A/B Testing Your Secondary Call-To-Actions

Given a choice, people will often go for multiple options. This is what makes us dynamic; what makes us flexible. As an online marketer, we can also implement this knowledge in our marketing strategy. Imagine all the possibilities when you give your visitors a choice. In this discussion, we will talk about secondary call-to-actions (CTA), how to select secondary CTAs for your webpage, and introduce to you the “Belcher Button”.

The Second Option

As described in Unbounce’s Ultimate AB Test Guide, your call to action IS your conversion. A call to action urges the visitor to take an immediate action, usually using words such as “call now”, “subscribe now”, “get free” and many more. Without these CTAs, your ads are incomplete or inadequate.

A webpage can have several call to actions. Occasionally, it’s required to have a secondary call to action to support your primary action. This acts as a backup if the user does not want to entirely commit to your primary CTA. If the user wants more information about the product, the secondary action will provide that information; and most often, this will later bring back the visitor to your desired primary call to action. This often appears as less prominent than the primary.

The position of a secondary call to action in relation to your primary action can also have a big impact on your conversion. Having it beside (usually to the right) or directly below your primary will often draw more attention to your prospects. As stated, you can also have multiple call to actions below a secondary action. Social sharing buttons also acts as a secondary CTA below your secondary CTA. It is much smaller but this will give your users a choices like, say, subscribe to your emailing list; share you in facebook; tweet you on twitter and so on.

Benefits of Secondary Call to Actions

In Pamela Vaughan’s Article – Everything Marketers Should Know About Secondary CTAs, she talks about the secondary CTAs and how it can be beneficial for a website:

“Secondary CTAs can be beneficial for a slew of other reasons (including)…

1. They’re Great for Generating Reconversions
2. They’re Great for Progressing Leads to the Next Stage
3. They Help You Prioritize and Support Additional Business Goals Other Than Just Lead Generation

Vaughan also shared the best practices to consider when choosing Secondary Call to Actions. You can read more about Pamela’s article
here.

1. Determine your Goals
2. Don’t Compete With Your Primary CTA — Complement It
3. Take the Person’s Lifecycle Stage Into Consideration
4. Take the Visitor’s Interests into Consideration
5. Don’t Overdo It
6. Avoid Using Secondary CTAs on Landing Pages

A/B Testing your Secondary CTAs

So how can you tell which secondary call-to-actions best increases your conversion? As always, it requires you to test, test and test. You can use A/B testing to find out which variety and order of your secondary links best affects your conversion. Based on Chris Hexton’s article,
5 Email A/B Split Test Ideas You Haven’t Tried, [Tweet “A/B testing the order and format of every piece of content and every link in your campaigns allows you to make informed decisions on these questions!”]As you can see from Chris’ secondary CTA examples, you can test as many variables as possible. You can either:

1. Change the order
2. Change the format
3. Change the content
4. or Set it in another page

You can also test whether removing the secondary CTA link entirely affects your conversion. And just to reiterate, A/B testing every possible order and format of your secondary call to action allows you to make well- informed decisions on these matter.

Summary: A Look into the Belcher Button

What is a Belcher Button? This button was developed by Perry Belcher and it was designed especially for people to buy stuff. It usually has a call to action, a dashed border, price tag (may also show the regular price for comparison), an add to cart button, plus an add to cart text link, and some credit card symbols.

This button is very popular in e-commerce and is probably the most used and most tested BUY NOW button to date. The good thing about this is, Perry developed a program in which you can easily edit all the necessary contents you want to have in your add to cart button. In this
video, user “bertranddo” made a demo on how to use the Belcher Button application. You can check out Perry’s website – BelcherButton.com for more information.