Firstly, for those of you who aren’t aware, a call-to-action (often abbreviated to CTA) is a button, text or image (or a combination of all three) that acts as an incentive for your visitors to perform a specific action (hence the name), helping you to convert visitors into leads.
These are not only integral to ensuring you attract the right visitors to specific areas of your site, but for also providing more structured and user-friendly navigation through your site for visitors; you’ll be able to see these strategically peppered throughout our own site.
It is imperative that your website includes calls to action – CTAs drive traffic to landing pages, which, from your perspective, is an opportune moment for visitor data collection, this is particularly useful for effective lead nurturing.
When considering creating a call to action, you need to be clear on the purpose which will, in turn, dictate the design – after all compelling call-to-actions are strengthened by creative design, driving visitors toward the desired areas of your site.
Remember, CTAs aren’t just for funneling visitors toward a certain stage of the buyer journey; they are transactional: through forms, for instance, you can set up a system through which in exchange for the completion of an action, the visitor can gain access to something of value such as a whitepaper or quote – this is the fundamental principle underpinning inbound marketing.
Having covered the fundamentals of CTAs, below we outline some of the best practices you’ll want implement into your own attempts.
Clear Messaging
It is vital that language used in your calls to action is appropriate in the context of the website in which it is hosted, and in accordance with your brand. Often the copy should be authoritative and have a sense of urgency, encouraging the visitor to click through instantly. Though it is not an exact science, verbs and numbers have a tendency to work well within CTAs: make sure that, where possible, you can include them in CTAs to boost their performance.
Visual Appeal
Again, many of the visual aspects of your calls to action will be determined by your overall branding and its colour schemes. However, this need for consistency shouldn’t act as an excuse for limited imagination – CTAs are visually led so you must invest time in ensuring aesthetics are top-tier and use graphics to support succinct, action-driven text. The most visually appealing and effective CTAs combine text and imagery to clearly show the user what they will be led to, entice them to click-through in the process.
Positioning
The location of the call-to-action on your website is very much dependent on the aim of the button: for instance, it can be placed adjacent to text so that it is always visible when reading copy, or at the end of an article, relating to something they the audience will have just read. Surprisingly, a fundamental error noticeable on many sites is poor sizing of calls to action buttons. With calls to actions designed to encourage click-throughs and the development of interest in your brand and its offering, fundamentals such as this are easy wins for optimising your website.
As a full-serviced agency, we’re no stranger to creating outstanding responsive websites for our clients – this is a service that covers more than merely optimising your calls to action and is one that we’re excited to extend to you in the form of a two-part guide, covering everything you could possibly need to get started in developing a more effective website.