August 12, 2010
Call to Action: Why More Choices Mean Less Action
The Gist
To increase your conversion rates, try dropping the number of calls to action you've got on a page.
Too many choices can create customer anxiety, watering down your call to action
One of the biggest reasons most websites don't make more money is because they're not using calls to action effectively. A call to action is simply asking the site visitor or reader to do something. This could be to share the page on Twitter, or buy a product, or sign up for an email newsletter.
The Number One Reason Your Calls to Action Suck
Here's the number one way most websites use their calls to action wrong:
They have waaaaay too many on a single page.
Ever gone to the supermarket and trying to decide on ice cream? Or cereal? The sheer number choices for cereal alone can make shopping a time-consuming and frustrating event.
The Paradox of Choice
Barry Shwartz's book "The Paradox of Choice" tells us that eliminating consumer choices reduces anxiety for potential buyers.
Less anxiety means happier web visitors.
Websites try to cram as many buttons, links, and other calls to action all over the page, blindly thinking that their visitors will happily click them all because they're there.
The problem with this mentality is the paradox of choice: The visitor is given so many options that they end up taking no action at all. Having to choose is too big of an undertaking that the visitor ends up doing nothing and leaving.
Here's an example: You've seen blogs that have post footers littered with social media buttons, right? You have options to email, tweet, digg, save, stumble, share, reblog and tag, all at the end of the article.
The number of people who actually pick one of those bazillion buttons that have a call to action with them are very, very few.
But if the reader is given only one option, the conversion rate jumps through the roof.
The Jam Test
The University of Columbia actually ran a study to test the theory that too much choice is demotivating. The study worked like this:
First the team set up a tasting booth in a store. For the first day, they only offered six jams. 40% of the customers stopped to taste, and 30% of those tasters bought jam. On the second day, 24 jams were offered for tasting. 60% of the customers stopped to taste them, but only 3% bought some.
Let's put some numbers behind this. For simplicity, let's say there were 100 customers that walked by the booth each day. Here is what it looked like for the number of people who actually stopped to try the jam:
- Day 1: 40 tasters, 12 bought jam.
- Day 2: 60 tasters, 2 bought jam.
The study proved the team's suspicion that choice can be a demotivating factor.
Ask Your Visitors to Do One Thing
As site owners we assume that web visitors need plenty of choices. Different subscription methods, different purchasing options, and so on. But in reality, site visitors want you to lead them.
As much as we hate to admit it, we don't like choices.
When you're writing focused copy for your site, you're crafting content so that your reader only has to do one thing by the time they're done with the article, or web page, or newsletter. You're writing for one purpose, and one purpose only.
And this purpose is the only call to action you should be worried about.
(Fortunately for you, Howdy helps you figure out what each visitor wants to do on your site.)
Ways to Improve Your Call to Action
We've already covered the biggest way to improve conversions: remove extra calls to action. Ruthlessly go through your site's design and page copy and start cutting other calls to action that aren't important. They could be
- social sharing links
- excess navigation
- low-performing ads
... and on and on. You can dig through your analytics program and check out which links have actually been clicked. (CrazyEgg can give you heatmaps showing you exactly what your visitors clicked.)
After you've eliminated the extra fluff in your design, here's how you can improve your call (see how how it's not plural?) to action.
1. Test different calls to action
Not all visitors are created equal, and each one has a different goal in mind. You can use services like Google Website Optimizer multivariate test different types of calls to action. You won't know which call to action converts best until you test each one, and multivariate testing allows you to test multiple options at a single time.
Of course, having a solid idea of what your visitor is going to find appealing is a nice advantage. Howdy allows us to show different messages to different types of visitors, so this will also help with your conversion rates.
2. Test variations of a single action
There are plenty of ways to test different variations of your call to action. Sometimes the smallest details can make the biggest differences with conversions, and you won't know until you test them.
You can try testing:
- link text (ie. "Click Here" or "Buy Now")
- fonts
- link or button colors
- position on the page
- underlined or non-underlined links
There are plenty of other elements of design and layout you could test as well. Really, the sky is the limit when it comes to testing your call to action, but make sure that you're not obsessing over details.
If there's one thing that you should take away from this article, it's this:
Less choices = More conversions.
Simple, isn't it?
Photo by Orin Zebest
