9

I've seen a number of ads with a clear call-to-action button, like this one:

handcraft ad

It seems to give the ad a place to click, even though the whole ad is technically clickable. Do ads like this tend to have a higher click-through rate through this extra affordance? Are there any marketing studies on this matter?

Improve this question
8
  • 2
    The impression it gives me is that if I click the button, I will be taken directly to a page to fill out info, rather than an in between page that just talks about the product.
    – Matt Rockwell
    Commented Jan 25, 2012 at 14:45
  • 1
    @MattRockwell at the same time I've heard arguments made against "Continue" buttons, as users want to start actions, not "continue" even if that's what they're really doing. But that's copy specific to this ad, I meant to refer just to the call to action button idea
    – Zelda
    Commented Jan 25, 2012 at 14:48
  • @MattRockwell Guess where it takes you ;)
    – Rahul
    Commented Jan 25, 2012 at 14:51
  • It looks like an interesting experiment, is someone in a position to do a simple test?
    – fredley
    Commented Jan 25, 2012 at 14:55
  • @fredley actually Usaura has free clickmap tests where you can test where people think they should click on an item. You could make a test and tell them to click to "follow the ad" and see how many people click the button vs anywhere on the image. I dont' have a user base/enough twitter followers to test on though :) Wouldn't be an entirely natural test but could be interesting.
    – Zelda
    Commented Jan 25, 2012 at 15:06

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
10

Interestingly...

In some research carried out by Doug Schumacher in 2005, he found that having no call to action button increased the click through rate by 27%.

The description of the tests describes how it was carried out on two otherwise identical banners with each having nearly 400,000 impressions.

enter image description here enter image description here

But wait - it's not that clear cut!

Unfortunately the text on the call-to-action button was simply 'Learn more' which is not the best of straplines to educate users about what will happen when they click.

Moreover, the bright yellow button slightly shunted the URL into the shadow a bit, and the standalone URL might have appeared to be the clickable call-to-action in it's own right.

There's also a possibility that the button is the point of initial focus and since it has some uninteresting and uninformative text, users might consider the whole ad in a similar vein.

In contrast, the ad with no button is more likely to allow focus onto the larger 'liquid sugar' text, and hence users may be inclined to want to 'learn more' but only because they subconsciously want to rather than because the call-to-action button is commanding them to.

So - there are some additional factors to consider in addition to simply being a case of button or no-button.

The takeaways

I'm not sure the takeaways from the test itself are that conclusive or useful given that the button that was added may have had its own detrimental effect to the results. What may be more useful to takeaway from this are the meta-takeaways about how to conduct and analyse tests.

  • the automatic idea that 'a call-to-action button is a positive influence on clicks' is not necessarily a given.
  • when A/B testing you have to be oh-so-careful about just what variables (and how many of them) you are changing at once - especially when you think you are only changing one variable.
  • you should always question whether the impact of the difference is really directly down to the variable that you think it is.

I have devised a new law based on the discussion above. I call it the conservation of attention - the user only has a limited amount of attention to give. If you increase the focus of attention on something, you automatically reduce the focus of attention on everything else.

In this example above, the addition of the button increases attention to something unimportant, and the rest of the copy in the ad loses attention. The result is a detriment to the ad.

Thus, if you are going to design an element to shift attention towards it then: - make damn sure you make it worthy of that attention - weigh up the benefit of directing attention against the cost of removing attention elsewhere

These are probably content strategy 101 principles and the concept rings a bell somewhere in my mind - but I just like the idea of making up my own law :-)

Improve this answer
2
  • 1
    Can we call it Attrill's Law?
    – Rahul
    Commented Jan 25, 2012 at 22:33
  • 2
    Doug Schumacher (who did the research above) just replied to a tweet saying that yes, in his experience, buttons distract from the bigger message, but agreed this could definitely do with an updated test.
    – Roger Attrill
    Commented Jan 26, 2012 at 8:06

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.