18 Call-to-Action Examples You’ll Want to Click (and Why They Work)

The Call-to-Action (CTA) is a powerful marketing tool that aims to encourage audiences to take an action in a marketing campaign. You will usually find them at the bottom of a small content piece in the form of a text or button that directs you to accept some kind of an offer, follow a direction, accept an invitation, or subscribe to a newsletter.  A compelling action-oriented CTA usually contains strong action words, good design, and higher visibility;  and must absolutely stand out from the overall page design. However, it’s always great to step outside of the boundaries of the best practices and experiment with something new and exciting. This is why, in this blog article, we’ll take a look at 18 call-to-action examples from live websites, proven to grab attention and compel users to take an action.

At the end of this post, we also answered the 3 most common questions about what is a CTA what are some call-to-action examples and more.

1. Qaisar Ahmad Portfolio Website CTA in a Multi-Column Grid

Let’s start with a portfolio website. Qaisar is a full-stack UI/UX, web, branding, and visual designer. They use Sailec Bold for the CTA, a font with high legibility, and create further contrast with lots of white space and contrasting colors. What we love most about this CTA is its layout, made even better with the animated arrows. In addition, although the CTA is at the bottom of the page, which isn’t a good practice, it compliments well the homepage as the end of the portfolio presentation.

Best Practices:

• Visible, easy to see, and understand
• Focused on a result
• Contrasting color
• Short and simple
• Use-action oriented
• Plenty of white space
• Micro-interaction

Unique Twist:

The CTA is composed of two parts: a call-to-action on the left and an animated icon on the right, both connected with animated arrows. The twist from the usual block grid structure with a CTA, supporting text, and a button feels different and memorable.

2. Bureau Tuk CTA: Small but Stands Out

Creative agency BUREAU TUK crafts awesome animated content and engaging experiences for brands. Their website serves as an example, with a beautiful parallax, black and white scheme, and tasteful animations. The website is built on NuxtJS and powered by Contentful. The CTA button invites users to view all their projects and is very easy to spot due to the abundance of white space and the unconventional shape.

Best Practices:

• Small but visible, easy to see, and understand
• Above the fold
• Contrasting color
• Short and simple
• Plenty of white space
• Micro-interaction

Unique Twist:

This particular CTA isn’t action-oriented, rather than a directional button, inviting users to see the entire portfolio gallery. Ocitocine uses a small font and a thin outline of the shape, however, the interesting shape and the breathing space make the button easy to spot and focus on.

3. Holyday OS CTA: Nostalgic and Fun

Polish creative agency Tonik sends users on a tree hunt in a mini-game to find the 10 hidden Christmas trees. Each three the users find will be planted IRL, so instead of using gift bags, users can play to reduce the carbon footprint and make a positive impact. The higher the scores = the more trees are planted.

So let’s enjoy this awesome nostalgic website that brings us to the 90s when we were able to watch Home Alone in ugly Christmas sweaters and never worry about smartphones, Slack messages, crypto, and Q4 goals. The CTA matches the overall retro OS interface design with Pixel Operator Mono and Inconsolata and users can easily locate the CTA button exactly where it should be.

Best Practices:

• Visible, easy to see, and understand
• Action-oriented “Let’s Go!”
• Intuitive, part of a well-known OS interface
• Contrasting color
• Short and simple
• Sense of urgency
• Micro-interaction

Unique Twist:

The CTA isn’t unique in itself, rather than being a part of a unique proposition, a great message, and an unconventional design.

4. Legate Injury Lawyers CTA: Strong Supporting Message

Legate Injury Lawyers advocate for people who’ve experienced injuries. Their website is built on WordPress and sports a simple and clean design as the main focus is on the call-to-action.

Best Practices:

• Visible, easy to see, and understand
• Action-oriented
• Strong supporting message
• Contrasting color
• Short and simple
• Sense of urgency

Unique Twist:

In some cases, the CTA text doesn’t need to do all the heavy lifting. Instead, the supporting message does the job with a powerful message: “Have you or someone you love been hurt? Unsure if you have a case?”. In this case, users feel compelled to click the CTA button without even having to read its text.

5. DDB Remedy CTA: Attracting by Distracting

A brand-new unexpected website experience by DDB Remedy with an unexpected CTA that doesn’t compel users to do anything else but waste some time with a fun minigame.  It’s playtime with Sharp Grotesk Black 25 and flashy colors.

Best Practices:

• Visible, easy to see, and understand
• Contrasting color
• Short and simple
• Micro-interaction

Unique Twist:

Unexpectedly, the CTA doesn’t aim to convert users or compel them to do anything rather than have some fun. Quite memorable in itself.

6. Portfolio of A_nG_d⚡️ CTA: Offering Choices

Another portfolio website example, this time by the creative product designer and technologist Aurélien Grimaud. According to the designer, the portfolio was built to bring people to a personal universe, made of simple generative patterns. Instead of a single CTA, the author uses 3 directional buttons with Sora Regular, giving users a choice to explore the portfolio.

Best Practices:

• Visible, easy to see, and understand
• Strong supporting message
• Contrasting color
• Short and simple
• Micro-interaction

Unique Twist:

Offering users choices is considered a bad practice. However, in this particular case, the CTA options are related and aim to compel users to explore different parts of the portfolio.

7. Immersive Audio Album CTA: The Sole Focus

This project serves as the internet’s largest destination for downloadable “lossless” immersive and surround-sound music. Built on WordPress, the website sports a creative artistic design and compels users to test the project by themselves.  Classic CTA block grid section with a title and a CTA button with highly-readable Degular font.

Best Practices:

• Visible, easy to see, and understand
• Action-oriented
• Above the fold
• Contrasting color
• Short and simple

Unique Twist:

No supporting text and straight to the point. It’s the first and only thing users see above the fold when landing on the page.

8. Raw Coaching CTA: Supporting Hashtag

Raw Coaching’s website serves as a portal for online coaching and transformation. A beautiful eCommerce website built on WordPress WooCommerce, Elementor, with an interactive design, and infinite scroll. The CTA comes right after the video hero section with a supporting title and a red hashtag.

Best Practices:

• Visible, easy to see, and understand
• Action-oriented
• Huge supporting title
• Contrasting color
• Short and simple

Unique Twist:

Using hashtags to promote your services and relate your CTA is on its way to transforming from a trend to a best practice.

9. Awwwards Conference CTA: Supporting Animated Text

The digital design community platform of Awwwards once again promotes an exciting conference for talks, networking, activities, and parties where designers and developers can learn from global experts, and connect with like-minded professionals. As usual, the website is a piece of art with the latest web design trends, smooth animations, fun mascot characters, and attention to detail. Each CTA related to the conference has a supporting animation that brings the focus.

Best Practices:

• Visible, easy to see, and understand
• Supporting animations
• Contrasting color
• Short and simple
• Interactive

Unique Twist:

The website has multiple directional and action-oriented CTAs with a fun animation bringing the focus to each.

10. Marble CTA: Invites You to Be Part of the Solution

VC studio Marble partners with scientists, engineers, and operators with a goal in mind, to slash emissions, remove carbon, and cool the planet.  Their website welcomes like-minded to join their mission with a classic block-grid CTA section of a title, supporting text, and an action-oriented CTA button. The website itself is powered by headless CMS Sanity and NextJS framework, while the animations and effects were made with Cinema 4D.

Best Practices:

• Classic, intuitive, easy to see, and understand
• Supporting heading and explanatory text
• Contrasting color
• Short and simple
• Interactive
• Action-oriented
• Sense of urgency
• Above the fold

Unique Twist:

The website gives users a unique proposition to make an impact. Although the page consists of an entire presentation with directional CTAs, it starts with the main goal, to recruit.

11. Zeuss For Him CTA: Hit the Phone Number

Zeuss is an eCommerce healthcare website that sells products related to weight loss and skin treatment. Powered by WordPress WooCommerce, the website uses its homepage as a portal for users to choose which part of the application they wish to explore: products for men or products for women. The Zeuss for Him page invites male customers to contact the shop with a CTA button that has the phone number instead of a text.

Best Practices:

• Easy to see, and understand
• Supporting heading and explanatory text
• Contrasting color
• Short and simple
• Above the fold

Unique Twist:

When it comes to CTAs for contact, the visual prompts usually contain an action-oriented phrase such as “Contact Us” or “Book a call”. In this case, the eCommerce shop is completely transparent and legit by displaying the actual phone number and even better: using it as the CTA button text.

12. Zeuss For Her CTA: The Natural Conclusion

Here we have the next part of Zeuss’website that offers skin treatment and weight loss supplements for women. Users can enjoy beautiful interactive design with clean visuals, a short engaging survey, and easy means to start their treatment right away.

Best Practices:

• Clean, contrasting, easy to read
• Supporting heading and explanatory text, In fact, the CTA button comes right after a short survey.
• Short and simple
• Interactive
• Action-oriented
• Sense of urgency
• Above the fold

Unique Twist:

The CTA doesn’t come with a title and supporting text rather than finishes a survey where a user will most likely say Yes to at least one of the questions.

13. Vie De Compost CTA: Scroll to the Brown Bin

Recyc-Québec wants to make composting a social norm. So here we have an awesome single-page web application that aims to teach users that individual actions can have a global impact. Powered by Dato CMS, the website offers interactive content and data visualization through the journey of an apple. The CTA only wants you to follow the apple all the way to the bin and you will learn what happens next.

Best Practices:

• Contrasting
• Uses imagery rather than a text
• Interactive
• Action-oriented
• Above the fold
• Animated and stands out

Unique Twist:

Here we have a great example of a CTA that doesn’t need to rely on text. In this case, the text is small and pretty hard to read, however, the arrow icon speaks instead of the text and lets users know exactly what they need to do.

14. Relays CTA: A Series of CTA Questions

This one-page website belongs to a wife and husband branding studio in upstate New York.  Here we have a series of directional CTAs after each part of the presentation, written in Default Sans and piquing users’ curiosity with the right questions.

Best Practices:

• Classic, clean, intuitive
• The CTA button comes right after the short presentation
• Short and simple
• Interactive
• Asking a question
• Direction

Unique Twist:

Most web presentations that use directional CTA to separate content into pages use the classic Next next that instantly tells users to click it and see the next part of the content. here, however, these CTA buttons go a step further by promising users answers to particular questions.

15. AM-ARC CTA: Three Choices, One Result

This beautiful website belongs to the architectural design AM-ARC. Designed and developed by Deveb, the website gives a short presentation of how this work, and users can get results by clicking either of the three CTA options below.

Best Practices:

• Clean, contrasting, easy to read
• Supporting explanatory text
• Short and simple
• Action-oriented
• Finishing the presentation

Unique Twist:

In this case, all CTA options lead to the same result. Users can either contact the studio or send a brief.

16. Luca Nardi Portfolio CTA: As Bright as the Sun

Luca Nardi’s portfolio website gives potential clients a creative journey through development and design. Powered by WordPress, the website sports a clean futuristic design and a powerful hero section.

Best Practices:

• Contrasting, easy to read
• Above the fold
• Interactive and animated
• Overshadows the supporting text
• Short and simple
• Action-oriented

Unique Twist:

The CTA comes in the shape of an overlayered floating button that shines bright like a sun and expands once you hover on it. It’s the one place you feel compelled to click.

17. They Call Me Giulio CTA: Contact the Creator

This interactive portfolio website of a Creative Technologist from Italy Giulio Collesei is built with ThreeJS and React and sports amazing 3D Blender animations. Once users finish exploring the homepage and enjoy the animations on scroll, they can contact the creator through Gmail, social media, or visit their Github.

Best Practices:

• Interactive and animated
• Ends with the presentation
• Easy to read and understand
• Supporting text
• Short and simple
• Action-oriented

Unique Twist:

Instead of a Contact Us CTA button, the creator offers transparent means of contact where users can choose their preferred method.

18. SILV CTA: Button So Delicious It Melts

SILV produces peanut butter for peanut butter lovers. This lovely Webflow-based website with melting visuals and great usage of Helvetica Now Display invites users to shop for their favorite butter straight from the hero section.

Best Practices:

• Above the fold
• Intuitive, simple, easy to read, and understood
• Supporting title and text
• Short and simple
• Action-oriented

Unique Twist:

The CTA button melts just like the delicious peanut butter on your bread, which is a fun and memorable visual.

FAQ About Call-to-Action

Call-to-action examples in practice include some of the following prompts, depending on the content’s purpose.

Although there’s no size that fits it all, a call-to-action should serve a particular purpose: to encourage users to take a certain action. To do so, there are a few best practices that can help you design and plan a successful CTA that converts:

Don’t take this as a blueprint. In fact, some of the best CTAs intentionally break the rules to put their own twist and this is what makes them memorable.

To Sum Up

The CTA serves as an instruction for your visitors on what step to take next after you’ve managed to make a good case for your brand. This is why it is also the most important set of words you will write for your application. We hope these call-to-action examples inspired you to break some rules and make your own twists on how you invite users to interact with your campaign.

In the meantime, why not enjoy some of the related articles, and get some more inspiration or insights for your next big project?

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