Follow These Best Practices for Creating a Compelling, Effective Call to Action
Looking to breathe some new life into your calls to action? Want to see if you can bump up your conversion rates? Look no further. Turn your tired old offer into a new and intriguing one with these 10 great tips to creating a compelling call to action.
- Know Your Audience. If your company uses brand personas, this should be easy! If not, take five minutes to think about your ideal customer or whomever you are trying to target and design an offer that appeals to that person.
- Put Your Best Foot Forward. If you have a couple different calls to action, pick the one that’s getting the highest conversion rate. If you’re starting from scratch, create two calls to action and do an A/B test to see which one is more successful.
- Engage Me! Revamp boring calls to action by asking a compelling question or by posing your offer as a challenge.
- Feature it Above the Fold. Your viewers shouldn’t have to scroll down to see your offer. A safe bet is the top-right corner of the page.
- Be Disruptive! Don’t let it blend into the page, use different colors and fonts to make sure your call to action is very visible.
- Use a Button. Make it REALLY obvious where the user is supposed to click by creating the outline of a button/image.
- Show Me What You Got! Include an image of what the visitor will get when he or she follows through with your action.
- Be Clear and Direct. Make sure your call to action or “what you are asking your visitor to do” is clear and obvious. Have a coworker (or better yet, someone outside the company) review the text before you’re done.
- Respect My Authority! If you have more than one call to action on the page, be clear about which offer your want to prioritize by having a clear hierarchy. The most relevant offer should be featured first and a secondary offer should be further down the page.
- Early and Often. Make sure there is a clear (and compelling) call to action appearing on the top of all highly-trafficked pages.
Once you’ve completed these steps, make sure to test, test, test! Then analyze the results to see what worked and what didn’t.
