Your business or organization may have a great website, but is it meeting your expectations and converting visitors into sales, leads, customers or partners? If not, would you like to improve the conversion rate of your website? It doesn’t necessarily require a website overhaul – in fact, simply crafting new calls-to-action on your website can instantly provide more opportunities for visitor conversion.
What Is A Call-To-Action?
A call-to-action is an element of a website that prompts a visitor-initiated “click” or other action that converts a website visitor into a sales lead or customer. If the primary purpose of a website is to convert visitors into paying customers, registered users, or participants in a charitable mission, then call-to-actions are vitally important to the success or failure of a particular website design.
Why Are They So Important?
Without proper calls-to-action, even a website visitor that is initially committed to becoming a user, customer or participant may become frustrated, feel stonewalled and eventually move on to a competing business, service or organization. If proper calls-to-action are part of a website’s design, the opposite can occur – a website visitor who may initially be disinterested or uncommitted may find themselves drawn to calls-to-action and be successfully converted to a lead and eventually a customer, user or participant.
Measuring Conversion Rates
Aside from being a physical element of a website, such as a graphic or a text-based hyperlink, a call-to-action also includes a mechanism for measuring the conversion rate of a web page. This rate is determined by measuring the number of user-initiated “clicks” against the total number of visitors.
Simple Complexity
While tracking the successful conversion rate of calls-to-action included in popular and prominent websites may be an expensive and complicated endeavor, the process of creating a successful call-to-action can be extremely (and deceptively) simple. Website calls-to-action typically require a snippet of text, a graphical element such as a button or banner, or a combination of the two.
Phone Numbers And Emails
Another way you can utilize call-to-action is to place your phone number and email address in a prominent and well-seen location. Consider displaying your phone number at the top of your homepage, using a bold font, or adding a catchy graphic. If you want your site visitors to email you, consider creating a prominent button that includes a link to automatically open a visitor’s email application and create a new email. Would you believe that according to a study recently cited by Inc.com, 93% of small businesses don’t list a contact email address at all and 49% don’t even include a phone number on their home page?
More Forms Of Call-To-Action
There are many more ways to utilize calls-to-action than just prominently placing your phone number, email, links, and buttons. Anything that keeps your visitors on your site and lets them learn more about your company can be used as a form of call-to-action. That means that blogs, email newsletters, and whitepaper downloads that are well placed and invite interaction can be calls-to-action. Your website’s sidebars are a great place for many of these call-to-action elements. The more successful you are at creatively utilizing your calls-to-action, the more likely visitors will remember your company when it is time to do business.
Gifts And Donations
Calls-to-action don’t have to include contact information. If you are a business that provides a service through a desktop application or a mobile app, calls-to-action on your home page could include links to encourage software downloads. If you or your organization is soliciting donations – either for a charitable endeavor or as compensation for providing content – your call-to-action could be a link to a PayPal account. Finally, if your business or organization is offering an incentive for signing up or donating, such as offering a free gift to visitors who donate above a certain level, your call-to-action may primarily focus on this gift in addition to providing a donation button.