Description
Call-to-Actions (CTAs) are ideal objects for studying digital resemiotization of shopping. CTAs are interactive design elements aimed at guiding a target audience towards specific actions, playing a vital role in online businesses (e.g., Eisenberg & Eisenberg 2006, Fogg 2009, McNeil 2014, Chen, Yeh & Chang 2021). Dimensions of CTAs that are relevant from the perspective of resemiotization include:Roles and functions of CTAs in shopping practices: CTAs are commonly used in commercial websites to promote products and brands. Also, they help potential buyers overcome crucial steps in shopping processes, such as transitioning from considering alternatives of goods to choosing a specific product, or rating the consumption of brands (Gube 2009).
Design and use: CTAs are typically short texts like “Buy Now” or “Add to Cart”, displayed as visually striking buttons, arrows, or images placed strategically on web shops. Thus, a study of these digital artefacts includes an examination of the design, use, and implementation strategies of CTAs.
Digital optimization of shopping: Marketing research uses data-driven analyses of media users’ digital touch-points on digital platforms to determine when and where CTAs are best implemented in web shops. On this basis, CTAs are optimized to prompt potential buyers to advance in their shopping experience and reduces bounce rate. This dimension emphasizes the interdependency of practice and technology.
The above-mentioned aspects seek to underscore that CTAs are a key to how practices of shopping are (re-)semiotized and how these digital artefacts mediate between shopping discourses and practices.
That being said, the concept of CTAs is not without its issues. A comprehensive examination of both the marketing literature and best practices reveals that there are many facets of CTAs that remain unexplored. The existing literature acknowledges several crucial dimensions of CTAs, including how potential buyers notice a CTA in a webshop, engage with it, and their subsequent belief that the appropriate action has been taken (Meltoft et al., 2021, p. 409). However, the diversity of CTAs is vast, and to date, there is no exhaustive description of the different semiotic and social functions that CTAs can serve. Moreover, the study of CTAs as multimodal phenomena is still in its infancy. While it is generally assumed that elements such as color, layout, and position play a significant role in influencing buyers’ decisions, systematic studies investigating these assumptions are lacking. While there are studies that examine nonverbal elements, these semiotic features have often been explored in isolation. Additionally, this approach overlooks the potential interplay between multimodal resources and how they collectively support shopping actions afforded by CTAs. For instance, studies examining how different designs of CTAs may influence potential buyers’ perception of CTAs and their inclination to perform the actions suggested by CTAs often exclude these semiotic aspects (e.g., Zalmanson, Oestreicher-Singer & Perez 2017).
Lastly, functions of CTAs are only vaguely linked to generic models of buying processes in a so-called consumer journey, such as stages of awareness, consideration, decision, and loyalty about brands and products. These descriptions are often based on best practices and are highly normative in nature (. Therefore, there is a pressing need for more nuanced and empirical research to better understand the multifaceted role and impact of CTAs in the realm of online shopping.
This paper aims to demonstrate that the study of CTAs fundamentally revolves around the concept of ‘resemiotization’. This perspective can elucidate issues related to the design, use, and implementation of CTAs in both marketing literature and practice, as well as refine the existing understanding of CTAs. To achieve this perspective, a semiotic technology framework is introduced.
Semiotic technology, a field that investigates technologies for meaning-making, encompasses the examination of design, uses, discourses, and narratives of technologies (Djonov & van Leeuwen, 2018). Furthermore, it connects these technologies to broader cultural and social structures and processes. Discourse studies within this field draw on concepts from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (Halliday 1973, 1985), Multimodal Social Semiotics (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006), Social Semiotic Discourse Studies (van Leeuwen 2005, 2008), and Geosemiotics (Scollon 2001). This includes the concepts of ‘resemiotization’ (Iedema 2001, 2003) and ‘recontextualization’(Bernstein 1981, 1986), which are integral to the study of discourses, multimodal semiotics, and social practices in relation to technologies.
By applying this framework, I aim to enhance the understanding of CTAs. The proposed outline for this exploration is as follows:
Multimodal Artifacts: CTAs should be studied as multimodal artifacts. This necessitates a focus not only on the written or visual resources of CTAs, which are the primary focus of most marketing and design studies, but also on nonverbal semiotic resources. These may include interactivity, color, position, typography, layout, and the integration of these elements into multimodal ensembles. I will argue that it is these specific features that set CTAs apart from other interactive elements and designs on a web shop, such as simple hyperlinks. Despite their significance, these features are often overlooked in empirical studies of CTAs. This oversight can lead to a lack of understanding of the functionality of CTAs. By bringing these features into focus, we can gain a more comprehensive understanding of CTAs and their role in user engagement and conversion.
Semiotic Technology: Studying CTAs not just as (multimodal) texts representing discourses of shopping, but also as semiotic technologies that enable online shopping as a distinct social practice, opens up a new dimension in understanding their . This approach allows us to see how CTAs incorporate both discourses and practices of shopping, providing a more comprehensive view of their function in the context of online commerce.
Interactive Resources: The interactive resources of CTAs constitute their action potential, and thus how acts of shopping are resemiotized (and transformed) in web shops. To inform the study of how actions of shopping are reconfigured as interactive CTAs, SFL and social semiotic research on functional elements of shopping provide valuable insights. For instance, Mitchell’s (1975[1957]) analysis of buying and selling on markets identified five functional elements: ‘salutation’, ‘enquiry as to the object of sale’, ‘investigation of the object of sale’, ‘bargaining’, and ‘conclusion’; Hasan’s (1985) study of buying and selling in a vegetable shop found eight functional elements of shopping; and Ventola’s (1987) study of service interactions laid out a complex network of functional elements that could be realized in different ways. Additionally, Martinec’s (2000) study of actions, Adami’s (2015) study of interactive signs, van Leeuwen, Boeriis & Dakwar’s (2022) study of functions in online fashion shops, Andersen and van Leeuwen’s (2017) genre study of webshops, and Poulsen’s (2022) research on cursor resources may help qualify the analysis of the functions of CTAs in terms of digitally embedded actions that seek to advance potential buyers’ shopping processes. These studies, taken together, provide a more sophisticated understanding of CTAs as semiotic technologies within the realm of online shopping. They elucidate how these artefacts resemiotize actions associated with shopping, subtly altering these practices in the process.
In presenting these arguments, I will substantiate points with data from the RESEMINA project on offline and online shopping, and include examples from brick-and-mortar stores and web shops that sell books and electronics.
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| Period | 24. Jun 2024 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Sociolinguistics Symposium : Ordinariness + Innovation |
| Event type | Conference |
| Conference number | 25 |
| Location | Perth, AustraliaShow on map |