Mastering the call to action: here’s how words, color, size, and location matter

In 2023, we’re all familiar with the standard “best practices” of CRO: always use social proof, always reduce form fields, never use image sliders, and so on.
As someone who believes that best practices are merely common practices, I’m always looking to test the tried and true to see how, well, true it really is.
First up? Social proof.
Quick! How many CRO “best practices” can you name off of the top of your head? I’m willing to bet the number is quite high.
Best practices are merely common practices. That’s why in this post we’re putting another “tried and true” concept to the test, just like we did with social proof.
Are you sold on the idea that it’s beneficial to understand your customer personas?
Hope so. If not, it’s guesswork. When you know who your customers are, where they are, what they love, and what they hate, you can market to them much more effectively.
It’s a cultural trope to “want what you can’t have,” but it’s also a principle based on decades of psychological research.
That principle, scarcity, is incredibly powerful in marketing, persuasion, and conversion optimization—when done right, especially in a free market with limited resources. If people believe that they’ll be missing out on something, they’ll be prompted to act more quickly to get it.
A few years ago, I launched a kind of “Groupon deal for musicians.” I gave away $1,250 worth of products, including recording time and iTunes distribution, for just $69.
I had spent four months building it, and invested a significant amount of my personal savings into ensuring the campaign was everywhere.
It had to work, and I obsessed over conversions. This obsession paid off when I managed to increase conversion rate from 2.5% to 10.8%.
A/B testing is no longer a new field. Finding a proper A/B testing tool isn’t the problem anymore. Now, the problem is choosing the right one.
Google has announced that it will shut down Google Optimize in September 2023, putting an end to one of the most used A/B testing tools ever.
If you’re not following form design best practices, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.
While forms aren’t the sexiest part of conversion optimization, they tend to be the closest to the money—the macro-conversions. Spending a little time optimizing forms can be some of the most important optimization work you can do.
Of course, best practices don’t work the same on all sites. It’s contextual. But generally, implementing form design tactics that work more often than not is a good way to get started.
You put tons of time into creating your product, experimenting with acquisition channels, and honing your messaging.
Yet here I am, about to tell you that consumers are often swayed by such subtle nudges as the order in which you present your products, or the “serial position effect.”
Your brand’s value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered. It’s the primary reason a prospect should buy from you.
It’s also the #1 thing that determines whether people will bother reading more about your product or hit the back button. On your site, your value proposition is the main thing you need to test—if you get it right, it will be a huge boost.