Why Your Hard-Worked CTAs Are Actually Hurting Your Conversion Rate

Every CTA is an opportunity to convert.

Why is your conversion rate stuck in the mud?

You’ve built a visually stunning page. Your copywriting took serious effort. Your offer is more compelling than ever before — yet conversions remain stubbornly disappointing. Infuriating, right?

Have you ever stopped to ask: is your CTA actually doing its job?

A Call to Action (CTA) is the gateway that moves prospects from one stage of the conversion funnel to the next, ultimately completing the value exchange at the bottom of the funnel. That means a broken CTA at any stage amplifies into a problem across your entire conversion flow. Getting CTAs right is critical to your business.

An effective CTA should:

Be easy to find.
Use text that reads as a simple, actionable phrase.
Make taking that action feel genuinely worthwhile.

Are you getting this right? Data-driven analysis suggests probably not — 70% of small business websites have no CTA at all.

Your copy and imagery exist to give users the information they need to act. If users can’t understand what’s being communicated, your CTA — the action you’re asking them to take — becomes useless.

Here are seven common traps that undermine CTAs on landing pages:

“A great CTA understands the user and gets clicked.”

Think about it: if users never see your CTA, what are the odds they’ll click it?

Not great.

Buttons that are small, tucked away, or camouflaged by competing images and text get overlooked in the blink of an eye. Nobody is going to hunt around a webpage looking for a button to click.

Where should you place the button?

The conventional wisdom used to be: put it above the fold. Always.

But there’s an important nuance here. If the key information that helps users make a decision isn’t above the fold, placing a CTA there won’t help. As users scroll down, your CTA disappears from view — out of sight, out of mind.

Fitts’s Law states that the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the ratio between the distance to the target and the width of the target.

Applying the science of user movement tracking and ergonomics, you can determine the optimal button placement and sizing for your specific page — the details are worth working through for your own context.

What color should it be?

Will green attract more clicks? Does blue feel more trustworthy? Does red undermine confidence?

There are many options to consider. The most important question about button color is simple: does it stand out against the background? While an “orange button” famously works well in many contexts, there’s no universal solution.

As ghost/transparent button styles have gained traction as a design trend, the color debate has become somewhat less decisive. The real baseline: regardless of color choice, your button needs to be visually distinct and easy to identify.

2. Vague or Missing Button Text

Even though we’ve learned to recognize the red power button on a remote control almost instinctively, most devices still include a power symbol or the label “PWR” below it. That label eliminates guesswork.

Most CTA buttons rely on text to communicate intent — so don’t phone it in. Whether your button text states a clear goal, makes a promise, or implies an obvious outcome, it should communicate that message clearly. You can also set expectations before the button itself by stating what will happen when users click.

Take Amazon as an example:

Button text must be immediately understandable — no mental effort required. For example:

Create an account.
Start your free trial.
Add as a contact.

3. Too Many CTAs on a Single Page

“Don’t let two competing CTAs cannibalize your conversions.”

Don’t force users to choose between two primary CTA buttons. If a second option is necessary, present it as a text link — not a competing button that distracts from your main CTA.

A classic example is the sign-up link placed beneath a login button:

Suppose you run a SaaS business and your landing page offers both a paid plan and a free trial. Which user type do you think will dominate? Free trial users, almost certainly.

While SMB prospects are more likely to click “Try for Free,” well-funded enterprise buyers may want to go straight to paid. Trying to serve multiple audience types with too many options on a single landing page can leave users paralyzed — and cost you the deal.

Consider this example comparing a dual-CTA layout versus a single-CTA layout:

Caption: After Scanitto removed the “Buy Now” button from their PDF software landing page, free trial downloads increased by 29.75%.

Why did removing the “Buy Now” option actually help them sell more? Dan Ariely has documented this in his research: too many choices prevent people from making any decision at all.

Don’t confuse visitors with too many CTA options. Be clear about what the primary conversion goal of each page is, and avoid creating unnecessary alternatives. Sometimes, too much choice results in users simply leaving.

4. Weak Copy — A Missed Conversion Opportunity

Selling isn’t just about offering a great discount — it’s about showing customers why they need what you’re offering. The content surrounding your CTA can amplify both the emotional and rational appeal of taking action, making your call-to-action far more effective.

Copy mistakes can be as subtle as choosing the wrong font, overloading text with adjectives, or poor text contrast. If users can’t comfortably read your page, it becomes worthless. They’ll leave before they ever reach your CTA, and you’ll lose the opportunity entirely.

Pay attention to the problem your user is experiencing (the emotional hook) and how your solution addresses it (the rational case). When you name the exact pain they’re feeling and offer a clear solution, you earn their respect — and their trust. This activates two of Professor Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion: liking and authority. Once you’ve established those two, asking users to click your CTA is a much easier ask.

The same principle applies to email marketing. Images, icons, and curiosity-driven language (“Want to learn more?”) can boost click-through rates — as long as you follow through and deliver precisely what the email promised when users land on the next page.

Certain words trigger stronger emotional responses than others. Build a swipe file of high-performing language for your specific audience. What you’re after are words that create an immediate emotional connection.

Sometimes simply rewriting CTA copy to better align with user language is all it takes to change everything. ADT (see below) did exactly this — updating their CTA text to better match user intent drove a 60% lift in conversions. Small change, big impact.

5. Distracting or Off-Brand Imagery

Research consistently shows that adding relevant imagery increases conversion rates. That’s true — but there’s an important caveat: you need to know when to stop. Cluttered or distracting images pull users’ attention away from your actual goal. Users may linger on the visuals and, if they can’t find the relevant information, leave the page without ever noticing the CTA. Like in this example:

Before deciding what images to use, get clear on why you’re using them.

Images can spark curiosity, attract attention, and build trust. But they must not get in the way of your primary intent — your CTA.

Related post: Not all images are created equal. Here’s a case study on stock photos vs. authentic photography.

Here’s a real example from VWO (the original source of this article):

Some users found the image so unsettling that they stopped reading altogether — which meant the actual CTA, placed after the image, was never seen. VWO ultimately issued an apology. The lesson: images should support conversions, not sabotage them.

6. Background Colors That Swallow Your CTA

Another reason CTAs go unnoticed: the background is too visually dominant, causing the button to blend in rather than stand out.

The fix is contrast.

Contrast is a fundamental design principle. Our eyes are naturally drawn to contrasting elements. Page components — backgrounds, text, and graphics — need sufficient contrast to register clearly on screen. Using whitespace and clearly differentiated colors improves both visibility and readability.

Just as clarity of communication is the core of good design, whitespace and strong color contrast are essential tools. See the example below:

Keep your layout clean. Build a color palette where text, buttons, and backgrounds contrast enough to make each element distinct. Now look at the page below. The neon-green background with green text is actively uncomfortable to look at — your eyes work overtime just to parse the content. Visitors may not even realize a button exists; the CTA practically disappears into its surroundings.

Don’t do this. It hurts the user experience and kills your conversion rate.

7. Pages With No CTA at All

Yes, we’re calling out the elephant in the room — because there’s a good chance you’ve missed this one entirely. This isn’t a CTA design pitfall; it’s a fundamental error.

Every page on your site should serve a purpose, right?

If so, add a CTA to fulfill that purpose.

Wherever possible, every page should be geared toward conversion — even a post-purchase thank-you page. An experienced salesperson knows how to make one final, graceful ask even as a customer is walking out the door.

On your thank-you page, for instance, you can include a CTA like “Continue shopping with us.” You might assume no CTA is needed there — but there absolutely should be one.

Circling back to where we started: remember that statistic — 70% of small businesses don’t have a CTA on their homepage?

Once you’ve addressed the copy and design fundamentals on your homepage, it’s time to take a hard look at your CTAs.

Placing a visible, prominent CTA on your homepage — one that invites users to explore further — is one of the highest-leverage moves you can make. Susty Party tested this change and saw conversions increase by 250%. Yes, really.

How to Avoid These Mistakes

Every CTA is a conversion opportunity. The mistakes outlined above are all avoidable — if you invest more attention in studying how users actually behave on your pages. We know this isn’t as simple as it sounds. Our recommendation: when in doubt (should I add a CTA above the fold? which color contrast works better on this landing page?), use A/B testing to validate your hypotheses with real data.

Tips: What is A/B Testing?

A/B testing is a data-driven method for making product decisions. It’s used to compare two or more versions of a webpage or app to determine which performs better. When you have multiple design options for the same page and aren’t sure which will produce the best results, A/B testing gives you the answer.

At its core, A/B testing is a controlled experiment: it randomly shows different versions of a page to a subset of users, then statistically analyzes user behavior to determine which version achieves better performance against your defined conversion goal.

Original title: “7 Common Pitfalls of Call to Action Design”

Source: Visual Website Optimizer

Author: Aditi Gupta

1. Blind Spots — Users Simply Miss the CTA