150 Experiments on the Call-to-Action: Six psychological conditions that hinder our results

“What you ask me to do is important, but when you ask me to do it has more bearing on whether I choose to comply or not.”

— Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director & CEO, MECLABS Institute

(This article was originally published in the MarketingExperiments email newsletter.)

One of the fastest ways to increase your performance is to improve your call-to-action. We did a meta-analysis of 150 of our experiments to determine 6 cognitive conditions that can hurt conversion.

In this video, Flint McGlaughlin, CEO and Managing Director, MECLABS Institute, talks about three of those negative conditions the customer experiences when seeing a call-to-action. He shows you how to improve your CTA by lining it up more logically with your page visitors’ sequence of thought.

This session is loaded with practical case studies and examples, both good and bad, to help you avoid common CTA errors and give you ideas for your own webpages.

If you would like your own webpage diagnosed on one of our upcoming YouTube Live sessions, you can send your website info through this form, and we’ll try to fit it in. (View Part 2)

If you would like to receive more detailed advice from a MECLABS conversion marketing expert via a video conference, visit our Quick Win Consult page to learn more.

Here are some key points in the video:

1:14 Which CTA won?

6:54 Key principle #1 – CTA is more than a button, it is …

9:23 Key principle #2 – CTA depends upon the context of …

10:27 6 negative conditions the customer experiences when they see a call-to-action

11:21 Cognitive condition #1: Apathy, and the root cause

13:12 Condition #1’s solution can be found in this case study: Defence contractor

18:00 Condition #2: Negative surprise and its root causes

19:42 Condition #2’s solution can be found in these case studies …

26:32 Two flawed “asks”

27:20 Here’s a checklist you can use on your webpages with criteria for a good CTA, and Condition 3: Too many choices.

29:38 The solution can be found in these case studies …

Related Resources

Effective CTAs: How the thought sequence of a call-to-action affects landing page performance

The 21 Psychological Elements that Power Effective Web Design

Call-to-Action Optimization: 132% increase in clickthrough from changing four simple words

Marketing 101: What is above the fold?

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