The 2 words killing your conversion

Hi, dear reader,

There it is, in plain sight: the conversion killer.

The phrase that you see present on 90% of websites out there but are dragging them all down to the bottom. It implies work. It makes us internally groan. We don’t want to click it.

But we do.

What I’m talking about is the all-too-common “Learn more” button. While it’s better than having no CTA at all, it’s all the things you don’t want to be:

• boring

• hard to understand

• something that reminds people of school

Ick, right? But how to avoid this common CTA, since everyone’s doing it?

The good news is that it’s not only doable, it makes your visitors sit up and take notice.

Why these words are worse than “boring”

Let’s be clear, it’s not just “Learn more” that’s the bad guy here.

There’s a plethora of phrases that just sound like work (or make us cringe because they sound like a whole process):

• “Read more”: Do people want to read more? Sadly not in my experience

• “Book a session”: Booking sounds like you’ll have to have lots of details ready and fill in forms, notoriously not fun things

• “Schedule a call”: You mean I have to have my calendar? It makes a person pause and think, “wait, do I really want to do this anyway?”

It’s not fair. These are perfectly fine descriptions of what they’re going to be doing. But, that’s not the bad part.

It’s not you, it’s them.

Consider it from your audiences point of view. They’re searching for something, probably in front of the TV, probably after a long day of work. They’re trying to get something done that maybe they’ve even put off.

They don’t have much time and the internet is not a place people who want to do heavy lifting often hang out. Then you hit them with one of those phrases and it’s like deflating a balloon. You are, without realizing it, saying:

“Listen, that problem you want solved, I can totally do it, but you’ll have to do a whole bunch of work to even see if I’m the right one to solve it.”

How to solve it: Inject a little excitement

When you’re weighing all the things that people can do online, does “learning” or “scheduling” seem high on that list?

No.

Sadly, you’re not just competing with your direct competitors, you’re actually competing with the rest of the dopamine for your customer’s attention. And it’s a high bar to overcome cat videos and the best TikTok dance crazes.

The way to solve it is with “fun” words.

I can hear your mind whirring, “Christine, words are not fun” you might think. I beg to differ, but think this through, which would you rather do:

These words for a CTA button are interchangeable, but the “mood difference” is HUGE.

Finding fun words

What you want to do is have words that feel like the reader is getting a deal. Words that are either casual (“Let’s chat”) to keep it less formal for a discovery call. Or words that imply someone found $20 on the street.

The truth is that people do enough work.

Don’t make them work more just to see if you’re the right solution. You want them to click before they even think about it. Part of that really is just creating a mood that sounds less serious than a funeral director selling urns.

Try it, take one CTA on your site and change it, see if it changes your bottom line.

That’s it for today,

Christine