Firstly, what is a call to action? Well it is the action, response or activity you most want visitors to your website to take. You should have a desired call to action for every page on your website.
Depending on your site you may just want people to make contact with you (whether by email, contact form or phone), subscribe to your newsletter, buy something, download your free ebook or white paper or comment on your latest blog post.
If you have ever looked closely at your website statistics it is common for around 80% of visitors never to go past the front page or to abandon a website from the entrance page. So in other words … to find your website, arrive on any one of the pages and then leave without proceeding any further. Reasons for this may be they did not find what they were looking for, your message was not clear or your website did not prompt them to take action.
So here are some tips to motivate your website visitors out of inactivity!
Attract their attention
Visitors are busy and often in a hurry so your call to action needs to stand out and be immediately obvious. This often comes down to size, position and colour so you attract eyeballs! Depending on the real estate you have available make your call to action as large as possible with white space around. The best position is high up and towards the centre of the page. Choose a different colour to the rest of your content on the page and use images to help your message stand out.
Give a reason
Before visitors are likely to respond or take action they need some information. Your copy should be short but identify a need or problem and then provide the solution.
Tell them what you want them to do
Be specific and tell people the action you want them to take. Use words like “Call”, “Download”, “Subscribe”, “Register” or “Buy”.
Create urgency
Use language that creates a sense of urgency or offer an incentive. Use words like “now”, “for a limited time”, “offer expire s”, “free gift”, “free delivery” “try risk free” and “available for the first 100 subscribers”.
Make it easy
Make sure it is fast and easy for visitors to take your desired action otherwise they might abandon the transaction half way through. It is important to have as few steps as possible.
In Summary
1. Define a desire call to action for each page on your website
2. Measure results
3. Tweak and improve to achieve your desire outcomes
