The best call to action on a website

Have you battled with getting visitors to your site to do what you want? Maybe you would like them to sign up for your newsletter or get a demo of your product however they never get to that page? It may be the right time to have another look at your call-to-action.

What is a call-to-action?

The term ‘call-to-action’ (CTA) is a statement which is designed to elicit an immediate response from the person who is consuming it. The CTA is used in business – as part of a digital marketing strategy –to get your target audience to respond to it by taking a specific action.

Before you put pen to paper and write down your call to action, decide what the goal is that you’re trying to reach:

• Do you want to boost subscriptions?
• Increase sales?
• Move readers along to another content piece?

Once you have an idea of the action that you want to be performed, think about how best you can achieve this goal.

The best call-to-action phrases are short and use powerful verbs. Also, they speak directly to the user. Rather than weaker call-to-action words – such as click here – an efficient call-to-action phrase will use more particular words that speak directly to the outcome that you want. Great calls-to-action include:

• Discover your best life
• Join our community
• Book your next adventure.

The best call-to-action examples

Here are a few examples of great calls-to-action:

• Video-streaming service Netflix makes use of persuasive text to help to guide you to their free trial. Then, they let you know how easy-to-use their product is as it provides you with the ability to watch your favourite programmes anywhere and the ability to cancel if you’re not satisfied.
• Marketing automation giant, Hubspot, HubSpot makes use of straightforward persuasive content alongside applicable images of fellow salespeople to get you to try out their sales tools.
• Trello, which offers a project management solution, makes their persuasive copy and button text stand out against their all blue background. This is by featuring strong contrasting colours and maintaining the page simple so that there’s nothing to divert you from what they want you to do next – in other words: sign up for free.

Where should a call-to-action be?

The question “where should I place my CTA on my website?” is one that digital marketing experts attempt to tackle often. And it’s probably as it’s so frustrating. Currently, no one has decided on one clear solution such as, for example, “top-right corner of every web page” to solve the problem of where CTAs should belong for optimal engagement.

Before A/B testing and heat-mapping tools, web designers and digital marketers though that the best solutions was to put all the necessary information above the fold and then the secondary information below the fold.

According to expert, where the CTA is placed should be influenced by the density of a page:

• For a shorter page that has less information, it may make sense to put the CTA above the fold.
• For a more extended page that conveys that is more complex, the CTA may do better below the fold.

In a study, researchers compared the difference in conversion rates between:

• A shorter home page design that had a distracting navigation bar, no value proposition in the content, and a call-to-action form in the top-right of the page, and
• A more extended home page design with content that delivered a stronger, clearer and more detailed value proposition.

The researchers also removed the distracting navigation and placed the call-to-action at the bottom of the page.

What was found that the more straightforward and more extended layout of the page had a 220% higher conversion rate than that of the original control page. The underlying assumption here is that because the web designers provided all the useful information which visitors required cleanly and; they didn’t mind waiting until the end of the page to engage with the CTA.

Your CTA is the opportunity to motivate your audience to take real steps in terms of becoming a customer or client. The CTA can be the deciding factor between a lead and a conversion. Many argue that the CTA is the most valuable part of your site or ad campaign. Skipping the CTA is a dangerous mistake that won’t bode well for your company. If you utilise your CTA to create a sense of urgency – or to gently steer your users towards the checkout line – the important thing is that you use a strong CTA. Next time you’re creating site content or ad copy, let your call to action shine. The results will follow.

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