Which of these footer text links is the best

[ecchi]

Originally Posted by faxxaff

I always found calls to action on galleries very silly. Of course people know where to click and what they can expect.

Yeah, I thought that way years ago, back when I started. But everyone said they were important, so I tested it. And they were right. Calls to action were VERY important. The results varied from site to site, increasing the clicks from about 20% to (in one case) over 100%. And the big eye opener was a non adult site which I calculated would not even make it's hosting cost (this was when hosting was more expensive) without a call to action, but went into profit with one.

To summarise my result:

A link with the word FREE in it gets the least boost from a call to action (presumably because the word FREE is the big draw). The less exciting the offer, the more important the call to action. And if the surfer thinks that clicking gets them to a page where they have have to pay money for something, a call to action makes a BIG difference!

(any newbie reading this and wondering what a "call to action" is, it the words "click here" or similar. As in "Click Here to get more great porn".)

I also find that emphasising the call to action gets more clicks thus:
"Click here for more porn" is OK.
"Click here for more porn" does better.
"CLICK HERE for more porn" does even better.
"CLICK HERE for more porn" does best (either only linking "click here" or using style tags to only show the "click here" underlined).

I also find that putting the click here in italics helps, but this is more NLP than emphasising (it gives the surfer a feeling of urgency, italics make them think they must obey quickly).

The mistake most people make is thinking that they are in the "porn" business or "web design" business. We are not. We are in the "advertising" business. You need to learn good advertising practises more than you need to learn how to design good looking sites or how to get guys horny!