[Easy Guide] Skyrocket Conversions with Your CTA Buttons & the Law of Alignment
Do you remember when you were in your prime, going to school every single day for… 12 years?
Taking your mid-term exams and waiting nervously to see that “A” or “F” on your paper... Every day there was the same uncertainty.
“Did I pass?”, “Did I fail?”, “Is mom gonna yell at me again for failing?”
If only you would have opened your chemistry book to learn all about the periodic table of elements. Or if you would have taken a look at Baldor’s Algebra book to figure out how to solve an algorithm.
Everything you needed to know to pass your test was right there. It was in the books. It was in the class when your annoying teacher wouldn’t stop talking.
Sometimes everything we need to know is out there. And all we need to do is pay attention to it.
The same goes for marketing. Except instead of paying attention to books and annoying teachers, you have the Laws of Sales Funnel Physics.
When you understand these laws, you can take the uncertainty out of your funnel and stop wondering if it will bring in results or not.
With the Law of Alignment, you can predict results for your business just as you can predict an “A” after studying your lessons at school.
All you need to do is understand how the Law of Alignment works and how to apply it to all elements on your landing pages, especially your crummy CTA buttons.
In this article, you’ll learn…
- How to expect predictable results after aligning your offers with your prospects’ interests.
- How, following the principle of the Law of Alignment, you can see your funnel bring in massive results without much input from a marketing guru.
- And you’ll see real-life examples you can model today so you can be the next successful case study.
Let’s align your offers so you can see predictable results coming in for your business, shall we?
What Is Aligned With Your Prospects’ Interests Converts
The Laws of Sales Funnel Physics are success patterns that every high-converting sales funnel like yours must follow. If your funnel doesn’t follow these laws, unfortunately, it won’t convert.
Physics is governed by laws. And these laws are statements or conclusions based on repeated observations and experiments that predict a range of natural events.
The Laws of Sales Funnel Physics apply to digital marketing and sales funnels. And with these laws, you can predict the performance of your sales funnel and foresee the results.
The law that I’ll review today is the Law of Alignment.
This principle says that that which clearly lines up with other landing pages and with your prospects’ expectations is more likely to sell.
Alignment refers to meeting expectations. It refers to offering to your site’s visitors whatever they’re expecting to see and read about when they visit your landing pages. Alignment deals with your customers’ intentions, questions, or context—and guides them through your funnel.
If you’re meeting people’s expectations, then you’re in alignment with your offer and your potential buyers’ preferences.
And if you aren’t (as so many entrepreneurs, busy business owners, and startups are), it can mislead your customers. And as a result, they won’t buy from you.
But how do you meet those expectations?
By simply applying the tweaks to your CTA buttons.
Let’s start reviewing them now, shall we?
1. Set Clear Expectations
The first thing you need to do to boost conversions is to set the right expectations for your prospects with your CTA buttons’ text.
And what does that mean? It means you must clarify to your site’s visitors what steps come next after they take a specific action on your page.
Isn’t it annoying for you when you add some products in your cart, then click on “Review your order” but then, all of a sudden, the next step is to pay?
You feel tricked. The next step should have been to review the order and not to pay. Why? Because that’s what the CTA button led you to believe was next.
And that’s exactly what setting clear expectations is all about.
Don’t mess around with your prospects or you’ll lose them.
In the example below, you can see how by simply changing the CTA button’s text from "Buy" to "Add to Cart" raised revenue per visitor by 1.68%.
Before...
After...
And it makes a lot of sense. There’s a huge difference between adding a product to a cart and buying it.
Seeing the word “Buy” added fear to the prospects because they may have not been ready to buy that camera at that point.
CTAs are a high point of leverage for growing your conversions. And in the example above, the button was brought into alignment with its actual functionality (to add a product in a cart).
"Buy" implies a decision and an action that you’ll take at the checkout page. In the example above, buying wasn’t the correct step and created the wrong expectations in prospects.
On the other hand, "Add to Cart" fixed the issue and eliminated the anxiety that customers probably felt. They felt they were about to make a decision to buy or not right away (loss aversion), rather than just adding a product to their cart.
Remember, people fear commitment. And buying represents a huge one.
Maybe people wanted to keep looking around on the website and buy other products before checking out.
In this other case study analyzed in our Proven Sales Conversion Pack, changing the CTA button’s text from “Get your membership” to “Find your gym & get membership” increased clicks to the payment page by 213.16%.
This small change worked because it moved the customers’ expectations into greater alignment with the next step which was to find a local gym and then buy the membership. That’s more clear than “Get your membership.”
When you evaluate if your CTA buttons on your website are setting clear expectations for your prospects, keep in mind that there’s always room for improvement. It’s not like “Get your membership” was incorrect. But “Find your gym & get membership” was way more clear because it clarifies, sets the right expectations, and reminds people of what comes next.
In the other example below, tweaking the CTA text at checkout lifted click-through-rate by 39.4%.
This example worked because tweaking a couple of words on your checkout buttons can make or break sales for your business. And in this example, the CTA text "Review Order" offers a clear understanding and sets the right expectations of what's about to happen. The original text "Continue" did not.
Evaluate all of your CTAs on your checkout page. Ask yourself, does the button text match with what actually will happen in the next step? Is it clear enough?
If you can’t A/B test, you can ask other people for feedback. Just ask them if the text is clear and sets the right expectation.
2. Be Clear, Not Clever
We’ve talked in the past about how clear copy sells better than clever copy. The clearer you are about what your products and services are and offer, the more likely people will buy them.
The same thing applies to the text on your CTA buttons. You must state what people will get on your CTA buttons even if you think it's boring or not clever. It’s better to be clear than to say something confusing.
In the example below, updating the CTA button’s text from "REQUEST SERVICE ONLINE HERE" was confusing and unclear.
But changing the text to "GET A QUOTE" actually doubled the conversion rate. This is because it was much more clear what the next step after filling out the form was.
Word choice on CTAs is vital. And the example below is proof of it.
"DONATE" is clear. Yes. But it’s focused on the action that the prospect would take (spending money). And it could be interpreted as an aggressive command because it was in caps.
But "Support ChurchPop" is more customer-focused. It’s also better aligned with normal sales preferences: less aggressive, more reflective of why people donate which is to help the organization and is also more specific and clear as to whom the person is donating to and why.
This simple tweak made 64.1% more people donate. That’s pretty substantial, don’t you think?
So, how can you use this example to your advantage? Simple: revise your CTAs to be customer-focused and strengthen them with clear wording, while still communicating an expectation of the next step they're about to take.
And in another example, changing the word “Pricing” for “Quote” spiked form submissions by 104%.
Before…
After...
This tweak worked because “quote” sounds more personal than “pricing” and now the text is more in alignment with what the visitors should expect on the following page (fill out a form).
"Get pricing" created a different expectation. Prospects may have expected to see a pricing table when really they were going to get a quote.
3. Offer a Clear Proposition
Communicate clearly and upfront about your products and/or services’ benefits. Provide a clear value proposition. You can do just that, for instance, by increasing clarity and social proof on your landing page.
In the example below, adding a few key elements on the homepage and tweaking some others, caused 21% more people to convert on the checkout page.
And some of those elements were a social proof section, using contrasting colors for the CTA button, and changing the text on it.
Before…
After…
This tweak worked because...
- Better contrast brings more attention and legibility to the value proposition and CTAs.
- Social proof in the form of trust badges being more visible on the homepage lowered customer’s concerns.
- The word choice is more aligned with prospects’ expectations (“Click here to purchase” vs “Start now”).
Adjust any CTA or headline wording that emphasizes the buying decision over the end result the customer desires.
Also, have a stronger color contrast on key headlines or CTA buttons so they don't blend in with the page's design (as it happened in the original example). And finally, eliminate any guesswork your potential buyers can have by uncovering points of concern or anxiety around buying. And a great way to do that is by using trust badges.
4. Use a Compelling Design & High-Contrasting Colors
Align the design of your CTA buttons with your prospects’ behavior and what they want and need. Your buttons will get more clicks this way. Because they won’t get clicked if they don’t get noticed.
So use empathetic colors aligned with your brand to build trust.
And remember to follow our formula for creating buttons: BABBs—Big-Ass (big on-page) + Bold (strong color contrast) + Buttons (easily recognized as a clickable button, with rounded corners).
That’s the best way to make your prospects not miss any steps in the path they need to take down your funnel.
In the example below, by adjusting the page’s layout and adding prominent, green CTA buttons, application submissions increased by 47.26%.
Before...
After...
This design tweak worked because the green CTA on each page is much more noticeable and it's clear where the user should click for the next step. Also, the repetition of the CTA on the page lets the prospect not have to scroll down to look for a button since it’s right there.
Make your CTA buttons stand out. Otherwise, they’ll get ignored.
And don’t think that tweaking your design is a complex action you need to take and apply to your whole website. They’re just small changes that can be made in a snap and that can help grow conversions and sales.
In this case study analyzed in our Proven Sales Conversion Pack, removing the CTA button with the login via Facebook increased sign-ups by 35%.
Take a look at it…
Before...
After…
The CTA text is now in greater alignment with the desired end result: creating an online store rather than just signing up to Facebook. And the button’s size was increased and now catches more attention.
There's also a repetition of the CTA button all the way down the page. And this, without a doubt, makes it easier for the prospect to click.
Use color to convey emotion, align it with customer preferences, and/or increase visibility on a key CTA.
5.Add the Right CTAs in the Right Places
Add the right CTA buttons in the right places. It’s not about adding them randomly everywhere. No. They must flow and take the prospects down your funnel.
For example, one error most entrepreneurs make is adding a “Buy Now” button on their sales page when the value proposition and offer aren’t clear. That makes the page be out of alignment. You must first introduce the offer and explain it, perhaps with a “Learn More” button like in the example below.
Because who’ll buy something without even knowing what it is? No one.
So allow prospects to easily navigate through your pages and understand your offer and the path they need to take to buy what they want or need.
You can increase visibility for key elements on your pages by moving them up on the page. But you can also move them left or right.
In the example below, by moving the CTA button to the center of the page, 3.7% more sales were generated.
Before...
After…
This is probably because, according to a study by Nielsen Norman Group, people spend more time viewing the left half of the page versus on the right half. 80% of the fixations fall on the left half of the screen and 20% of fixations fall on the right half of the screen.
So if you want people to click on a button, place it strategically so it can be easily found.
Obviously, not only should you place them strategically, you must ensure they’re highly visible too. Because visible CTA buttons get clicked and convert. And don’t make them look like ads either.
In the example below, even though the CTA button was in a good place, the whole section inviting prospects to donate looked like an ad.
Take a look at it…
Realigning that widget that looked like an ad resulted in 9.3% uplift in donation revenue. Again, it all happened because of a simple change in the placement of the CTA button.
This is how the widget looked after the tweak…
People are more reluctant when it comes to picking out content that they feel has "commercial intent" and that’s another reason why you should take this into consideration.
Conclusion
Call-to-action buttons are a high point of leverage for growing your conversions. But they have to be seen and aligned with your prospects’ preferences and needs in order to convert.
Most entrepreneurs and marketers ignore the fact that CTA buttons are as important as any other element on your landing pages. And if your CTAs follow the principles of the Law of Alignment, you’ll see conversions skyrocket.
But you need to apply the tweaks right...
1. Set Clear Expectations
2. Be Clear, Not Clever
3. Offer a Clear Proposition
4. Use a Compelling Design & High-Contrasting Colors
5. Add the Right CTAs in the Right Place
Be aware of the expectations your CTAs create in your prospects and how sensitive customers can be to wrong words and misunderstandings—so be wise when choosing your copy.
Also, clearly communicate the benefits of your products or service and make sure they align with your prospects’ interests—potential customers are your main focus.
And be patient when tweaking your CTA buttons. It’s a natural part of the process to not see results immediately. They may take days if implemented right.
And if you’re worried about not getting these changes on your landing pages right, reach out to us. AutoGrow’s all-in-one digital marketing team is available to optimize your CTA buttons, landing pages’ design, and any other digital marketing task or project you need help with.
Now tell me something, were you aware of the importance of the Law of Alignment in your offers and site? Have you ever applied any of the other Laws of Sales Funnel Physics to your funnel?
Let me know in the comments below.
Keep AutoGrowing, stay focused.
Mariana Lessmann
