Demystifying the Call-To-Action (CTA)
25th March 2023
You’ve probably heard online marketing gurus banging on about the importance of having calls-to-action (CTAs) on your website, but how do they work?
At its root, a call-to-action is meant to tell customers what you want them to do next. In other words, what actions do you want them to take?
In this article we will demystify the science behind CTAs, and give you some clear ideas about how to get your website visitors to follow your lead.
What is a call-to-action?
Essentially, the phrase describes any prompt contained on a website that asks the visitor to do something. For example, when you visit a news website you might be asked to “register” or “sign up” for exclusive content.
Website call-to-actions usually take the form of a button or hyperlink that take you to another page, such as a contact form. Social media or email marketing campaigns contain CTAs which are usually links to drive traffic to a website.
Websites need a clear purpose, and a call-to-action is a tool to inform a user what they need to do next. For ecommerce sites, calls-to-action are a vital part of the sales funnel as they encourage users to view and buy products.
Other businesses might use CTAs as a data capture device, or as a way of encouraging readers to explore more content on the website. The length of time users stay on a website is important if your site contains advertising space.
Without CTAs, visitors may leave a website before they have the opportunity to purchase a product or sign up for a newsletter.
Ask yourself: what do you want your website visitors to do?
What makes an effective call-to-action?
This depends on the type of website in question. Charities might ask visitors to donate to their fundraising campaign, while new businesses might want people to sign up for a newsletter so they can grow their marketing database.
Mapping your customer journey is vital as this will dictate the type of CTA required. When visitors first visit your website, you could include soft calls-to-action to help them explore the site further to learn more about your business or organisation. These softer prompts could lead to a page which contains a more direct “buy now” button.
Here are a few examples of common call-to-actions:
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CTAs can be dotted around a website, such as a pop-up window (use sparingly), checkout page, advert, page footer, side panel or simple hyperlink in text.
How do you create a call-to-action?
This is the tricky bit as CTAs will be unique to your business. Do your research on what other websites are doing and play around with the wording and design. To help, here are a few hints:
Design: buttons need bright colours to stand out from the rest of the page and an eye-catching design to attract the attention of visitors.
Position: CTAs must be visible, so be bold and don’t hide them away.
Value: users will only respond to calls-to-action that have a perceived benefit. What is in it for them?
Message: the wording needs to be clear and demand action. Include words like start, today, now, discover etc.
Brief: calls-to-action need to be six words or less in order to fit into a button.
Time: get people to act now with limited-time offers or competitions with tight deadlines.
Consider the price of your product or service. If you are offering a high-value product such as a loft conversion or new car, it can take longer to convince someone to click buy.
Focus on creating a route to an appointment, consultation call or a free estimate.
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How do you use a call-to-action?
Different people will respond in different ways to calls-to-action, and there is no guarantee of success. Research by advertising companies has found that wording and appearance are important factors in producing higher conversion rates. Rather than offering a “FREE trial”, you could say “try it today” or “get started today”.
So how can you find a CTA that produces results?
Successful marketing is all about testing and measuring, so you can collect data by conducting A/B testing. This involves using clever software which can produce real-time data, allowing you to make informed decisions on the success of your calls-to-action rather than leaving it to guesswork.
As we have mentioned, you need to build different calls-to-action into your customer journey as not everyone will respond the same way.
Imagine an online training company which offers webinars and other online resources. The visitor is encouraged to learn about the products with soft CTAs inviting them to click on more pages, articles and video demonstrations. As the visitor progresses through the website, they are then offered to sign up for a trial subscription followed by CTAs to purchase an upgrade to access more content.
If these calls-to-action are unsuccessful, visitors receive a “final” CTA to sign up before they leave the site. If email data has been captured, the potential customers receive a discount offer the day after visiting the website, with a follow-up email a week or so later.
The results of each call-to-action can be monitored to find when ones work and which ones are ignored. The business can then use this data to streamline the customer journey and increase the conversion rate.
What to do next?
Whatever your business or industry, a website without CTAs could mean that you will be losing customers and revenue to your competition. Finding the right marketing message is often the difference between success or failure.
Here at it’seeze Website Design, our team of boffins are committed to helping your business grow. From start-ups to multi-nationals, we can design, build and optimise websites with appropriate calls-to-action that will make your phone ring and your email ping.
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