Marketers know that in order to execute successful campaigns, all channels of communication with customers require at least one call to action. The Web is absolutely no exception. In fact due to information overload, it demands even more candidly communicated calls. Calls to action extend much further than buying and include subscribing, donating, applying, submitting, bookmarking the page, contacting, referring to friends, discussing, getting help or support, or simply getting involved.

Visitors make a decision about whether or not to stay at a Web site very quickly, usually within a few seconds. Does your Web site convey its three most important calls to action within 20 seconds of a visitor arriving at your home page? If not the action they may well take is to hit the Back button.

Being an avid internet user myself, it’s all too often I see a corporate Web site simply displayed as an electronic brochure and find myself hitting the Back button or typing in another URL.

It all comes down to content. The right words will capture the attention of visitors and drive them to action and the wrong words will lead to distraction. "The goal of content is to expose business value and articulate it in a way that matters to the customer," leading subject matter experts Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg write. "Great copy persuades the reader to take action."

Studies of shopping behavior show that consumers tend to be more likely to buy something if they are asked to do so. Even panhandlers who ask for money on the street are much more successful than those who just hold out a cup or a sign!

So perhaps you are a charity or government department and you don’t have a commercial purpose in the sense of selling goods and services; however you still want to generate a call to action: an opportunity for the visitor to say, "Yes I'm interested!"

Every time you write a piece of Web content, you should also write at least one call to action at the end of that content. That's maximising your chances of converting a visitor to a prospect.

You may think that putting a simple contact form on your Web site will generate leads, and sure enough if you have a totally unique product or service it will generate a few. But most businesses operate within a competitive landscape, one with similar products and services. The best way of generating as many sales leads as possible is through demonstrating how and why someone would want to contact your company.

The whole idea is to get the users of your Web site to do something, or to direct them to a page or section of your website that you would like them to see. To do this, provide links within a product or service's descriptive content, and direct them to an online contact form that contains those same link texts. Links like "Receive a product demo", "Take a tour of this property", "Learn more about xyz" are all effective ways to directing your Web site visitors into a course of action.

By doing this you answer both fundamental questions; Why am I contacting you? (eg. for a product demo) and How do I do it? (eg. by following this link to a contact form).

Namita Davey, Project Manager

Labels: Design and Usability, Web marketing