How Does CTA Placement Affect Conversion Rates? [Data]

In order for your calls-to-action to effectively drive prospects and generate conversions, it’s critical that your understanding of what works – and why – is both thorough and ongoing.

This is especially true today, as mobile technology and the Internet have fostered somewhat of an attention deficit environment amongconsumers.  This means it’s even more important that your CTAs are optimized for success.

So…how exactly do you do that?

While there’s no set formula for ensuring your next CTA is killer, there’s certain trends and data that make the potential for your CTAs much greater simply by being aware they exist.

That’s what our aim is here, to provide you with the information that’ll allow you to analyze and make adjustments of your own.

Placement of Your Calls-to-Action

The following data was taken from calls-to-action with at least 100,000 views.

When it comes to the placement of CTAs, many Marketing Directors and Managers make decisions based off instinct of “their gut.”

Leave the gut instincts to bookies and third base coaches. The success of any CTA in regards to its placement is scientific, not instinctive.

Banner

Based on our study, banner CTAs – whether at the top of a blog page or any other page of the website – had an extremely low click rate of 0.6%.

It should be noted however, that the click-to-submission rate was 40.4%. So while there are very few visitors clicking the CTA, almost half the ones that do convert on the subsequent landing page.

Many companies rely greatly on these, as they seem an obvious choice to generate a high volume of clicks. However, due to search engine advertisements, many users are so used to expecting an ad that they simply skip the very top of your web pages.

This is referred to as “banner blindness,” and will directly impact the success of any call-to-action.

Takeaway:

As you can see, your visitors are more drawn to the content of your page rather than any banner image or CTA that precedes that. It’s the content they're after. You also haven’t given them time to digest your content yet, so any banner CTA is falling on deaf ears.

Below Blog Post

Calls-to-action placed below blog content was by far the big winner in our study. Not only did below post CTAs have a 3.2% click rate, but they also boasted an impressive 62.1% click-to-submission rate.

This should come as no surprise, as any website visitor who is willing to complete an article obviously has greater interest. Also, as any successful marketer will tell you, tailoring the below post CTA with one relevant to the subsequent content greatly increases the likelihood of a click through.

Takeaway:

Start featuring more CTAs below every published blog post. More importantly, be sure whatever offer your CTA is promoting relates to the content it follows.

Sidebar

This one came somewhat as a surprise. We found that calls-to-action located on the sidebar of a web page had a measly 0.2% click through rate.

And while the click-to-submission rate was a healthy 46.6%, this is certainly a case where the ends don’t justify the means. If only 2 out of every one thousand visitors click the CTA, the submission rate is inconsequential.

Takeaway:

Don’t rely too heavily on a sidebar CTA. However, play around with different variations to see what can work for you and your industry. Adjust content and visuals frequently in order to test their performance.

Homepage

Here’s where it gets tricky. While our study concluded that homepage CTAs generate a 1.7% click rate, this can be significant dependent on the volume of traffic your homepage is generating.

(It also depends on what the CTA is promoting. If only 1.7% are clicking through on an ebook? Eh. However, if 1.7% of visitors are clicking through to an assessment, that could be big.)

Takeaway:

Depending on the volume of traffic your homepage is generating, as well as how advanced the offer your CTA is promoting is, could very well mean it’s prime real estate for lead generation.