by Sarah Santacroce
Every website should have a call to action, a response you want users to complete. What do you want the visitors on your website to do ? Should they
- download your free e-book and get added to your e-mail list?
- download your brochure?
- subscribe to your newsletter?
- register for a webinar?
- buy your product?
- donate money for a good cause?
- book a free call with you or one of your representatives?
- what else?
Once you have defined the action that you want your visitor to take, you will have to think about how to encourage the users to act. Here are a few ideas:
- Action words
A call to action should clearly tell users what you want them to do. They should include active words such as:- Download
- Subscribe
- Register
- Buy
- Donate
- Call
All of those get the users attention and encourage them to take an action.
- Sense of urgency
To create a sense of urgency and a need to act now, words like these can be used:
- Now
- Order now and receive a free gift
- For a short time only
- Immediately
- Location
Location is important for the call-to-action. The right side of your website’s header is a good place, or anywhere else above the fold, so visitors see it without having to scroll down. - Presentation
Use images – Images or buttons get people’s attention because our eyes are naturally drawn to images rather than text first.
Choose contrasting colors – Use a color that contrasts with your main colors for maximum effect.
Use white space – The more space around a call-to-action, the more attention is drawn to it. If you surround it by too much content, it gets lost in the jungle.
Track your success
Last but not least you will want to track your results. You want to be able to measure how successful your new call-to-action is. If your call is related to an e-mail registration, a product sale or a registration for a webinar, this is pretty simple. You can just look at those statistics. But if you just want your customer to download your brochure or watch your video for example, I suggest you use the Goal Settings of Google Analytics. You can define your goal (for example the “download complete” page) and Google analytics will then measure how many users get to that specific page.
Some good examples
Firefox has a nicely designed button, in a contrasting color. It is clear that they want you to download their browser.
It couldn’t be more simple. An empty page with just two things: a video and a download button. Any questions ?
Mailchimp is also a great example. It is pretty obvious that they want you to sign up to their free e-mail marketing plan.
Do you have an example of a creative call-to-action ? Or do you have a question ? Share it in the comments below.
