So you’ve designed your website and optimised it to make it as visible as possible to the search engines. People are finding your listing and clicking through to take a closer look.
So far so good.
But when they don’t buy instantly, how do you keep them on your site long enough to understand what they want, and or, secure their permission to continue the dialogue?
A good looking site is not enough. Every page should lead people towards a clearly defined ‘Call To Action’.
Calls To Action are, in the simplest terms, something people visiting your site can do, over and above simply browsing through the pages of text and images. If a site visitor has to figure out what to do next on your site, after skimming through the text and images, they are likely to leave. Calls To Action, on the other hand, guide your site visitor towards what you want them to do and increase your website conversions.
And, of course there’s a science to doing this successfully. The following are three key things to bear in mind when formulating your Calls To Action.
1. Identify Calls To Action which will serve your buying cycle
Each product or service has a different buying or purchase cycle, based on how long it takes for the customer to make a decision. Higher value products like a car, typically take longer and require more consideration, than lower value products like office supplies for example.
Where an office supplier might focus on calls to action enticing people towards making a quick purchase a car seller is more likely to focus on calls to action which invite people to find out more about the car they have shown an interest in. This might be done, by inviting them to engage in an online survey, download a PDF brochure, or take a test drive. All these options will require them to give you their email address, allowing a customer representative to continue the sales dialogue with them at a later point.
You should also make sure there are secondary Calls To Action, so even when you can’t enter into a direct dialogue with your site visitor, you will still benefit from their visit. These include the opportunity to participate in a forum, or leave feedback (helping you improve your website or products), or bookmark your site on a social bookmarking service (helping you increase your visibility).
2. To Increase Your Website Conversions Use Your Prime Real Estate
Prime Real Estate is another way of saying ‘make sure you put your Call To Action where people are most likely to see it’. Over the years, website user research suggests the places on a website peoples eyes are most likely to gravitate towards, is the middle and the middle right. Obviously there’s no point putting a link to your terms and conditions at these points, compared with advertising your latest deal. Be aware too, that although the majority of people today are familiar with scrolling sites, not to put your call to action too far below the fold i.e. the part of the site which is not immediately visible.
Finally, if your call to action is part of the main text on the site, (i.e. not positioned in one of the side bars), then make sure it represents the conclusion of a short bullet pointed sales pitch headed by a headline.
3. Use Language That Is Motivating
Make your Calls To Action crystal clear. There’s no need for cryptic messages. If the call to action is for 10% off a product or service, say so in the simplest terms. Use active phrases which include an active verb, to motivate people to complete the action. Examples might be commands or invitations such as ‘subscribe to our newsletter’, ‘download a white paper’, or ‘speak to a sales advisor’.
Finally, some advisors suggest, that today, people are web literate enough, not to have to be told to ‘click here’. If something is activated as a blue hyperlink, or a hand appears when they scroll over it with their mouse, they will know they can click on it.
So why not blastoff your website conversions with some new Calls To Action.
In future articles, I will be examining some of these specific Calls To Action in more detail.
I hope you have found this post on Website Conversion and Calls To Action useful. I would love to read your thoughts and comments, or if you have any questions please enter them into the comments section below. Thank you very much.
A great tool to optimise your online business is a web analytics provider such as clicktale to optimise your conversions. The analytics show you aggregate behaviours of your website as well as real time videos of their journey through your site. To top this off there are heatmaps of clicks, hovers, mouse and eye movements. So dont waste your money on SEO bringing people to your site unless you are going to employ an analytic provider to convert those shoppers to buyers
Hi Cath,
Thank you, you make a very vaild point. The best SEO in the world will not necessarily make you sales or website conversions. Your site needs to be monitored and tested constantly and Analytics software is essential for that. I have only a limited knowledge of Clicktale but when I tried it, it was very good, with some very advanced features.
However, I would also highly recommend Google Analytics, as this is also a great program and free of charge.
Take care and thank you for taking the time to comment.
Regards
Harvey