What is your call to action? Creating website content without a call to action is like opening a retail store without any employees. Customers come in, but you have no way of helping them find what they’re after and no way to guide them to the checkout counter. A call to action is essential on the web…whether for sales oriented copy or any other web content as well.
What is a call to action?
Well, it can be many different things and take many different forms. But essentially, all calls to action boil down to the same thing—asking the visitor to take a next action. It could be outright asking for the sale…for example, “Click here to buy this product now.” That’s a fairly obvious call to action, but a very common and important one at that.
Another call to action might come in the form of getting your visitors to fill out a form to provide more information. For example, “Enter your email address here to receive our very best deals of the week.” Or maybe the info capture instead offers to sign them up to receive complete additional information by providing their basic contact info (this is sometimes considered a squeeze page too). Either way, all of these techniques are based around a call to action.
Ask for the sale.
You’ve heard this timeless advice over and over again. It’s because it’s very important and insightful advice. Sometimes you can’t beat around the bush or expect your visitors and customers to pick up on subtle clues that you would like them to purchase your offerings or whatever else the next action is that you would like them to take. Nope, sometimes you’ve just got to come right out and say the words—ask for the sale. If done right, you really can’t offend and there’s only upside in the outcome.
There is an art, though, on how you ask for the sale. “Buy now” isn’t always the right approach. Some various examples of good calls to action might be along the lines of:
- Click here to begin a free trial.
- Take a tour of our service. Start here.
- Sign up for a free account today.
- Learn more about how we can help you.
- Find out why 99% of our customers buy again.
- Subscribe to our once-a-month 100% no spam email newsletter.
- Provide your address to receive a free report in the mail.
See how it works? A call to action can be obvious, it can be subtle…it can be creative or it can be completely straightforward and traditional. The point is, you always want your visitors to have a next action just a click away, no matter which page on your site they’re on. Never make them think too hard or look too hard for the call to action or the logical next step, or you’ll lose the prospect forever. And no one wants that.
Until Next Time.
George Chaney
President/CEO
SEO King, Inc.
