Writing call to action (CTA) text is scary. There’s a lot of pressure — everything relies on your user doing whatever it is you’re CTA’ing them to do. While the words in your buttons have an influence over whether or not people act, it often seems like this copy is tossed off and then completely abandoned.
Instead of just writing “SIGN UP NOW” or “CLICK HERE!” and then moving on, treat your CTA copy just like you would any other important element on the page. The best way to do this is to remember that the CTA is nested inside a section, which is nested inside a page, etc., and they’re all designed to assert the same message:
Your CTA should strongly reinforce the message that flows through all of your copy.
Instead of “Sign up now!” or “Click here!” try something that echoes the text around it. To completely toot our own horn, here’s an example at work from the site we did for Rank Science:
Not a generic CTA — a CTA that makes sense in context.
“Learn about the science behind RankScience” works here both because it reinforces the context and because it’s not typical CTA text. “Click here!” just wouldn’t cut it in this case — we’re glad we reached deeper for something that was both unique and felt right in this particular section.
Part of the art of writing effective marketing copy is treating it more like an essay with a flow and less like a pile of disjointed parts. Keeping messaging and nesting in mind when you write your CTAs will make your pages flow better, and will hopefully get more folks acting and fewer bouncing.