The Improvement That Made Things Worse
Here is a product hypothesis that sounds unambiguously correct: your call-to-action button should tell users what they are getting, not just what they are doing. Tailored value propositions replace generic verbs with specific promises.
An energy provider ran this hypothesis on their plan comparison chart. The result was a statistically significant, double-digit relative decline in enrollment starts. A clear loser, confirmed at high confidence, consistent across both desktop and mobile.
What the Action Point Actually Is
The action point is not primarily a communication event. It is a commitment event. By the time a user's cursor hovers over an enrollment button, the communication has already happened. The product chart communicated. The pricing communicated.
Generic copy — "Sign up" — is frictionless because it requires no evaluation. The user's existing decision carries them forward. The button is a door.
Value-proposition copy introduces a task at the threshold. "Start saving on clean energy" is a proposition. Propositions invite assessment. Assessment takes time. In that time, the user switches from commitment mode to evaluation mode.
Choice Disfluency at the Worst Possible Moment
"Sign up" is maximally fluent. Two words, no semantic complexity. The user executes it.
A tailored value proposition is significantly less fluent. It is a claim that makes implicit comparisons and requires evaluation. For a user whose priority does not match the specific framing, it raises doubt.
This is choice disfluency: reduced fluency at a decision point creates micro-hesitation. Micro-hesitation at the point of enrollment compounds into non-conversion.
Why Downstream Was Stable
The decline was isolated to the initial CTA engagement. Users who did start enrollment converted through at the same rate as control.
This confirms the product was not the problem. The CTA copy did not corrupt the funnel. It filtered the entry to it — in the wrong direction.
The Business Economics of Over-Communicating
When the CTA generates a meaningful decline in click-through, every unit of acquisition cost is spread across a smaller conversion base. The CTA is the narrowest point in the funnel. Small changes there have outsized economic impact.
The cost of over-communicating at the action point is not just a lost click. It is the partial write-down of every investment that brought the user to that click.
What Generic Copy Actually Does
Generic CTAs are not lazy. They are an acknowledgment that the decision has already been made. By the time a user reaches the enrollment button, the value proposition has been delivered in the plan name, pricing, and features above.
Repeating it inside the button is redundant — and redundancy at the action point is friction in disguise.
The Broader Principle
There is a stage in the user journey where additional information accelerates the decision. And there is a stage where it decelerates it. The inflection point is roughly at the moment of intended action.
Before the action point: more can help. After the action point is reached: less is more.