Ever heard of the “three second rule”? You have about three seconds to grab the attention of new landing page visitors before they click away. 

One way to keep them interested is by leading visitors to focus on a CTA that will take them to the next step, so that they go from reading about your product to engaging with it.

Not All CTAs Are Created Equal…

But you don’t just put some rectangle somewhere on the page that says “buy me.” A successful way to coax the visitor to move into the sales funnel relies on many CTA variables:

• Action words that deliver a value proposition
• Page position – some visitors like to read a page in the classic F pattern, but some prefer a certain visual design that “leads” them to the CTA
• Different CTAs according to visitor history (for example, you might want to ask a brand new visitor to try the product for free, and during their next visit you can suggest that they make a purchase)

…And Neither Are Visitors

Then there’s another issue – individual visitor preferences require a lot of consideration. Age, gender, and a variety of other factors can influence how a visitor perceives both your landing page and the CTA.

For example, older people prefer larger text sizes and simple menus, while younger visitors are used to the dense text of smartphones. Similarly, some readers will identify with intimate terms such as “you will love our product”, while others will see it as cloying.

Build Personas for Better Performance

So where do you start? One way of discovering the preferences held by a “typical” visitor to your landing page is to develop personas.

The persona is like a list of personal characteristics that hint at what kind of messaging appeals to a certain visitor type the most. Visitor personas are developed by researching the sort of people who visit your site and for what reasons. The three basic questions that a persona profile needs to answer are:

• What pain point do you want to solve?
• What is stopping you from achieving this goal?
• What aspect of your work/life makes you want to solve this problem?

Once you have a persona in hand, you can develop the CTA language that will work for it.

Testing, Testing, One, Two, Three

Got those personas? Great! The next step is to put your CTAs to the test. 

There are many forms of testing, and one of the simplest is to try some variants written according to the best practices and personas as described above. For example, you can pick three product landing pages that speak to specific audiences and see what conversion percentages result from the CTAs that you include in each. Then rinse and repeat until you get the best conversion scores per page. *To see exactly what we mean, check out the examples at the bottom.*

Along the way, the personas that you used as a starting point will need constant refinement. The more data you have about users, the more effective your CTAs will be. This is even truer whenever more products are added, or if it is decided to appeal to a wider or different audience as the product line matures.   

AI: A Game Changer in Copywriting

Sound like a lot of effort and estimation? If you’re looking for a faster way to design CTAs, and without the guesswork, there’s Anyword. Based on literally millions of CTA engagements, Anyword’s AI copywriting tool can predict how the CTA that you created will perform according to persona factors like age and gender. Then, with only the click of your mouse, Anyword will also show you CTA variations and their persona engagement statistics, which you can then apply to your landing page.  

Let’s take a look at those three product landing pages we mentioned, and try three very different industries. We’ll use Anyword’s AI to score the actual CTAs on these pages, as well as rewrite them to better serve the target audience.

• Mutual of Omaha (a number one recommendation for senior citizen’s insurance). CTA text: “See your options”. Anyword score: 70. Sound good? Not really – Anyword shows that the CTA’s text is best for people in their 20’s and 30’s. Could use some work.

Now let’s see how Anyword’s AI can improve things:

Definitely a marked improvement.

• Dollar Shave Club (grooming products mostly for men). CTA text: “Tell us about your grooming needs and we’ll recommend the perfect products”. Anyword score: 44, and heavily oriented towards females. Definitely needs improvement.

Now let’s see how Anyword can improve that CTA:

Not bad for a few seconds worth of work.

• Lastly, we took a look at Spanx. Women’s shapewear, popular with women in their 30s and 40s. They use the very straightforward “Shop Best Sellers” it scores a solid 60, and the demographics are fairly generic.

Now let’s see what Anyword can do:

Anyword’s results are available in seconds, whereas manually experimenting with CTAs takes much more time. Want to do your CTAs better and faster? Try Anyword today.