“What if by adding a step in the journey, I reduce conversions?”
“What if we lose conversions by removing an option?”
These are two questions I got asked during my full-day workshop in Athens last week.
Not from beginners, but from senior marketers working on brands you’d recognize. Brands with millions in monthly revenue and conversion rates they’ve been optimizing for years.
And they’re common questions I hear from marketers, product managers, and founders alike.
The fear of breaking “best practices” or somehow losing conversions by removing options from the customer journey is real. I see this fear show up across industries in different disguises and one of the most potent ones is the double CTA:
In B2B, this shows up as the ‘Free Trial’ and ‘Book a Demo’ buttons that commonly appear side by side on most pages.
Service businesses use a ‘Call Now’ and Contact Form CTA.
SaaS pricing pages have a ‘Start for Free’ and a ‘Request Pricing’ CTA.
Universities and online programs often include both ‘Apply Now’ AND ‘Request Info’ or ‘Enroll Today’ vs ‘Schedule a Tour’ buttons, speaking to multiple prospects at different commitment levels.
And in retail, the confusing paths of ‘Subscribe & Save’ vs. ‘One-Time Purchase’ are common.
On the surface, this approach seems logical.
More options mean more chances to capture a lead or a sale, right? All you’re doing is giving the customer choice so they can take the journey that makes the most sense for them. Win/win, right?
But what if the opposite is true for your business and your customer’s unique situation? What if adding these ‘helpful’ CTAs creates friction that quietly costs conversions every day because customers are not ready to self-select yet?
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The trap of “covering all bases”
Adding multiple calls to action feels safe and, theoretically, should make your customers’ lives easier.
It signals abundance, accommodates different user preferences, and calms the internal voice that says, “What if someone can’t find the path they need?”
Yet each additional CTA asks visitors to stop and decide multiple times, and that’s where the challenge begins.
Meet Choice Overload: The psychological trigger and hidden conversion killer
Psychologists call this phenomenon Choice Overload (or the Paradox of Choice).
The core idea is simple: Having too many options increases cognitive load, making decisions harder and less satisfying.
When visitors land on a page with two equally prominent CTAs, like Call Now and Book an Appointment, they’re forced to answer a mini internal quiz:
- Which option is better for my situation?
- Which one will get me to the result faster?
- What if I choose wrong?
Instead of acting, many hesitate.
Some delay the decision. Others abandon the page entirely “to come back later”. The very tactic meant to capture “everyone” creates enough friction to quietly repel the people you most want to convert.
Our recent mobile A/B test for an HVAC client put this principle to the test, and the results proved just how meaningful they can be.
Case study: Understanding and optimizing for prospect intent
This week, one of our mobile experiments led to a decrease of 7% in bookings via a rather detailed online form for our client (a national HVAC company). And it led to an 18% increase in phone calls — the primary conversion metric and the key marker of success.
Let’s back up a bit:
Our client provides HVAC, plumbing and electric services. They help you handle everything from emergency repairs to routine maintenance. As part of our CRO program, we aimed to optimize their mobile homepage experience.
Their original mobile homepage featured two prominent CTAs:
- Call Now – a direct phone number for immediate service.
- Click to Book – an online scheduling form for service or maintenance visits.
On paper, this setup covered all bases, but we suspected it was doing more harm than good.
Our Hypothesis
Our research showed that the majority of potential clients who land on the website are in a state of emergency. Maybe their AC is on the fritz. Or the heater has broken down and there’s a cold front coming. Or the pipes are making a weird noise that should definitely not be happening.
In that state of mind, they want to fix the problem. Immediately.
Picture this: It’s 3 PM on a Sunday.
Your AC just died in the middle of a heat wave. It’s 95 degrees outside and climbing inside.
You grab your phone with sweaty fingers and pull up the first HVAC website you find.
Two buttons stare back at you:
- Call Now
- Click to Book
Which one gets you help today? On a Sunday afternoon?
Which one is for emergencies? Will “Click to Book” even let you book for right now, or is it just for next Tuesday?
You pause. You think. You second-guess.
Meanwhile, your house gets hotter.
This is the exact moment we were sabotaging.
Because most customers prefer to do this via the phone and leave booking online for less urgent services like tune-ups. Basically, prospects naturally fell into two buckets, each with their own ‘best fit’ CTA:
- Emergency need: They want a problem fixed fast and want to speak to a human.
- Service or maintenance: They want to prevent a problem and would prefer to schedule things at their convenience
But the double CTA on mobile pages was confusing the conversation.
It was driving people with urgent issues into a long form best suited for scheduling a heater tune up for the end of October.
In other words, we were actively standing in the way of prospects naturally self-segmenting into the two buckets.
Our goal was to design a better experience around these natural paths (and intent levels), instead of driving people into a journey that was not suited for their immediate needs.
Our hypothesis:
Making this a single CTA and focusing on the phone number would reduce cognitive load and help prospects in an active emergency get the help they need. This would, in turn, increase phone call conversions while making the booking experience better for the right prospect.
So our variant removed the secondary CTA and highlighted the call button alongside some solution-focused messaging.
The results:
- Click-to-call conversions increased by 18%
- Bookings via the form decreased by 7%. What was extremely interesting was that while 35% less people started filling out the form, the completion increased by 45%.
This confirmed the theory.
Prospects in a state of urgency were getting stuck in the form and were actively dropping off. By removing the CTA, we introduced a simpler filtering mechanism.
The form had 12 fields. It asked for your preferred time window, the type of service, your equipment model, and how long you’d been experiencing the issue.
Logical questions for a maintenance appointment.
Torture for someone whose house is quickly turning into a sauna.
Only the highest-intent prospects, those who truly wanted a maintenance appointment, took the extra step to find the form (Which was still easy to find on the site!.) Once they started it, they were far more likely to finish. But prospects who had an urgent problem could find the path to fixing their problem immediately.
Essentially:
- People with emergencies saw a single, clear path and acted immediately.
- People seeking maintenance were willing to spend a few extra seconds to locate the form and complete it thoroughly.
By reducing visual noise and focusing on the most important action, we helped prospects self-select into the right conversion path.
Quick reminder before you go ripping every second CTA off your site
Let’s be clear:
Double CTAs aren’t always wrong.
When you have two distinct user groups at the SAME intent level and commitment stage, multiple options can work.
The problem isn’t the number of CTAs.
It’s when those CTAs serve different stages of urgency and intent, forcing customers to self-diagnose where they belong before you’ve helped them understand their options.
Designing for intent sometimes means adding friction for the high-intent users
When visitors truly want a specific outcome (they have high intent), whether it’s booking a maintenance appointment, signing up for a demo, or requesting a proposal, they’ll take the extra step to reach it.
Your job isn’t to create the shortest possible path for every action. It’s to create the clearest path for the primary action.
Sometimes the best user experience is to get out of their way.
Remove the extra button, let prospects who need urgent help act instantly AND help high-intent visitors find their way to what they’re looking for (yes, even if it means adding more steps).
Our next steps? Testing new ways to make online booking accessible in the right place on mobile, without distracting from the primary call CTA.
Here’s how to apply these insights yourself:
- Audit your CTAs – List every call-to-action on key pages and ask yourself: Does each button serve a clear primary goal for our business and customers, or just calm our fear of missing out?
- Invest in uncovering real intent and what stage your prospects are in their decision-making journey – Are they actually ready to buy? Are they looking for more information? Are they comparing you to a competitor? Understanding these different stages of your prospects will help you choose the right CTAs for them at each step of your customer journey.
- Once you uncover their intent, create better paths for your different segments, and don’t be afraid to test adding more steps in the process. High-intent prospects will take an extra step if the path feels logical and gets them to their destination.
Fear drives us to add more
We add buttons, links, banners, and forms, all in the name of capturing every possible visitor. But more isn’t always better.
When you clearly define your prospects’ paths and level of intent, removing an option can lead to clearer decisions, faster action and stronger results.
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