A call to action is important for your website because it leads to a direct response that you want your audience to take. Effective calls to action motivate visitors to perform an action on the site by providing descriptive labels, understandable directions, and even incentives to click, call, or fill out a form. Starting with a clear and effective website is the first step in the right direction. You can optimize calls to action for search engines as well as users by understanding your audience and their behaviors. Creating accessible, clearly labeled directions that generate interest as well as trust will help you engage your audience making them more inclined to take action.
Compel the User to Click
One of the tricks for optimizing your call to action is presenting it at the moment your audience will be most interested in taking the next step. There has to be something that compels the user to click the link, as well as an accurate description of where the link will take them. If the landing page isn’t a place they wanted to end up, you can confuse the user and lose their trust in the ability to effectively navigate throughout the rest of your site. Make sure that your call to action button clearly explains what it does so that your website users feel more inclined to click other links around your site.
On the other hand, some brands use vague calls to action on purpose. Say you’re shopping at an online clothing store. You enter the site and the top half of the page is advertising a sale and has a button reading “Shop Now.” You may not know what the site is even selling yet, but maybe the sale was enough to draw you farther into the site. Having no extra text or product images can be a sly way of drawing the interest of first-time site visitors to an ecommerce landing page, but it can also be very effective. People are curious by nature, and you can sometimes use this to your advantage.
Create Multiple Options
Some sites choose to optimize a call to action by creating multiple choices that actually lead to the same or similar places. When you get to the bottom of a blurb about a product you’re interested in, you may be prompted to do a few things, such as browse the site’s selection of that product, or “Learn More.” Lots of sites will provide more detail about the product by offering it at the top of their product selection pages, so these links could very well lead to the same place. By offering your audience a “choice” in calls to action, they feel less like they’re having their hand held throughout the site and more like they’re able to click around of their own fruition.
Easy To Navigate
Link optimization is more than just a label. It’s about placement, direction, and visualization. Make sure that the actual link button is clear to the user, or they may be mousing over multiple things to figure out where you want them to go. A call to action is an important part of your site, so make sure that you’re paying special attention to what it looks like. Research other sites to see what works and what doesn’t in your browsing experience, and you can learn a lot about the user experience on your site as well.
Need help with your website design? Contact us today to get started!
