Every two or three weeks at Rufus, the UX team provides lunchtime entertainment for the agency. No not by performing a jig, but by swatting up on one of the many topics of user experience and sharing our findings with our fellow Rufains. The most recent presentation answered the question: What is the psychology behind compelling calls to action? The answer to which has important lessons for UX.
Why are calls to action important?
In the digital world, the call to action (CTA) is one of the smallest details with the biggest impact. Arguably it’s one of the most important elements in digital. It can make or break not only the customer’s experience but can have an enormous impact on the success of a business.
Amazon famously introduced the 1-click button back in 1999, which has become the gold standard of the checkout process — at least for repeat purchase items. This single button helps ease a lot of the pain points for the customer and the business.
For customers: No more annoying forms, or error messages and customers don’t even have to move to grab their wallets. I know I’m guilty of buying something on Amazon, just to avoid filling in a form, or finding my purse.
For businesses: Fewer steps in the payment process helps to reduced transaction costs (Jacobsson, 2017).
All this from one call to action. Small but mighty.
The psychology behind a CTA
One way we can look at CTAs is through the lens of Perceptual Set Theory, which describes how our minds perceive everything around us. Our minds consider objects, people and experiences by a combination of three steps:
1) Selection: We selectively pay attention to some things and ignore others. For example, we ignore the picture on the wall and choose to focus on the table.
2) Inferring: We recall previous experiences that roughly match the present situation as a guide on how to act.
3) Interpreting: Lastly we combine the selective sensory data and the previous memories together which allows us to act in the present.
For example, on a landing page we look for (Selection) and we expect a call to action (Inferring) then we follow our previous action (Interpreting).
Three golden rules
The Perceptual Set Theory help us to know how to act in a situation based on our previous experience. So when it comes to CTAs we know their meaning and how to use them, but when it comes to being persuaded by one — there are three golden rules to follow.
Curiosity: A good CTA will spark our curiosity and pique our interest. We are naturally curious and our need to seek out and understand information is hard-wired in us.
Anticipation: Similar parts of the brain are activated when we’re in a state of curiosity and anticipation of reward. Neuroscientist Jacqueline Gottlieb at Columbia University states, that simply being told we’re going to receive a reward, releases Dopamine in the brain. It’s not the reward itself that provides the most pleasure, it’s the anticipation of it.
For us the height of anticipation is at the point when our mouse hovers over the button (for example, the Buy now button). Just like Christmas Eve is better than Christmas Day, because Christmas Eve fills you with anticipation of incredible presents and delicious food. Whereas Christmas Day is a hectic chaos of the usual underwear-based gift from grandma and not enough pigs in blankets.
Association: Like Pavlov’s dogs, we too have been conditioned to associate clicking on a button with a reward. Just think of that feeling before you hit the ‘Buy Now’ button.
Copy is King
Once we have our three elements, we need to wrap up curiosity, anticipation and association in as few words as possible to encourage users to click.
Best practice recommends about five words, keeping it brief and straight to the point but still providing enough information to encourage clicks. That’s a massive challenge in itself.
Balance
One method to avoid overwhelming or underwhelming the user is to split the copy between providing instructions and benefits.
Example 1:
Instruction = Add your email
Benefit = for faster journey results
Together: Add your email for faster journey results
Example 2:
Instruction = Sign up
Benefit = for access to exclusive content
Together: Sign up for access to exclusive content
Team work
Of course copy is a part of a wider group of design factors. For example: position on the screen, contrasting colour and the size of the button or link, all come together to get the job done.
Here are just a few of articles to help with the design of your CTA.
5 Call-to-Action Best Practices That WILL Make People Click
Call to Action Buttons: Examples and Best Practices
Top Email CTA copy that gets clicked
Conclusion
We need to rethink how we approach CTAs. We put a lot of emphasis into selecting the images, adjusting colour and editing copy to improve the overall user experience and convince the user to act. But we should apply the same attention to detail to the humble CTA. We know most users skim read digital content, sorry Copywriters. But the simple ‘Sign up now’ is no longer a compelling call to action, and ‘Read more’ and ‘Click here’ are crimes against humanity.
The CTA is an opportunity to succinctly wrap up the reason to act and help create a little anticipation of things to come. Do you have any more tips and tricks to creating a killer CTA? Share them below.
This article was written by Steph, UX Architect at Rufus Leonard.
