How to Get Better Results from Your Call To Action (CTA)
Why are you not making more sales or getting more leads? You have launched your website. You have evaded the common website design mistakes and you kept your blog content fresh and interesting.
You have built and segmented your email list with care and your social media is on mark.
Could it be that you are not asking for them or not clearly asking – in a way that prompts a response.
It may be that your website lacks a Call To Action (CTA) on its main page or anywhere else and that is a problem.
What is a Call To Action (CTA)?
IF YOU DO NOT ASK – YOU DO NOT GET
People are likely to do what you want them to do if you let them know what you want them to do.
If you would like them to join your email list, listen to your latest podcast, share your social media posts to build your follower or buy your product?
You will need to guide your customers’ behaviour by asking them to do something.
This act of asking for the sale or perform an action is the Call To Action (CTA). CTAs are very important because we encounter so much information every day.
If your website is cluttered with information or hard to navigate? This will feel like walking into a big grocery store and forgetting what you came to buy.
You will get better results if you ask your customers what to do.
Before doing that – you need to know what you want to accomplish with each piece of content you have created.
Further Reading: How to Fix Common Website Design Mistakes
Always include a call to action when you are creating content for your business for a webpage, a blog post, a video, a social media post or something else.
That lets the reader or viewer know what you would like them to do next. Your calls to action will depend on your goals, your business and your target customers.
For example you are into the fashion jewellery business and selling exclusively online. Here is how you might use calls to action in your content.
Your goal is to have your customers start browsing your products in your online store.
The landing page may have some information about where to find your fashion jewellery. How you search and create these jewelleries in your history and prepare it for sale.
There will be high-quality close up images of some of the best pieces.
Your main call would be a button that stands out: Explore the Collection. This is your call to action to go to the online store items.
This is the next step that the history and the gorgeous pictures are leading your customers to.
This is where the calls to action can be highly focused. So you have built loyal YouTube followers who are eagerly awaiting your latest videos on styling prom and date-night outfits with fashion jewellery.
In this instance your CTA at the end of each video could be Visit the Prom Shop Now and a link to the shop page.
Featuring selection of items that will appeal to and be priced for teens, young adults, his & hers to browse and more
Perhaps experienced collectors are another segment of your business.
The blog might cater to these customers with individual posts about unusual or valuable items.
Lacing them with a short back story about the value of those pieces and highly detailed photographs of each piece.
Here the CTA could be Shop Our Collectibles Now – linking to a shop page with rare, highly-priced pieces for stone jewellery connoisseurs and private collectors.
Further Reading: Why You Need a Mobile Friendly Website
On those shop pages a Buy Now or Add To Cart button is the call to action. Make it bigger than the other text so it is impossible to miss.
Email newsletters can include seasonal calls to action – Shop For Christmas Collection Now or limited-time calls to action like Get These Deals Before They are Gone.
Your store’s social media posts could be as simple as individual photos of new pieces with a link to your sales pages – Jewel It Up Now.
Or maybe you are using social media to get more people to Join our Email List or Read the Fashion Jewellery Newsletter.
Whatever you want your customers to do – Just ask clearly.
A call to action is a deceptively simple piece of copy that moves your customers to take action and fast.
The fast part matters because typical site visitors spend a whopping 15-20 seconds on the site and read no more than 25% of your copy.
Your CTA must catch customers’ attention immediately and get them to do something that allows you to stay connected.
That can be joining your email list or subscribing to your blog so you can build a relationship with them.
Below are four simple ways to improve your site’s CTAs for more leads and conversions
Just adding a CTA on your homepage, you will be ahead of most websites.
In a previous survey of 200 B2B companies with fewer than 100 employees found that 70% had no CTA on their homepage.
Calls to action (CTA) will help a businesses and blogs to establish a relationship and build trust with potential customers. The simplest way is by asking for further action or contact.
For many businesses, the goal is to add subscribers to the company email newsletter. For bloggers – the goal is getting readers to subscribe to the blog.
In both cases, you are collecting email addresses you can use to reach potential customers later on with giveaways, surveys, contest and promotions.
For some businesses, the goal is to get visitors to call or email so you can answer their questions and discuss what they need.
This is especially true for consultants, designers, bloggers and writers who sell customised solutions rather than service packages or physical goods.
In these cases, the CTA can be a simple Contact Me or a more compelling variation a phone number and email address above the fold on the homepage.
Previous research has confirmed a staggering 68% of sites do not have the company email address on the homepage.
This lack of easy to see contact information is absolutely crucial you will probably notice it all the time as you navigate the web.
Unless your business is already making vastly profits and your brand is ultra-exclusive in the know only niche – just make it easy for potential customers to contact you.
Seth Godin, the entrepreneur, author and blogger, has a CTA on his blog that offers a benefit for readers: Click On My Head.
Subscribers get Godin’s new posts and newsletters in their inbox and avoid the fear of missing out (FOMO). They are happy to keep up with his ideas and his email list just keeps growing.
Mean time just over at Copy blogger the goal of the blog is to get visitors to try out their free training. That is their CTA just on the homepage below their main heading.
They are also gathering email addresses and offering something in return – in this case it is a free training rather than blog updates.
Further Reading: Improve Online Copywriting on Your Website
3. Ensure your CTA is fresh and compelling
Simple Sign Up and Join Now CTAs are better than nothing however there are many more ways that can motivate customers to take action.
Productivity expert Working Simply has an email opt-in on her homepage with the CTA – Identify Your Productivity Style at the main navigation bar.
There is another CTA – Take The Assessment – just a few inches from the main navigation menu in the next section below. This is a double whammy for being CTA on a homepage.
The pop-up CTA on The Edinburgh Woollen Mill – takes a different but equally creative approach.
For customers, it is hard to go wrong with “Keep up to date! With regular news of all the latest deals & offers”
And you can choose “womenswear or menswear with an email sign up!” There is a friendly greeting – a cure for FOMO (fear of missing out) and the promise of deals and offers which is much better than join our list.
You do not need a huge or tacky CTA. The simplest approach is to eliminate visual clutter that distracts customers from your CTA.
Make sure the CTA is above the fold. That means an item is at the top of a web page so customers can see it without having to scroll down.
It is not only freelancers who indulge in CTA overload.
A promotional product retail site I use to shop has – at this point in time two online chat tabs, one giant phone number, one coupon code link, a Shop Now button and a field to enter a promo code all above the fold and to top it up a blinking light GIF.
It is difficult to know where to look or what to do first. A competitor’s site by contrast is promoting a seasonal sale with one large button.
There is nothing pulling the viewer’s eye away from that big sale button above the fold.
By making your CTAs easy to see, interesting to read and appealing to potential customers. You should see better results from your marketing efforts.
Respect your customer’s time and make the CTA process easy for them.
Keep it simple and think about what are your goals for each piece of your business content to achieve. You should be seeing better results from your marketing efforts.
Further Reading: Minimalism in Web Design.
For more information and how to create, design and manage your business website effectively.
Hope you are enjoying and learning a lot of information about:-
How To Get Better Results From Your Call To Actions (CTA).