Calls to action: the questions we get asked most

Teams tend to reach for this after something has already gone wrong. The questions about calls to action that come up most often on our calls.

Content is the part of a project most likely to be underestimated and most likely to delay a launch. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

Do we need to care about this?

One clear next step beats several options. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

Can it wait until after launch?

Occasionally. More often the post-launch version costs several times the pre-launch one. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one.

How do we know it is working?

Reduce the sense of risk near the button. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

The short version

Pages that answer a real question outlive pages written to fill a slot in a sitemap. Three things worth confirming about calls to action before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Reduce the sense of risk near the button — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Worth checking on your own setup before it becomes someone else's problem to fix.