What is a call to action?

A Call to Action (CTA) is something which encourages a visitor to engage with your business/product, progress along the buying cycle and ultimately convert.

Common CTAs you’ve probably seen are newsletter signing up forms, registration forms, clickable call now links, buy now buttons, download buttons and many more. In this blog post, we have some tips and tricks that can encourage your prospects and customers to follow through with your CTA.

A Call to Action is just that, a callout to get a user to perform ONE action. As you’ve been browsing eCommerce stores do you see “Buy Now” buttons or do you see “Buy Now or Compare or Add to Wishlist”? These are the CTA buttons.

Same goes with other industries, if you’ve built a landing page explaining the difference between business names and trademarked names then add a CTA with copy such as “Want to know if business name is at risk from trademark by another party? Call Us Now”. This is a clear call to action to start the buying cycle. Having multiple CTA’s such as “Call Now or Email Us at XXX@XXX.com” is as a good as having none.

Encourage the user to engage with the CTA. If we take the same landing page above and just have a Call Us Now button at the bottom with no surrounding text why are they contacting you? There is bound to be 10 important points on the page, each which they are equally concerned about and having more than one issue is as good as having none as users will not act on it because it lands in the ‘too hard basket’. Reiterate the one big issue to the user and encourage them to fix 1 thing. Once you have them on the phone or their contact details you can assist the other 9 important points on the page as well.

As well as simple, the text of your call to action should be convincing and make your audience want to act. This means a clear, short and concise phrase that is convincing and distinct. Good things to include in your call to action copy are subjects and verbs and supportive figures, for example, “Buy Now”, “Read More”, “Join Now”, “Sign Up”, “Get Started” or “Join our other 100,000 members by clicking here!” are great examples. “Submit”, “Go” and “Click Here” are poor examples.

There is no point in having a CTA if no one can find it. A CTA needs to match your company and sites brandings but also draw a users attention. Having a word that is a link in the middle of a block of text is difficult to see and often overlooked. It is important to ensure your Call to Action is eye catching and appealing to the visitor. Your call to action should contrast with the rest of your site so that it can be easily spotted by your visitors and customers.

Simplicity is key! Calls to action work the best when they are not complicated. Ensure your call to action is simple and easy to use, so that your consumer does not have to go through many steps to respond to your call to action.

Remember, the goal of the CTA is to move them along the buying cycle. A CTA should get you a prospect’s (website visitor’s) details to start them along the path to purchase from you so don’t make it difficult.

If you sell high end financial advising services the chances of a CTA yielding results for “Want to learn how to reduce tax through a corporate trust structure? Call Us Now” are very low. However “Want to learn how to save 30% or more on tax? Call Us Now” is much easier to understand and it may lead to a corporate restructuring but it’s much easier to get someone to contact you with a simple issue and simple CTA.

And now for our CTA: want to learn how Calls To Action can increase your website leads? Request a Call Back here.