Visitors Into Customers Series 1: Use A “Call-To-Action” On Your Website

You have a beautiful new website, and you’re running some ads or an SEO campaign to bring new visitors to your site.

Now what?

Imagine a bakery that’s full of people, but no one buys anything. They just walk in, take a peek around, and then leave. If that was your business, what would you do? I can guarantee you’d at least think “why isn’t anyone buying anything?”

It would be perfectly natural to think that, yet sometimes we don’t have the same thought process about our website:

“Why isn’t anyone buying?” Or possibly “how can I get more people to buy?”.

Given this question, we’ve decided to introduce a new series called “Visitors Into Customers”. We’ll be giving you a new idea every week that you can apply to your business’s website. It’s not a huge job, and most tasks can be done in under an hour (bar week #4, which has one of our most important tips).

We’ll provide examples and tools that you can apply yourself, or get your webmaster to do for you. Let’s start with tip #1:

Use A “Call-To-Action” (CTA) Throughout Your Website

Also known as “telling your visitors what to do”, a CTA is short, and it contains your “Most Wanted Response” (MWR).

Most-wanted response definition: the action you most want visitors to take that is most valuable to you. Common MWRs for a small business are to get a visitor to:

• call you
• fill out a contact form
• make a purchase online
• fill out a form for a free quote
• book an appointment online

Your MWR is valuable to you; it usually represents a lead or a sale.

It may seem shallow and possibly even cynical, but simply saying “Call Us Today!” will dramatically increase the likelihood of a visitor calling you, instead of just leaving your website.

You have two action steps now:

1. Decide on a most-wanted response
2. Turn that MWR into a call-to-action, and put it throughout your website

Examples Of A Call-To-Action

Let’s say you decide that your MWR is for a visitor to email you. You’ll want to place some prominent buttons around your website, “calling” your visitors to take action. Here’s an example:

You’ll also want to put a “contact” link in your navigation.

One successful idea is to put a call-to-action at the end of your articles whenever appropriate. For example, a local mechanic in Chilliwack puts this button at the end of his articles:

Because they’ve already been reading his content, and are sold on his credibility (because he answered all of their questions), providing a CTA at this time is very effective.

Where can you put a call-to-action on your website? If your site is built on WordPress, you should be able to find shortcodes that make creating buttons a snap. If not, you can always use Button Optimizer to make your own custom CTA buttons.

And in our very own “call-to-action” style…

…create your website’s call-to-action now!