Calls to action

Whether you're trying to motivate readers to sign up for an app trial or click through to a blog post, the call to action (CTA) is key. Almost all marketing content should include thoughtfully-crafted CTAs designed to drive—you guessed it—action.💥

Most often, CTAs take the form of buttons. Big buttons, small buttons, red buttons, blue buttons, ghost buttons, hover buttons—we'll leave the button styling to the designers, but here are a couple guidelines for the copy that goes on those buttons.

• Language should be clear and specific. Strong command verbs are preferred.

  • Log in

  • Sign up

  • Start trial

  • Get help

• Use sentence case (capitalize only the first letter and proper nouns).

  • See examples above.

• Focus on the benefit.

  • Start increasing sales

  • Boost signups

• Unless you have a good reason not to, adhere to the conventions laid out in Language and Grammar.

  • Here's a good reason not to: Spelling out numbers takes up a lot of space. It's okay to use figures for numbers less than 10 in a CTA. Same goes for space-saving ampersands.