What is your default CTA button text?

  • 14 April 2021
  • 6 replies
  • 6 views

Are CTA’s like “Learn More” and “Get Started” the go-to button text for most landing pages?

If you can’t think of anything else to use for the button, what do you default to?

📊 What is your default CTA button text?
  • Learn More
  • Get Started

0 voters

It seems like it’s everywhere! I certainly use it when I don’t know what else to use. But I’m not so sure that is a bad thing. If those aren’t your default choices, what do you use?

Spoofing from Unbounce’s content here 😆

Screen Shot 2021-04-14 at 08.40.51 Screen Shot 2021-04-14 at 08.41.14

I was working on a project to optimize a client’s landing page which they had done a fine job building it themselves. But the headlines and CTA’s were all generic. No real issue with that, it gets the job done. But is it the best choice?

I suggested to use verbs in the headline. Then let the headline and CTA button text work together. For example…
Headline - “Design Beautiful Landing Pages That Convert More”
Button - [Design a Page] or [Convert More] or [Start Designing for Free]

Again, just spoofing from Unbounce’s content as an example. It could also be the other way around, maybe it starts with headline/verb text and making it generic is the next option. Is there a best-practice to follow? If so, which is best, generic or headline/verb specific?

🤔


6 replies

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This is a tricky question to answer! Get Started is the goal, but Learn More is, in my opinion, a stepping stone towards the goal. I wish there was the option for both 😅

I can provide some context from behind the curtain for how we use this at Unbounce 👀

“Learn More” is the fallback, or ghost CTA when the reader isn’t quite ready to take action, but they’re not ready to bounce either. Typically, wherever the ghost CTA takes them, there will be another button to “Get Started Now” (the main CTA). What I like about the ghost CTA is you can still see who’s interested in your offer, but not ready to move on it. What you can gather from that is if you have a high volume of visitors click “Learn More” but don’t convert, that means your offer is compelling but there’s something lacking in the next step.

Having done my fair share of email campaigns here, there’s some room for creative liberties on some of the button copy. Learn More and Get Started Now are on all our main content like the website, our blog, etc. But if you see our email campaigns, a lot of our CTAs are a personalized action.

I ran a few page speed campaigns a couple years ago, there were a variety of CTAs and ghost CTAs (depending on who we were messaging) but they were things like:

Go To My Page Overview
Tell Me More About AMP
etc…

It might be a personal preference, but I appreciate personalized CTA buttons that make me feel like I’m part of the process. Learn More and Get Started Now definitely have their place, but I tend to take a different approach with the campaigns that I work on.

Curious what others think!

Whoa! Love getting the “behind the scenes” strategy from Unbounce! 😎

Loving the topic @Kyle.Carline !

I have also run one or two campaigns at Unbounce and I’ve got to experiment with CTAs quite a bit. In my experience, what’s worked best is setting the right expectation from the CTA and making it as clearer as possible what’s next for them.

I use “Learn more” type of CTAs usually when the expected next steps for a user are loooonger and no immediate action will be required from them. Some others on this group are “Discover now”, “Show/tell me more”, etc.

When I have a more transactional type of campaign (filling a form or taking customers back to the app), I try to use more direct and intentional copy into the CTA to foster action, and manage their expectations, trying to increase certainty on what their next step looks like for them.

Hope this helps, Kyle!!

Abrazos!

I like that a lot! CTA’s like “Learn More” are widely used and for good reasons like that.

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Can’t recall where I heard this advice, but someone said the text of a button should complete the sentence: “I want to ___”

Of course, the “I” is the visitor.

This doesn’t fit every scenario, but it’s worth a try.

Yes! I live by that logic and often make that suggestion to co-workers and clients.

I think it certainly can fit every scenario though.
“I want to… Learn More”
“I want to… Discover Now”
“I want to… Get a Free Burrito”

Are there any scenarios where the “I want to…” method doesn’t work?

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