Facebook Launches Call-to-Action Buttons on Business Pages

Great news, marketers: Facebook just announced a feature that can help drive more traffic from your Facebook Page to your website: a call-to-action button.

While this feature isn't available to everyone just yet, it'll roll out in the U.S. over the next few weeks and worldwide starting in 2015.

So if you don't see it on your Page yet, rest assured that it's coming. In the meantime, you can catch up on all the feature's details in this post.

Here's How a Facebook Page Call-to-Action Works

Page admins can choose one CTA button from a group of seven pre-made options -- "Sign Up," "Shop Now," "Contact Us," "Book Now," "Use App," "Watch Video," and "Play Game" -- and link it to "any destination on or off Facebook that aligns with a business's goals," according to the official announcement. According to VentureBeat's conversation with a Facebook spokeswoman, Facebook will monitor these links in the same way they monitor current links -- and users can report Pages with malicious links, too.

The CTA will show up at a fixed location: the top of your business Page, to the left of the Like button.

The location of the CTA button makes your cover photo all the more important. Be sure the color and design of your photo isn't making the button less visible to Facebook Fans who aren't accustomed to seeing it there. At the time of publishing, the CTA buttons don't yet appear on the mobile app -- so note that it might be confusing to mobile users if you integrate the cover photo design with the new CTA.

Want to see what it looks like while you're waiting for this feature for your Page? Head on over to online retailer Dollar Shave Club's Facebook Page -- they were given beta access to the new feature and chose to place a "Sign Up" button linking to their home page. After a three-week test in beta, Dollar Shave Club's director of acquisition Brian Kim reported a boost in customer acquisition efforts as a result of the CTA. He told Facebook, "Over the course of a three-week test, the Sign Up call-to-action button delivered a 2.5x higher conversion rate versus other comparable social placements aimed to drive new user acquisition."

Keep checking back on your Facebook Page so you can take advantage of this feature as soon as it becomes available to you.