Call to Action Concepts for Small Businesses

A call to action is an advertising and marketing concept. It is a request or direction to do something, usually it’s the next step that a website visitor could take toward the purchase of a product or service or make contact.

It is important that websites include a call to action not just on the home page but other pages such as the contact page. Examples of calls to actions are:

1. Request a free quote today

2. Sign-up for our e-newsletter

3. Buy now for €19.99

Typically such calls to action are displayed as high visibility graphic images in order to catch the visitor’s attention. If your website doesn’t have some calls to action then it’s likely that its effectiveness has been greatly diminished. The majority of visitors to your website are likely to be interested in your company’s product and services and you may have missed a potential conversion opportunity by not presenting them with a clear and highly visible call to action.

Objectives that you have established for your website may include selling your products or services, document downloads, newsletter registration etc. When the visitors reaching a point where they have decided your website has something that interests them you need to have the facilities to convert this interest into a possible sale, call back request etc. This is the function of a call to action, a clear step to tell visitors what you want them to do.

Every visit to your website should be considered a valuable commodity and without call to actions you may be missing precious conversion opportunities. As a first step you should compile a list of the most popular pages on your website, from a website statistics package such as Google Analytics, and plan a strategy of adding calls to action on these pages.

The following points should be considered when adding calls to action to your website.

1. Distinctive: The call to action should relate to what the visitor might be looking for i.e. a call to action on a contact might feature an enquiry form entitled get in touch.

2. Page Location: Calls to action should be placed towards the top of a web page, do not expect a visitor to scroll down to view your call to action. Research states that 60% to 80% of website visitors will not scroll down a web page.

3. Page Availability: You should consider placing your most important call to action on as many pages as possible. It is rarely enough to place a call to action on only one web page. The number of calls to action that a web page may contain is open to some debate and will vary from business to business and some experimentation is likely to be required.

4. Colour Scheme: A consistent colour scheme should be developed for call to action graphics so they can be easily distinguished by visitors.

5. Language: Brief and specific language can help visitors to take action.

6. Dimension: The dimensions of call to actions should be a large as possible within the constraints of your website design.

Implementing calls to action will help convert website visitors to customers.