by Stuart Mortimer

This article illustrated a good web design technique that is often forgotten and not fully leveraged of on a lot of websites. This web design technique is the use of the 'call to action'. Calls to action are triggers that will increase the amount of leads that your website generates exponentially - this article will explain how to use them for maximum benefit.

When was the last time you walked past a shop that did not clearly display signs outside to convince customers to come inside and make a purchase? Well as strange as is sounds, despite the quality of your products and services and the well thought out content you have on your website - this may be exactly what you are doing online!

Let's look at an example. One very common objective of a business website is simply to generate leads and enquiries that in turn become orders and sales. Basic online marketing tells us that there are usually 3 steps involved in achieving this:

1) Getting your site noticed in search engine results 2) Getting people interested in your wares by using an attractive sales pitch. 3) Converting the user into a prospective customer by using a suitable trigger.

The first 2 components of this process are covered extensively in my other articles. For now I would like to look specifically at the third and final point on the above list and why it is both simple and so important.

Converting a website user into a potential customer by encouraging them to make an enquiry is simply a matter of displaying a well placed, enticing call to action. This can be as simple or as elaborate as you want to make it. It could simply be a text link after the main text of your page that says 'click here to contact us'. It could be a more elaborate graphical call to action which is usually better given that it stands out more on the page and offers interested users and easy way to shortcut to your contact page.

The point that I really want to make here is that it is essential to include some call to action on all your web pages in order to achieve the objectives that you have set for your website. Not only that but the more enticing your calls to action are the more successful they will be. Your calls to action should clearly state the main benefits of using your product or service. For Example, which of the following call to action texts do you think is more likely to convince a website user to make that all important enquiry:

1) click here to contact us.

2) For a free no obligation quotation please click here.

You should be able to see that by putting a little more thought into your calls to action you can dramatically increase the numbers of users that you can convert into enquiring, potential customers. The second call to action is obviously a much better choice because it offers a free quotation - an instant benefit - it's free. It also states that there are no obligations which is likely to put the person making the enquiry at ease about supplying their contact information.

Conclusion:

By always remembering to include a compelling call to action in all our web pages and by making our calls to action as benefit driven as possible we can dramatically increase the numbers of website users that we can convert into enquiring customers. This will ultimately mean more orders, sales and more profit!

About the Author

Stuart is a freelance website designer in wakefield UK who specialises in search engine friendly web design wakefield for companies of all types.

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