The CTA button is an essential component of any WordPress form. Without it, submissions won’t get through. You don’t need a code to add a call-to-action button to your WordPress form. With Ninja Forms, you can easily add a submit button to trigger form submission.

We’ll explain the importance of a CTA button and show you how to make a call-to-action button in WordPress, with Ninja Forms. We’ll also show you practical examples of CTA button customization and how to hide the Submit button when you don’t want a user to submit your form. Let’s dig in!

How to add a submit button to your WordPress form
Best practices for effective call to action buttons
How to customize your CTA button
How to show or hide the CTA button in your form

1. How to Add a Submit Button to Your WordPress Form

While you can add CTA buttons to WordPress forms using code, we have an easier solution. Using our contact form plugin, you can find the Submit button under the Common Fields. Just drag and drop the Submit field directly onto your form or simply click on it, and it will automatically show up ready to roll!

Once you add your call-to-action button to your form, you’ll discover a range of settings this crucial element provides. If you don’t have developer mode enabled, you won’t be able to see all the existing features. But don’t worry, you can unlock it for free!

Congrats! You’ve just learned how to add a call-to-action button to your WordPress form. Before we get to more exciting stuff like hands-on practice, let’s review some optimal approaches to using CTA buttons.

2. Best Practices for Engaging Call-to-Action Buttons

A well-designed CTA button increases website conversions by enticing visitors to take a desired action. Whether your form’s purpose is to sign up visitors for a webinar, join an email list, or make a purchase, an effective CTA button can help you complete that conversion.

While there is no magical formula to get your web visitors clicking on your CTA button and completing the desired action, there are some rules you can follow to provoke an immediate response.

Keep It Short and Simple

We tend to skim over the text and rarely read every word on the page. That’s why it’s important to make your CTA copy easy to understand with a clear and compelling message. Try to keep the length of your CTA text up to four words. You can go up to five maximum, but that’s nearing the red zone.

The text should be large enough to draw attention but not so overwhelming that it obscures the form’s remaining fields. Your CTA text should tell visitors what will happen when they click on the button, as it helps mitigate the fear of clicking, leading to increased conversions. While you want to keep it simple, stay away from boring.

Use Action-Packed Terms

Use action-packed words such as “grab” and “discover” instead of less interesting ones. Some action-packed phrases to experiment with include:

Get Your Free E-book
Reserve Your Seat
Try Our Free Trial

You can also try first-person CTAs like Get My Free Kit, Sign Me Up, etc.

Make It Visible

Your call-to-action or submit button should stand out from the rest of the content of your WordPress form. You want to ensure enough contrast so your visitors notice your button.

Another critical aspect when you want to make the submit button visible is using white space, also called negative space. This design principle improves text readability and draws focus to essential elements. Most importantly, it increases user interaction, which is what you want.

Strive to achieve a noticeable placement without disrupting your audience. To learn more about positioning your CTA buttons not only on your form but also across your WordPress landing pages, check out our article comparing the position of the CTA button above the fold vs. below the fold.

Choose the Right Button Size and Shape

Rectangular and rounded buttons are the most common shapes, but there’s no conclusive evidence that either works better. It’s best to do your own testing and determine which option delivers the optimal results with your settings and audience. Whichever shape you choose, ensure it’s large enough to be noticeable without looking disproportionate to the rest of the form.

Use Vibrant Colors

If you’re going to heed just one small piece of advice from this post, choose your button colors thoughtfully. Highly contrasting colors work great to make buttons stand out.

While some colors have proven to perform better than others, the ultimate decision depends on your website design. The golden rule is to remember not to go too wild when designing your call to action and to stay consistent with your brand.

A/B Test Your Buttons

A/B testing enables continuous improvement, ensuring that your CTA buttons are finely tuned to encourage desired actions. This ultimately enhances the overall effectiveness of your website or marketing campaign.

By experimenting with different variations, you can pinpoint the most effective design, color, size, and text that resonate with your audience. This method helps analyze user preferences and behaviors, allowing you to make informed decisions based on actual performance data.

In addition to acquiring the skill of adding a call-to-action button in WordPress, you now possess insights into the essential practices that contribute to the success of your forms and encourage users to submit them successfully.

3. How to Customize Your Call-to-Action Button

Ninja Forms is designed to inherit your WordPress theme’s style to match your page aesthetically. To customize your form’s look, you’d need to change your WordPress theme’s stylesheet or use the plugin option. Styling your WordPress call-to-action button with a plugin is efficient and easy.

Ninja Forms offers the Layout & Styles add-on that lets you customize your CTA button and the rest of your WordPress form.

While we are going to show you some practical examples of how to customize your submit button, we also have multiple styling tutorials for your CTA below:

To customize your call-to-action button, install the Layout & Styles add-on. This plugin will add an additional section to your Submit button field called Styles featuring the following sections: Wrap Styles, Element Styles, Element Hover Styles. You’ll probably experiment the most with Element Styles and Element Hover Styles.

The Element Styles section allows you to customize the background color, text, and border of your CTA button. The Element Hover Styles section lets you customize the look of the button when a user hovers or clicks on it.

Now, we’re excited to present examples of CTA buttons customized with our Layout & Styles add-on in our short video below.

Want to use the same styles on your WordPress form buttons? No problem. Check the settings for each button below so you can replicate it on your WordPress form:

Contact Us Button: What We Customized

Element Styles: We set the background color in the color picker, selected the border style and width, and used the Advanced CSS section to write custom CSS rules.

Element Hover Styles: We did the same as in the previous Element Styles section but added the additional CSS property translate in the Advanced CSS section.

Subscribe Button: What We Customized

Element Styles: We selected the button background color from the color picker and rounded our button using the border-radius:25px in the Advanced CSS section.

Element Hover Styles: We selected the button background color from the color picker and copied the same CSS property to make our button rounded. Additionally, we used the transform:scale(1.05) to change the size of the element on the 2D plane.

Leave Us Feedback Button: What We Customized

Element Styles: We selected the background, border, and text colors from the color picker. We also set the padding, border width, and border style from the drop-down. Additionally, we enabled the Advanced CSS settings to write our own CSS rules.

Element Hover Styles: We picked the background color and text color from the color picker.

✨ Quick tip: Transform CSS property lets you rotate, scale, skew, or translate an element. CSS border-radius property allows you to add rounded corners to elements.

So, what do you think about upgrading the appearance of your CTA button with the Layout & Styles add-on? Elevate your button’s appearance today and witness a conversion boost in no time!

4. How to Show or Hide the CTA Button in Your Form

Why would you want to hide the call-to-action button on your form? I’m glad you asked! Perhaps, you are receiving a lot of spam submissions from disposable email addresses, or someone has been harassing you, and you want to prevent them from submitting your form.

You might also want to hide the submit button if completing the form isn’t necessary. For instance, if customers come to your support channel with questions and you provide the answers before they submit the form, it’s a win-win situation for both parties.

Whatever your situation is, the Conditional Logic add-on does the job for you! This impressive integration empowers your forms with intelligent automation, allowing you to determine which form fields, including the submit button, you want to display.

Learn how to turn your WordPress forms into smart forms with our tutorial on How to Create Conditional Fields in WordPress.

Congratulations on Your Mastery of the Submit Button!

Well done on becoming proficient with the CTA button in your WordPress form! The CTA, or call-to-action button, is essential to your WordPress form. Customizing it can significantly boost your ability to generate new leads and increase conversion rates for your online business.

Remember, even the smallest adjustments on your CTA button that might look trivial at the beginning can have a significant impact.

Now that you know how to add a call-to-action button in WordPress, be sure to explore other Ninja Forms fields for your form-building endeavors below:

Are you new to the form-building business? Download our free core plugin and discover why Ninja Forms is one of the best free WordPress form plugins on the market.

Don’t miss out on the chance to unlock the full potential of your forms without the need for an upgrade. Try our contact form plugin and support small businesses like ours in the WordPress community!

How to Add a Call-To-Action Button in WordPress

Table of contents

1. How to Add a Submit Button to Your WordPress Form