You’ve invested in setting up a website and are getting a healthy amount of traffic to your site, but your conversion rate is still suffering. So what could be the problem?
Many business owners struggle to generate leads via their website. Often they wonder where they’ve gone wrong, because of how well-designed their site is — however, this may just point us towards one potential issue — your call to action (CTA).
What Is a CTA?
In its simplest form, a call to action tells your reader what steps you want them to take next. You can phrase it in several ways depending on what your article was about or the purpose of your webpage content. Whether you want them to share their contact information, complete a purchase, sign up for your mailing list, or contact you directly, a strong CTA is the way you’re going to get your visitors to do what you want them to.
The Importance of the CTA
Content may cover many different topics, but ultimately its role is to guide your target audience through their buyer’s journey. A CTA is the icing on the cake that seals the deal.
You’ve produced some quality content, well-written email copy, or some fantastic graphics for your ad — but it’s not finished unless it contains a call to action for your readers.
You need to take them by the hand and show them what to do next; that’s the job of a CTA. And by not having one, you might be struggling to land conversions.
Types of Calls to Action
CTA’s take a lot of different forms and can be used with different types of content. They can be either buttons or hyperlinked text.
Some places they can be found include blog content, emails, newsletters, graphic ads, videos, and more.
Here are some examples:
- Subscribe To Our Blog
- Contact Us
- Get Started
- Sign Up Now
- Start Your Free Trial
- Buy Now
- Add To Cart
- Read More
- Book A Call
- Claim Your Reward
- Watch The Video
The list is endless, and you can get as creative as you want, as long as the text gets the point across in a way that’s memorable and persuasive.
What Makes a Good Call To Action?
A CTA can make or break your content, campaign, or ads, so it’s essential to make sure that you’ve ticked all the boxes. The following are some simple tasks that create a good call to action.
#1. Offers Value
It should give the user some additional value. Let’s say you’ve written an article about custom photography, and at the end of the article, your CTA will be a link to get a quote from your studio for a shoot.
This is a good use of an appropriate CTA, because it naturally fits into what you were discussing, and you will likely get a lot of high intent traffic, which will result in conversions.
#2. Stands Out
Don’t make your target audience scour your website for your call to action — people don’t have time for that, and you could lose a potential client. Instead, make your CTA stand out. CTA’s are often big, bright, and colourful buttons that you will not mistake for anything else.
#3. Is Well Designed
Simply having a big colourful button won’t cut it — it needs to be pleasing to the eye and blend with the overall design of the page it’s on. Don’t be afraid to reach out to an experienced web designer to help you craft elements of your site such as your CTA, landing page, or other elements of your sales funnel.
If you have some design experience, you can do it yourself, but professional work always wins. And once you get it designed, you can use slight variations of it over the next few years to keep things fresh and make the most of a good design.
#4. Evokes a Sense of Urgency
This practice is popular with eCommerce products. The visitor is offered a 30% discount, but only if they complete the purchase in the next 72 hours. Some online businesses even go as far as putting a countdown timer on the page and following up with cart reminders.
The urgency tactic is used for abandoned cart campaigns or when a customer drops out of the sales funnel and doesn’t complete their order. The discount becomes the little nudge the customer needs.
You can apply it to any business type by using language such as ‘Limited Offer’ with a date it needs to be redeemed by. It’s worth thinking about how you can also incorporate this into your next call to action.
#5. Has Been Tested
Doing thorough A/B testing with your CTA’s is important, because the people who can give you the best feedback are your target audience. Don’t be afraid to set up A/B testing with two different CTA’s for the same offer to get some much needed data you can use for your future.
Best Place to Put Your CTA
Some people place their call to action after the first paragraph of their content and others at the end. Some believe that if a reader has seen it initially, they will remember it at the end and will most likely take action.
Others believe placing it at the end is the best. No one can tell you where the best place would be. Like we mentioned earlier, testing is crucial. What works for one business won’t work for another.
Complimenting Your CTA
If you want to get the most bang for your buck in the digital world, consider other factors that compliment your CTA. You need:
- A well-designed website that appeals to your audience.
- Good, well edited copy.
- Beautiful and SEO-optimized images to capture and keep your visitors attention.
- An analytics tracking tool to get those essential insights that help make your site better and see where prospects are falling out of your sales funnel.
Let’s Get Started
Revy Web Design is a community-driven collective of digital service providers. We are passionate about creating beautiful and bespoke websites. We design and build our own templates using an industry-leading WordPress page builder, which means that all our websites are tailor-made just for your business.
Get in touch today, and let’s craft a tailor-made digital solution to help your business thrive.
