Signs it is time to revisit calls to action

The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. A few signals that calls to action is due some attention.

Writing for the web is largely an editing job: the first draft is always longer than it needs to be. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

The signals

• Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
• The answer depends on who you ask
• One clear next step beats several options
• Say what happens after the click

The practical version

Reduce the sense of risk near the button. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

In practice

Content is the part of a project most likely to be underestimated and most likely to delay a launch. 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

If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.