Your call to action (CTA) is one of the most essential pieces of your website. Your CTA is there to guide your website visitors through your marketing funnel, giving them a clear set of instructions guiding them on what to do next. The CTA is your key to transforming your leads into conversions.
It’s crucial to get your CTA right. You’ll want to spend some time making sure your CTA is optimized at it’s fullest potential – color, wording, positioning, and other factors.
CTA optimization is part art and part science. You cannot always predict what will work, but there are some recommended best practices when it comes to mastering the call to action. These tips will give you a little lead on optimizing your CTA and help you to not waste time on ineffective graphics and copy.
Let’s go over a few of these best practices so that you can begin masting your CTA on your website. If you’d rather get started right away, we’re here to help. Contact BHirst Media, and we’ll be there every step of the way to make sure your CTA is top-notch and on point.
Creating a sense of urgency (or scarcity) is a well-known and very effective trick for gaining leads and boosting conversions.
You can do this simply by:
Create urgency, but be brief about it. Your whole sales page should be brief because those that are way too long or wordy are ineffective. Visitors scan websites – they do not read. If your copy is long-winded, you’ve likely already lost them. Keep things short and sweet and stick to the point. Bold keywords for emphasis but do not overuse the bold feature.
Keep your CTAs to 4 words if possible. You can make the most of this short length by using strong verbs. You are trying to create that fear of missing out (FOMO) to prompt users to complete your CTA or risk losing your offer. Some examples are:
If you’ve experienced a pop-up when visiting a website, chances are you’ve witnessed some reverse psychology. Pop-ups have become extremely popular due to their effectiveness.
The idea for a pop-up is to offer two choices. Instead of using “yes” or “no,” use the power of reverse psychology to push your visitor towards the CTA that will result in a conversion for your business.
A little personalization goes a long way. By personalizing your CTA, you can increase your conversion rate by up to 202%. This does not mean your CTA needs to say “[Name] Click Here!” or that this message should be posted all over your sales pages. However, you should use the data you have available to adjust the wording of your CTA – depending on visitors’ locations, new leads, existing customers, or other relevant factors.
Most of your visitors are landing on your website through a mobile device. If your website is not mobile responsive, you are losing leads. Using a responsive design means your website is easy to read and navigate from any device with any screen size.
Before you publish your web page, make sure to check your CTA placement on all devices with a variety of screen sizes.
You need to make sure your CTA stands out against the rest of your web page contents. Utilize colors that contrast and take advantage of white space. If a CTA is using the same colors as the rest of the page text, it will blend in instead of popping.
Use plenty of white space around your CTA to help it stand out more on the web page. Size matters here, so make your CTA stand out more than the text surrounding it. Your CTA should be the first thing your website visitor sees when they land on the page.
Don’t surround it with a lot of fancy borders or photos – this will only distract. Design your CTA to draw the eye toward it.
Don’t shy away from using a buttonYou can design your CTA with plain hyperlinked text, a nice graphic, a relevant photograph – but buttons convert! The human brain wants to expand when a button is pressed, making them extremely tempting. The pleasure center of our brain is wired to wonder what’s behind door #2, so keep that in mind and don’t be afraid to tease at your offering.
Your CTA can be the most amazing one on the planet, but it won’t do you any good if it just lands your visitors on a broken page. Once your sales web page is complete, and you’ve added your CTA, make sure to click through everything to make sure all of it is running correctly and there are no broken links or pages.
It’s highly unlikely you’ll create and master the call to action on your website the first time. This is an ongoing process, and it’s likely you will have to test and refine your CTA a few times until you find the one that works for you and your business.
At BHirst Media, we know that every business is different. We’re ready to talk to you about the website design and CTA that is best for you based on your business’ unique goals and visions. Give us a jingle and find out exactly how BHirst Media’s website design and technical support packages bring your website into the 2020’s with style.
