Call To Action – Don’t Make Me Think

It’s all well and good having a fantastic website that attracts thousands of visitors a day, but unless you have a strategically placed, well-crafted call to action YOU WILL be losing out on leads. Fact. But before we drill down into that statement further, what exactly do we mean when we say call to action, and how can you avoid losing out on potential business? Let me explain.

In website design, a call to action or CTA can be anything from a button, banner or telephone number, to some type of graphic or piece of content which has been specifically designed to prompt the visitor to either click, or follow an instruction to continue down a sales funnel. Understandably, many companies spend countless hours trying to craft the perfect call to action for their websites, but here’s the thing, it’s not rocket science, the key to a stellar CTA is simple, don’t make your visitors think.

Now you might think that’s a strange thing to say ‘don’t make them think’, but bear with me. Let me ask you this, how many times have you been browsing the internet looking for a particular product or service, only to find that when you have located what you’re after, there is no logical next step towards buying/enquiring about that said product or service?

This happens more often than you would think and if your website falls into that category, then unfortunately, you’re in real trouble. Your visitors will be frantically searching around your website looking for the next step towards buying your product or service.

By making the buying process difficult, you’re forcing the visitor to have to think, and because of this you will be actively disengaging them from not only your product, but your company as well, and eventually (usually after 10-15 seconds) they will give up and move on, maybe to one of your competitors!

So, to avoid falling into these traps you must make sure that your website includes an effective call to action. If you do this properly, your potential clients will instinctively know what they need to do next. They won’t have to think about it!

Some Decent Examples

Dropbox
I imagine that many of you have seen this website before, I would also imagine that most of you signed up to the service pretty much straight away! So why is that? What is it that works so well on this page? One word, simplicity. The page is clean, easy on the eye and instantly makes you feel at ease. There is also a large blue CTA that draws the visitor in and allows them to sign up straight away, for free! Brilliant, what more could you want, it basically does all the thinking for you!

Amazon
Let’s be honest, Amazon can feel a tad cluttered a times. But as far as CTA’s for an ecommerce website go, it’s spot on. As soon as you find what you’re after and add it to your basket, you’re immediately re-directed to a page that not only offers you a list of other products that you might be interested in, but also has a clear and simple call to action that lets you proceed straight to the checkout to complete your purchase.

Wrike
Now I love Wrike, it’s a brilliant piece of software. But if I’m honest I probably wouldn’t have ever got around to using it in the first place if its homepage wasn’t so well laid out. Firstly, I’m a sucker for a great image so this just works for me! Second is the fact that it makes things so easy to actually get started in the first place! A well placed big green CTA that screams click me, "Get started for free" ok then, let’s go. Job done.

Survey Monkey
We use Survey Monkey for our own business and if I’m honest it probably has the simplest homepage on the web. Basic colours, an easily assessable menu structure and a bold statement that convinces you that you are in the right place. But that’s what makes this webpage great, the fact that it is so damn simple, and it uses that much white space that the 2 "Sign up" CTA’s stands out above everything else on the page.