You don't REALLY want to cut response to your sales letters, opt-in pages, or squeeze pages, do you? You may be unwittingly cutting your response by as much as 58% by using graphic "Submit" buttons instead of the standard gray ones generated by the visitors browser.

In case you are wondering, here is an example of graphics being used instead of the default buttons:

Much better looking, eh? And you can use a rollover, which we did in this case so the nice white and red buttons turn green when you mouse over them. (Sorry, you can't see the rollover in this screen capture). Slick, isn't it?

No, not so slick. Testing by several marketers over thousands of page views has proven that use of these graphics instead of the default buttons can cut response by an average 58%! That's a LOT of sales or opt-ins to lose!

Why? The standard buttons are what your visitors are used to. They see the plain gray buttons on dozens of websites every day. Once in a while, they come across a site that uses graphic buttons, but the graphics may look entirely different on each site. Confusion enters the picture and one thing we all know to be true: "the confused mind says NO!"

When you have dollars on the line, you don't want to be different. Yes, graphic buttons are creative, interactive, etc. But, they are NOT effective. You want effective.

The tests also revealed that the best results were with the plain old browser-generated buttons, but with a twist. See the example below. The standard browser-generated button is surrounded by a red line or border. Familiarity with a touch of flare. It works.

Here's a tip. NEVER argue with what works. Just do it. Save your creative energy for where it really counts, like writing great copy.

Here's an example of the code we used to produce the red-bordered, plain buttons above:

You can download the code file here, or you can copy and paste the code from this text file.

We are going to be changing any graphic buttons we have on our, or our clients websites. I suggest that you do the same and reclaim that 58% that you've been missing. It is very rare that one change has the potential to make that much of a difference, but when it does, it requires immediate action.