Businesses spend most of their marketing efforts driving visitors to their website. However, getting people to come to your site is just the first step. Once they land on your homepage, they should convert into quality inbound leads, and you can’t turn visitors into leads without a proper call to action.
Small businesses often make several mistakes when it comes to website design, but one of the most critical ones is not having a call to action to guide the visitors through the inbound marketing funnel. In fact, as much as 70 percent of small businesses don’t have a call to action on their website, and many of those who do incorporate a CTA, fail to do it correctly.
A call to action provides focus to your site, it gives a direction to your users, and it gives you a way to measure the success of your site.
There are many techniques for creating a compelling call to action, so let’s mention some of the most important ones:
Focus on Value
A user has to recognize the need to complete a call to action. Before you ask people to respond, you should first identify a problem – then present a product that solves it. You also need to explicitly state the benefits of responding to the CTA. What will the user get out of completing your CTA? A call to action must have definite value for the visitors.
Address the User’s Concerns About the CTA
When a customer completes a call to action, it’s primarily their first step of trust towards you. In many cases, the visitors have to make a payment or give out their details, so they probably have questions and concerns.
Will you spam them if they sign up for your newsletter? Is it easy to unsubscribe? Will there be delivery charges if they complete the CTA that leads to ordering goods from you?
Your call to action has to address these concerns and reassure the visitor that they can trust you and safely go through with the process.
Positioning Your CTA
The position of your call to action on the page is another important factor. The best place for an effective CTA is usually high on the page and in the central column. However, this doesn’t guarantee success, especially if there are many images of people’s faces on the page. Faces draw attention away from the CTA unless they are looking directly at it.
In addition to positioning it accurately, you should also think about the right time to ask the user to interact. Should it be right after they land on your page, or should it be after they have seen what you offer?
Follow Through
Think about what happens after a user responds to your call to action. The journey rarely ends when the visitors click on the CTA link. There is usually a sign-up process and several different steps. You have to think through the rest of the process just as the call to action itself and make it as easy and smooth as possible for the visitor.
A call to action isn’t only limited to e-commerce websites. Every site needs to have a goal for the users to complete, whether it’s signing up for a newsletter, filling in a contact form, or volunteering their time.
At Exceedion, we know all about the power of a compelling call to action. Contact our team of experts to help you convert visitors to leads and leads to customers in no time.