How do you convince visitors that of the millions of websites out there that yours is going to be the one to solve their problems?
Impossible you say? No way! You can influence visitors to act by having attention grabbing calls to action. Calls to action, or the chunks of website text prompting visitors to act, can be mastered. Just follow our 5-step checklist and you’ll be on your way to conquering calls to action in no time.
Be Direct
A call to action is like a pick up line, short, sweet and to the point. The recipient either does something or totally ignores it. You have one chance to make an impact, so don’t be soft with your calls to action. Use specific wording to tell visitors exactly what you’d like them to do. Use phrases such as “join now”, “get instant access”, “download now” etc.
Make It Pop
Most pages on your website are going to be text rich. In order for your calls to action to grab attention make them big, colorful, and graphical. The ultimate goals is for your call to action to be the first thing a visitor sees when landing on a page.
Positioning
Numerous eye-tracking studies have confirmed the top right and left corners are hot spots for viewing. So don’t make your visitors work hard to find your call to action, put it where they will probably be looking. If your call to action is at the bottom of a post visitors are forced to scroll down the page. They can then become distracted by other content or even opt-out completely.
Simplify
It’s no surprise that people are very territorial when it comes to names and email address. If you make your call to action difficult or suspicious by making visitors jump through hoops they may leave your page. So seriously consider if more forms or extra steps are absolutely necessary before implementing them.
Testing
Design is subjective. You can follow all the fundamental rules of design and still have unresponsive visitors. The solution is to then test your calls to action. Try different text, colors, positioning, and wording to see what your visitors like. Be sure to keep track of your changes and conversions to find the best solution for your business.
Your Turn!
I hope this has helped you to get an idea of what makes an effective call to action. Please leave me a comment on which methods you hope to implement on your website and what results you wish to achieve.
