Why it’s a good idea to use a high stakes call to action in a landing page test

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Lots of landing page tests have low stakes call to action (CTA) buttons.

Here’s a screenshot of the CTA button from the first landing page test I ran–

"Get the app" is a low stakes call to action button
I used a big red low stakes ‘GET THE APP’ button

Here’s the CTA button from the landing page of a product I found on IndieHackers–

"Join the beta" is another example of a low stakes call to action
Low stakes… click the button get on the mailing list

Here’s another one–

An email entry form with a sign up button is a bit higher-stakes but why is it on the home page?
Low stakes. You can even sign up right on the homepage.

These CTAs are all low stakes. Website visitors don’t risk much if they click into the next page or sign up for the pre-release list.

I would imagine these landing pages convert well. My ‘GET THE APP’ landing page definitely did. My test resulted in 44 mailing list signups over the course of a week. Not bad really.

While it was nice that people liked my pitch enough to sign up for my pre-release list the test was honestly a bit of a failure.

I had hoped that after running the test I would know whether or not to proceed with development but I didn’t.

The test had failed to reveal whether or not people would pay for my product.

In the end I didn’t feel comfortable building a product without proof that I’d have paying customers.

Setting the stakes higher

These days I like to set the stakes higher.

A pricing page is a high stakes call to action
A landing page test that tests pricing

This is a screenshot of the pricing portion of another landing page test that I ran.

The click-through rate of this landing page was way lower than the clickthrough rate of the first landing page. Actually, very few people clicked the ‘Get Access’ buttons.

Despite the low click-through rate I was very happy with the test itself because it tested what I needed it to test.

Had the click through rate of the landing page been high I would have had a strong indicator telling me that I could move forward with my product development.

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