Improve Video CTA Click-Through Rates by Using the Right Words

Ezra Fishman

Business Intelligence

Should you tell them what to do?

We have constant debates here at Wistia about how explicit we should be in guiding user behavior. These discussions surface in all sorts of places — new user onboarding in our app, CTAs in our videos, product pages, and beyond.

There are basically two schools of thought.

School #1 says:

“Let’s make the design so simple and intuitive that no explicit instruction is needed. Those instructions are just a crutch making up for bad design.”

School #2 says:

“There is no such thing as ’perfect’ design, so almost every situation can be helped by directing people to take the desired action.”

Well, when it comes to interactive elements in videos (e.g. calls to action and annotation links), the data proves that school #2 wins. Direct language yields higher click-through rates.

To “click” or not to “click” for video CTAs

First question: does including the text “click” or “click here” increase the click-through rate for calls to action in videos?

Well… in a word, yes.

According to data we pulled from across all Wistia-hosted videos using calls to action, the click-through rate for those that include the word “click” is the highest, at just over 15%, and “click here” comes in second, at around 11%. The average click-through rate for CTAs not using any form of “click” was just under 10%.

“The click-through rate for calls to action that include the word ’click’ is the highest.”

Ezra Fishman

Business Intelligence

Mailing list sign-up form

Sign up to get Wistia’s best and freshest content.

More of a social being? We’re also on Instagram and Twitter.