Order & Submit Buttons
I see this mistake quite a bit or maybe I don’t! So many times I see order buttons and form submit buttons that don’t appear to be buttons.
Many web designers will make great looking graphical buttons to “match” the design of the rest of the site. While these buttons might look nice they aren’t always effective.
There has been a lot of debate about the fact whether graphical buttons are as effective as regular “HTML” style buttons. I suggest you test on what’s best for your market but I’ll make the comment I’ve made time after time if it looks like a button, acts like a button it must be a button.
Why would you want to chance the possibility of lost sales by “hoping” the website visitors realize that the graphic button you have in place is perceived is a button. This goes the same for your opt-in form buttons, you should be consistent with the buttons so the visitor knows what is and isn’t a button.
There are a few things you can do to “enhance” the regular “HTML” button to increase you can see an example of some these effects by visiting http://www.50biggestwebsitemistakes.com. You can see that I’ve increased the size of the button and text as well as adding a red border around the button to help draw attention to the button. This increases action to the button.
Just as is true with many components of marketing copy is king even on something as small as a button. By default the text on a HTML button says simply “submit” which really doesn’t say much. You want to change the text or copy on the button to have some sort of instruction or action so that there is no question what is going to happen when they push the button.
Some examples of Copy to use on an order button would be “Click Here To Order Now”; “Order Now for Only $29.95”; A few examples for the opt-in button would be “Claim Your Report Today!” or “Get A Free Chapter!”.
By applying several of these strategies just with the button it’s self you will be surprised how much you will improve conversion of opt-ins and orders. Of course be sure that you test everything and monitor by using your stats programs.
“If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” Lord Kelvin
No doubt about it Frank, I am a testing geek, and your order buttons or text order buttons do make a BIG difference to your salesletter, I find that a “add to cart button” works better than a “buy now” button and infact it has been proving to convert better by other test too. Using stuff like “invest now” “add to cart” is good to change up your sales letter with, not only for the order buttons, but for the salesletter wording itself.
Terrance I totally agree with you. You have to test everything because what works for one site might not work for the next. Each niche market reacts differently to different “triggers”. I like to interchange buttons with the links through out the sales page and not just “click here to order” links. You have to be creative with the copy on these or many times the get over looked because of repetitiveness. Thanks for sharing what’s worked for you.