribe
Here’s a slide-in call-to-action that caught my attention from OfficeVibe. While scrolling through a post on their blog, a banner slid in from the bottom of the page with a call-to-action to subscribe to their blog. The best part? The copy on the slide-in told me I’d be getting tips about how to become a better manager — and the post it appeared on was a post about how to become a better manager. In other words, the offer was something I was already interested in.

office-vibe-pop-up-CTA

4. Netflix
CTA Button: Join Free for a Month
One big fear users have before committing to sign up for something? That it’ll be a pain to cancel their subscription if they end up not liking it. Netflix nips that fear in the bud with the “Cancel anytime” copy right above the “Join Free for a Month” CTA. I’d venture a guess that reassurance alone has boosted signups. Also, you’ll notice again that the red color of the primary and secondary CTAs here match Netflix’s logo color.

netflix-cta

5. Square
CTA Button: Get Started
To achieve effective CTA design, you need to consider more than just the button itself. It’s also super important to consider elements like background color, surrounding images, and surrounding text.

Mindful of these additional design components, the folks at Square used a single image to showcase the simplicity of using their product, where the hovering “Get Started” CTA awaits your click. If you look closely, the color of the credit card in the image and the color of the CTA button match, which helps the viewer connect the dots of what to expect if/when they click.

square-cta

We hope you can see just how important little CTA tweaks can be. It’s a good idea to experiment with your CTAs.

Website Architecture Basics

Website Architecture Basics

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Methods for organizing your content

When building a new website, or redesigning an existing website, it is crucial to start with a review of the content architecture. The success of your website is heavily dependent upon how easy it is to find content and how it is organized.

As part of our series on Website Redesign principles, we’d like to share our methods for how to start what can seem like an overwhelming exercise. And the larger the website, the more daunting this can feel. We have 4 methods we use – 2 are good old pen/paper and the other 2 are digital.

Large Scale Paper & Post It Notes

For the visual thinker, this method is ideal and can easily be used for small as well as larger sites where you need to have an easy process for moving content around. The idea is to use a large sheet of paper for each section of the website. Then put each page title on a sticky note. With the spectrum of colors now available with sticky notes, you can easily color code types of content (i.e. secured content could be identified as a specific color, etc). You now have an easy way to see how your content is structured and if the balance between your sections is logical.

Large Scale Post It Notes

For deeper navigation, you can create sub-levels if needed (note the “Underwriting” section is separated out here):

Notecards

Notecards can be used in a similar way to the post it notes, but can also be helpful for identifying key information on each card such as image ideas, key information, functionality notes, etc. Cards are also ideal when splitting up the project with a team where different team members are managing full sections of the website.

Notecards

Visual Hierarchy

While there are several software programs for this type of visual hierarchy charting, PowerPoint is one of our favorite go-to applications for familiarity and ease of use. Creating a deeper level navigation structure is easily accommodated with this method as well. The options for notating variations and characteristics are endless using these digital tools. Just be sure to create a coding system that is easy to follow (for example, putting the secured pages in a different color box).

Here’s an example:

Visual Hierarchy

Worksheet Content Listing

Regardless of whether or not we use one of the above methods, we always setup a worksheet content listing eventually. While this method is more challenging for visual people to really get a sense of the website layout, it provides a means to record the crucial details. As we build the website pages, we will highlight which pages are completed and ready for our clients to review. Other notes such as whether the page is secured or if there are notes about specific layouts or content are also added.

Here’s an example:

Worksheet Content Listing

 

Building BLocks to a better Website Blog

Building Blocks to a Better Website

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Know your audience and identify your goals!

We know how exciting it can be to start a new website project. The creative juices start flowing and pretty soon you’ve got the whole website pictured in your mind. But if you skip over a very important step, you could be setting yourself up for failure. Take some time at the beginning of the project to really dig into the purpose, audience and objectives.

Purpose [objectives and goals of the project]

The first step in producing an effective website is to define its purpose.

• What do you want this project to accomplish?

• What are the primary business objectives, and long and short-term goals, for the website?

Audience [Who will visit and why?]

List as many potential site visitors as possible and what you feel to be their specific content interests.

• Who is likely to be interested in the content provided by your website?

• What do these visitors want to know and what do they want to do?

• What actions would you like them to take?

Content [What do you have to say and show?]

Identify the information that your target audience will find most interesting or useful.

• Does this information exist; if so, in what form? If not, how will it be developed?

• What visual assets (graphics, illustrations, photographs, charts/diagrams, logos, video, sound or other media) are available to support your content?

• Are there unique opportunities to present your content on the web that would be different from other media?

• Do you need assistance creating your content?

Brand Message [Marketplace Differentiation]

• Describe your organization in one or two sentences.

• Describe the concept, product or service this site is intended to provide or to promote.

Design [Tone and Personality]

What image should the site reflect? Is there a strong company identity, brand or unique market position that should be conveyed?

Functionality [Interactive Features / Business Process]

Other than content, information to be read or downloaded, is there any type of user-focused activity, interaction or business process that could be placed online?

Competition [Who is online?]

Direct competition

• Are any of your direct local competitors on the web? Have you visited and evaluated their sites?

List who they are and what you like, or dislike, about their web presence.

• Go to a search engine and input the key words you think will assist you in locating websites similar to yours.

• List the Key Words you used below along with a short list of the web sites you found interesting (from a design, content and/or functional perspective).

General

• List any example websites you feel make the best use of the medium and why? Are there specific examples, on any website, of design, image, content, functionality or audience focus that you feel are particularly well executed?

Success [ROI / return on investment]

• What are the business or marketing/communication goals that must be met?

• What factors will “make” or “break” your investment of time, money and other resources?

• How will you measure the success of the website?

Assessment [evaluation of your current site]

• What are the strengths and weaknesses of your current website?

• Are there specific websites you feel are good models of a successful site?

If you need guidance, give us a shout. We’re here to help!

How People Really View Websites

How People View Websites

To create the right visual hierarchy, you need to understand how our eyes process information.

Top left corner gets the attention first

When users land on your site, their eye path starts from the upper left corner and moves on from there. According to this eye-tracking study by Eyequant, these areas get the most attention:

Top left corner

Check your site and see what you have in these zones. Move the value proposition to the top left zone. Yes, there can be exceptions, but use this as a starting point and test from there.

Are you familiar with the Gutenberg diagram? It describes a general pattern the eyes move through when looking at (usually text-heavy) content. It fits this zoning conclusion pretty well, with the exception of the bottom right area.

gutenberg-diagram

Image credit

The fourth, bottom right terminal area is where you should place your call-to-action. Note that this is not some universal truth, but a good starting point.

People read in F-patterns

Most people don’t read, they scan. Eye-tracking visualizations show that users often read website content in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe.

This heat-map image shows where visitors look first. This is why you want your value proposition in the top and why your menu should be either top horizontal or on the left, vertical.

f_reading_pattern_eyetracking

Image Credit

Use visibly bigger introductory paragraphs for improved attention

Make introductory paragraphs in boldface or larger font size. Keep the paragraph line lengths short and in a single column – that’s how people are used to reading text.

How People Read Sites

People do scroll, but put the most important content above the fold

Web users know how to scroll look below the fold, but not nearly as much as they look above the fold. Make sure the above the fold part contains your value proposition, but don’t try to squeeze everything in there.

Scrolling is still better than slicing up lengthy content to several pages – it provides better usability. Just make sure you guide people to scroll down.

Dominant headlines draw the eye

Big headlines most often draw the eye first upon entering the page.

Art Plus Science Apis Productions

Present a whole value proposition with the headline. Keep in mind that clarity trumps persuasion.

When you list a bunch of headlines on a page, most often it’s the left sides of the headlines that get the attention. People typically scan down a list of headlines, and often don’t view entire headlines. If the first words engage them, they seem likely to read on.

On average, a headline has less than a second of a site visitor’s attention. This means that the first couple of words of the headline need to be real attention-grabbers if you want to draw attention.

blogwhitespace

Whitespace

Unfortunately, whitespace is often seen as empty space and, therefore, a waste of screen real estate. However, the truth is that whitespace is one of the most valuable parts of your design. Whitespace is an important element of design for good reason. If used well and correctly, it can transform a design and provide many advantages to your website.

When deployed properly, white space can give your design a sense of balance. The white space found between your lines of copy can improve legibility and offer your user a better experience consuming the content found on your website. Too much information or visual data crammed into a small, busy space can cause cognitive fatigue, and our brains have difficulty absorbing anything at all. It’s information overload at its very worst.

To illustrate how effective whitespace is at helping our brains process information in print, check out the example below from Digital Ink:

In fact, classic research by Human Factors International found that using whitespace to highlight or emphasize important elements on a website increased visitor comprehension by almost 20%.

Whitespace Defined:

Whitespace design is characterized by what is not there. When it comes to websites which make generous use of white space design, often what is most noticeable is the simplicity of the design.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that white space design means that everything is white. Far from it, white space design can make use of any color, albeit sparingly. To put it simply, white space design is design that is stripped back and an exercise in economy of expression.

Examples of good whitespace design:

Goal Report: Google Analytics

Analytics: Create and Manage Goals

Source: Google

Goals let you measure conversions on your site and are an essential tool in Analytics. A goal represents a completed activity, called a conversion, that contributes to the success of your business.

Regardless of what business you’re in, defining both micro and macro goals for your site or app is one of the most important parts of your implementation. Macro goals correspond to the primary objectives of your site, such as e-commerce transactions or lead generation conversions. Micro goals help you understand the contribution of other user activities that lead up to the primary conversion.

The articles in this topic help you create, edit, share and manage the recording status of goals.

About Goals

Use goals to measure how often users complete specific actions.
 
Goals measure how well your site or app fulfills your target objectives. A goal represents a completed activity, called a conversion, that contributes to the success of your business.
 
Examples of goals include making a purchase (for an e-commerce site), completing a game level (for a mobile gaming app), or submitting a contact information form (for a marketing or lead generation site).
 

Defining goals is a fundamental component of any digital analytics measurement plan. Having properly configured goals allows Analytics to provide you with critical information, such as the number of conversions and the conversion rate for your site or app. Without this information, it’s almost impossible to evaluate the effectiveness of your online business and marketing campaigns.

In this article:
 
Track Visitors Google Flow Report

Analytics: Users Flow Report

About the Users Flow report

Source: Google

Visualize your users’ paths through your site.

The Users Flow report is a graphical representation of the paths users took through your site, from the source, through the various pages, and where along their paths they exited your site. The Users Flow report lets you compare volumes of traffic from different sources, examine traffic patterns through your site, and troubleshoot the efficacy of your site.

In this article:

Users Flow report prerequisites

None.

Access the Users Flow report

To see the Users Flow report:

  1. Sign in to Google Analytics.
  2. Navigate to your view.
  3. Open Reports.
  4. Select Audience > Users Flow.

What can I do with the Users Flow report?

The Users Flow visualization lets you see:

  • The relative volume of traffic to your site by the dimension you choose (e,g., traffic sources, campaign, browser)
  • The relative volume of pageviews per page or collection of pages
  • Specific metrics for connections, nodes, and node exits when you hover over them

The Users Flow report is very similar to the Behavior Flow report; however, the Users Flow is focused on the pages your users visit, whereas the Behavior report also includes Events and Content Groupings.

Next Steps

Access the Users Flow report now and explore your site. For information about how to configure the report and use the different visualization options, read Using Flow reports. 

Once you have a general idea of how the Users Flow report works, read the Analyze your data with the Users Flow article to see some specific ways to gain even more insights from the report.

 
Increase User Engagement Apis Productions

Increase User Engagement on Your Website

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To be successful with user engagement, you should know how to define maximum engagement and how to boost this critical website factor to earn more leads and revenue in the future.

WHAT IS USER ENGAGEMENT?

Put most simply, user engagement is when visitors to your site appreciate your content enough to stick around, absorb, and convert. That said, let’s jump right into the top five high-level ways to increase user engagement on your website.

  1. De-Clutter Your Layout
    Too much confusion can lead to higher bounce rates, which is the opposite of user engagement. If your layout has too much going on, switch to a simpler design. Your menu should also be center-stage and easy enough for anyone to figure out. Use plenty of white space so your content is easy on the eyes and always use readable fonts and text sizes.
  2. Be Clear About What You Expect 
    Whether it’s submitting a form, entering their email address, or clicking a button to learn more, state those instructions in clear enough language that anyone can understand. Your CTAs (Calls to Action) should stand out so they’re always noticed with commanding language that directs the conversion.
  3. Collect Email Addresses and Engage Directly
    If you aren’t in the habit of gathering information from your website leads, start now. Keep returning visitors coming back by delivering your content directly to their inboxes. You can have a subscribe box or pop up on your site, or you can collect email addresses by gating middle-to bottom-funnel content and then following up with useful content based on your target audience’s needs.
  4. Surveys & Questionnaires
    From your best customers to new leads entering your marketing funnel, everyone’s opinion matters. Start releasing surveys and polls and questionnaires to help uncover improvement ideas for your website that aren’t immediately apparent. Keep engagement trending upward on your site by regularly publishing the data you’re producing. Not only will it drive more engaged traffic, but it will increase your inbound links, too.
  5. Analyze the Data, Test & Tweak Your Website
    Of course, the best way to gauge visitor interactivity and user engagement is to crunch the numbers. Google Analytics and other platforms can give you the invaluable insight you can use to boost engagement across every page of your site.

In our next post, we will cover ways to measure user engagement by utilizing Google Analytics and other applications.

These will measure:

Engagement
Page Views
Bounce Rate
Average Time on Site
Return Visits
Conversions

It’s important to note, as well, that there are ways to measure “Real Time” stats. Google Analytics offers Real-Time analytics, which means that you can view visitor data coming in as it’s happening.

There are also other methods to view how effective your content is by using Heat Maps which let you know where visitors are hovering their cursors, clicking on buttons, filling out forms and more.

As always, if we can be of help to you in any way, give us a shout! We’re listening!

 

Themify Blog

Switch Up Your Look with Themify’s Ultra Skins

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Have you wondered about trying different looks for your current site? With Themify’s Ultra Theme, you can do just that (well, we’ll do it for you).

60+ Pre-designed Layouts

Create unlimited layouts using drag & drop Builder, responsive layouts, slider backgrounds, video backgrounds, parallax scrolling, custom styling, animations, and more. See their demo.

Skins Demo
Source: Themify

Smart Layout Options

Ultra gives you full control from header to footer, either site-wide or per individual page. This means that you can make your entire site share the same look and feel or create a unique look for every page.

6 Archive Layouts

Ultra includes 6 different styles for archive post layouts that you can choose from such as slider, full width, masonry, grids, Polaroid, and overlay. You may also toggle the visibility of the post elements such as post title, featured image, meta, content, etc.

6_post layouts
Source: Themify

The possibilities are endless! So, if you’d like us to switch it up for you, give us a shout! We’re here to help!

YouTube Series Part 3

Fine-Tuning YouTube Part Three

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In Part Three of Apis Productions’ YouTube Series, we’ll cover adding thumbnails to videos (custom or auto-generated), adding watermarks to videos, and we’ll also cover YouTube’s 2019 image guidelines for each of the sections.

Add (or Change) Video Thumbnails

Video thumbnails let viewers see a quick snapshot of your video as they’re browsing YouTube. After your video is finished uploading, you can choose a thumbnail from the three options YouTube automatically generates, or upload your own.

To add or change a video thumbnail:

Sign in to YouTube and select “YouTube Studio (BETA)”

YouTube Fine-Tuning

From the left menu, select Videos.

YouTube Series Select Videos

Select a video by clicking on its title or thumbnail.

Choose an auto-generated thumbnail (choose from three listed for you) and select Save.

YouTube Thumbnails

From the left menu, select Videos.

Select a video by clicking on its title or thumbnail.

Under “Thumbnail”, select Choose custom thumbnail.

YouTube Custom Thumbnail

Choose the file you’d like to use as your custom thumbnail. (See the Image Size and Resolution section below for thumbnail size specifications!)

Select Save.

Image Size and Resolution:

Your custom thumbnail image should be as large as possible, as the image will also be used as the preview image in the embedded player. We recommend your custom thumbnails:

  • Have a resolution of 1280×720 (with a minimum width of 640 pixels).
  • Be uploaded in image formats such as .JPG, .GIF, .BMP, or .PNG.
  • Remain under the 2MB limit.
  • Try to use a 16:9 aspect ratio as it’s the most used in YouTube video players and previews.

Add a Branding Watermark to Videos

You can encourage viewers to subscribe to your channel by adding a branding watermark to your videos. This is often called a custom subscribe button. When you add a watermark, viewers can directly subscribe to your channel if they hover over the watermark when using YouTube on a computer.

To Add your Branding Watermark:

Sign in to YouTube and select “YouTube Studio (BETA)”

YouTube Fine-Tuning

From the left menu, select Settings.

Select Channel and then Branding.

YouTube Branding

Select Choose image and choose which image you’d like to use as your branding watermark.

Select the display time for the branding watermark:

End of video: The branding watermark will appear for the last 15 seconds of the video.

Custom start time: The branding watermark will begin showing at a time you choose.

Entire video: The branding watermark will appear throughout the entire video.

Save changes.

Image guidelines for branding:

Images must be square, with a minimum of 150×150 pixels, and less than 1MB in size. We recommend that you use a transparent background rather than a solid one and include just one color in the image. This will help the image be less distracting, especially on small screens.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

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