Call-to-Action Buttons: What Not to Do on Your Website

Your contact form sits two clicks away and visitors still leave without reaching out.

The problem is rarely your service offering. Most finance brokers lose leads because their call-to-action buttons blend into the page, use vague language, or appear at the wrong moment in the visitor's journey. A button that says "Submit" or "Learn More" asks visitors to do mental work. They need to decide what happens next, whether it's worth the effort, and if now is the right time. That hesitation is enough to lose them.

Using Generic Button Text That Means Nothing

Buttons labelled "Click Here", "Submit", or "Find Out More" force visitors to guess what happens next. A finance broker's website exists to convert curious visitors into booked consultations, yet these phrases create a disconnect between the visitor's intent and the action you want them to take.

Consider a broker who changed their primary button from "Get Started" to "Book a Free Home Loan Assessment". Enquiries increased by 34% within three weeks. The only change was clarity. Visitors understood exactly what they were committing to, how much it would cost, and what they'd receive in return. The button removed doubt instead of creating it.

Your button text should complete the sentence "I want to...". If a visitor is reading about first home buyer loans, "Check My Borrowing Power" works because it speaks to their immediate question. If they're comparing refinance options, "See How Much I Could Save" connects directly to their decision point. The action should feel like the logical next step, not a detour.

Hiding Buttons Below the Fold on Every Page

Visitors decide whether to engage with your website within seconds of landing on a page. If your primary call-to-action only appears after they scroll past three paragraphs of introductory text, you've already lost a portion of your audience.

Every service page should present a clear action within the first screen view. That doesn't mean cluttering the header with multiple buttons, but it does mean giving ready-to-act visitors an immediate path forward. In our experience, brokers who place a single, high-contrast button in the hero section alongside a brief value statement see higher engagement than those who bury their contact options in the footer.

A useful approach involves matching button placement to visitor intent. Someone landing on your mortgage broker website homepage might need context before they're ready to book. Someone arriving at a refinance calculator page has already done research and wants to take action. Adjust your button prominence accordingly. Calculator pages, suburb guides, and service-specific pages should lead with action. About pages and blog posts can afford to be more patient.

Using the Same Call-to-Action for Every Visitor Type

A first home buyer researching borrowing capacity has different needs than an investor comparing interest-only loans or a homeowner exploring refinance options. Treating them identically wastes the context you've already established through your page content.

If someone reads through an entire article about construction loans, offering them a button that says "Book a Consultation" is acceptable but generic. "Get Construction Loan Advice" acknowledges what they've just read and confirms you can help with that specific scenario. The visitor feels understood rather than processed.

This doesn't require building a dozen different landing pages. It means auditing your existing service pages and matching the button language to the content above it. Your refinance page should offer a refinance-specific action. Your first home buyer guide should lead to a first home buyer consultation. Your investment loan content should reference investment lending in the call-to-action. The effort is minimal. The improvement in conversion rates is not.

Designing Buttons That Disappear Into the Page

Contrast matters more than colour choice. A blue button on a blue background fails regardless of how well blue performs in conversion studies. Your call-to-action should be the most visually obvious element on the page after your headline.

Brokers often choose button colours that match their brand palette, which makes sense for visual consistency but fails if the brand uses muted tones. If your website is built around soft greys and whites, your primary button needs a bolder treatment. That might mean introducing an accent colour used exclusively for calls-to-action, or it might mean using a dark button with white text where everything else is light.

Size matters too. A button that's the same height as your body text doesn't command attention. It should be large enough to tap easily on a mobile device, which generally means at least 44 pixels tall and wide enough to contain the text without cramming. Padding around the text makes the button feel substantial rather than squeezed.

Asking for Too Much Information Too Soon

Every form field you add reduces completion rates. A visitor willing to share their name and phone number might abandon the form entirely if you also require their employment status, loan amount, property value, and current lender before they've even spoken to you.

The purpose of a website call-to-action is to start a conversation, not to complete a fact find. You can gather detailed information during the actual consultation. Your form should collect the minimum viable information needed to follow up meaningfully. For most finance brokers, that's name, phone number or email, and optionally a single-line question about what they need help with.

Some brokers worry that shorter forms attract lower-quality leads. In our experience, the opposite holds true. Visitors who complete a brief form and then engage in a phone conversation are often more committed than those who fill out exhaustive online questionnaires and then go quiet. The relationship starts with a human interaction rather than a data entry task.

Forgetting That Mobile Visitors Use Their Thumbs

More than half of your website visitors will arrive on a mobile device. If your call-to-action buttons require precise tapping or sit too close to other clickable elements, you're introducing friction exactly where you need momentum.

Buttons should be large enough to tap comfortably without zooming, positioned where thumbs naturally rest on a phone screen, and surrounded by enough white space that accidental taps don't trigger the wrong action. The bottom third of the screen is prime territory on mobile. A sticky button that remains visible as visitors scroll takes advantage of this without blocking content.

Test your own website on your phone. Pull it up, hold the device how you normally would, and try to tap your primary call-to-action without adjusting your grip. If it feels awkward, it's costing you enquiries. A high-conversion website treats mobile as the primary experience, not an afterthought.

Ignoring the Value of a Clear Call-to-Action Strategy

Buttons don't work in isolation. The most effective websites guide visitors through a deliberate sequence, matching the urgency and specificity of each call-to-action to where the visitor sits in their decision-making process.

Your homepage might offer a soft entry point like "See How Much You Could Borrow". A service page goes further with "Book a Free Refinance Assessment". A blog post about offset accounts could end with "Ask About Offset Account Strategies". Each button builds on the context established by the content around it.

Brokers who map out their visitor journeys and assign appropriate calls-to-action to each stage see better results than those who scatter the same generic button across every page. It's not complicated, but it does require thinking about what question each page answers and what action naturally follows that answer.

Your website is either making it easy for visitors to take the next step or forcing them to figure it out on their own. The brokers who get consistent enquiries through their websites have simply removed more barriers than their competitors. Better buttons are part of that, but they sit inside a broader commitment to clarity, relevance, and respect for the visitor's time. Get those foundations right and the technical details of website design start working in your favour.

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