Abs­tract: A look at the area call to action con­cepts tar­geted towards small busines­ses, organizations and sole traders.

Inten­ded Audience: Small Business Owners/Webmasters and anyone new to the world of web design and search engine optimization (SEO) par­ticularly those wor­king with small busines­ses, organizations and sole traders.

A call to action is an mar­keting con­cept. It is a direction to do something, usually it’s the next step that a website visitor could take toward the pur­chase of a product or service or make contact.

It is impor­tant that websites include a call to action not just on the home page but other pages such as the con­tact page. Exam­ples of calls to actions are:

1. Request a free quote today

2. Sign-up for our e-newsletter

3. Buy now for €19.99

Typically such calls to action are dis­played as high visibility graphic images in order to catch the visitor’s atten­tion. If your website doesn’t have some calls to action then it’s likely that its effectiveness has been greatly diminished. The majority of visitors to your website are likely to be interes­ted in your company’s product and services and you may have mis­sed a poten­tial con­ver­sion oppor­tunity by not presen­ting them with a cogent and highly visible call to action.

Objectives that you have established for your website may include selling your products or services, document downloads, news­let­ter regis­tration etc. When the visitors reaching a point where they have decided your website has something that interests them you need to have the facilities to con­vert this interest into a pos­sible sale, call back request etc. This is the fun­ction of a call to action, a clear step to tell visitors what you want them to do.

Every visit to your website should be con­sidered a valuable com­modity and without call to actions you may be mis­sing precious con­ver­sion oppor­tunities. As a first step you should com­pile a list of the most popular pages on your website, from a website statis­tics pac­kage such as Google Analytics, and plan a strategy of adding calls to action on these pages.

The following points should be con­sidered when adding calls to action to your website.

1. Dis­tin­ctive: The call to action should relate to what the visitor might be looking for i.e. a call to action on a con­tact might feature an enquiry form entit­led get in touch.

2. Page Location: Calls to action should be placed towards the top of a web page, do not expect a visitor to scroll down to view your call to action. Research states that 60% to 80% of website visitors will not scroll down a web page.

3. Page Availability: You should con­sider placing your most impor­tant call to action on as many pages as pos­sible. It is rarely enough to place a call to action on only one web page. The num­ber of calls to action that a web page may con­tain is open to some debate and will vary from business to business and some experimen­tation is likely to be required.

4. Colour Scheme: A con­sis­tent colour scheme should be developed for call to action graphics so they can be easily dis­tinguished by visitors.

5. Language: Brief and specific language can help visitors to take action.

6. Dimen­sion: The dimen­sions of call to actions should be a large as pos­sible within the con­straints of your website design.

Implemen­ting calls to action will help con­vert website visitors to customers.

Eoin Redmond is an expert in the area of Search Engine Optimization and Inter­net Mar­keting for small busines­ses works for Istech Tech­nology Services in Kil­kenny, Ireland.

Istech Tech­nology Services Ltd

Leading Website Developer and SEO Specialists

Tel: 00 353 56 7780234

Web/Blog: SEO Com­pany Kil­kenny Website Design Kil­kenny
Grab practical recom­men­dations about one week mar­keting — make sure to read the web site. The times have come when proper infor­mation is truly only one click of your mouse, use this possibility.

Ran­dom Post