Hero Sections with a Secondary CTA Path (103)

What a secondary CTA path actually is

A secondary CTA path is the decision to give the hero two next steps instead of one. The primary action serves the visitor who is ready to act now. The secondary action serves the one who is interested but not ready, by offering a lower-commitment or higher-touch alternative that still moves them forward.

The best heroes use one of a few recurring pairings:

• Free trial plus demo. "Start free" sits next to "Book a demo," so self-serve buyers can try the product while considered buyers can request a conversation.
• Build for free plus talk to sales. Common in developer and infrastructure products, where "Start building free" serves the individual and "Talk to the team" serves the enterprise evaluation.
• One-click signup plus guided tour. A "Sign up with Google" or email path next to a "Take a product tour," so a visitor can either commit or look first.
• Inline action plus secondary download. A core action in the hero alongside an app store or platform link, capturing a different way the same buyer wants to start.

Why it works

A SaaS hero almost always serves two audiences at the same time. One visitor wants to try the product immediately and resents anything that stands between them and the signup. The other wants to understand the product, or needs buy-in from a team, before committing. A single call to action serves one of them well and abandons the other.

A second path closes that gap. The primary action keeps the self-serve buyer moving, and the secondary action gives the considered buyer something to do other than leave. Done with clear hierarchy, it widens the top of the funnel without slowing the visitor who already knew what they wanted.

How the best heroes do it

About six in ten of the scored hero sections in our library offer a secondary path beside the main CTA. Across the scored examples below, the discipline is hierarchy. The strongest heroes make the primary path obviously dominant, a solid button, and let the secondary sit beside it in a quieter style so the intended default reads at a glance. They also map the split to real buyer types: self-serve trial for individuals and small teams, demo or sales contact for larger evaluations. Heroes from Scoro, Livestorm, and Whatfix pair a free-trial CTA with a demo path; developer-led products like Dyte and Runtime split a build-for-free action from a talk-to-sales path for enterprise buyers.

The second path rarely stands alone. The strongest heroes pair it with a risk reducer in the hero so the self-serve path carries no signup anxiety.

67/100

Common mistakes

10/100

The usual failure is two CTAs with equal visual weight, which forces every visitor to make a decision the page should have made for them and slows the buyer who was ready to act. The second failure is a secondary path that goes nowhere useful, a vague "Learn more" that adds a choice without adding a real alternative. Lead with the path most visitors should take, give the second path to the audience it is actually for, and make the hierarchy between them obvious.