Optimizing Your Website’s Call to Action

It is important to have a strong call to action on your website. A call to action is not limited to ecommerce sites like eBay.com or Walmart.com. Every website should have a purpose.  What is it you really want your visitors to do, whether it is filling in a contact form, signup for a newsletter or volunteering their time?

Having a strong call to action gives:

• Focus to your website
• A way to measure your sites success
• Direction to your visitors

Creating a Strong Call to Action

There are many dos and don’ts for crafting great call to action pages. In general, they’re not difficult to design well, but there are certain guidelines that sometimes run counter to a designer’s instincts, or what might work on other kinds of pages.

The main thing to remember is the purpose of a call to action page: to get a visitor to perform your desired action. If you keep that in mind while you’re designing, you’re likely to have a more successful result.

 Dos:

• Plan – what do you want the visitors to do? Figure it out.
• There should be no more than 2 strong calls to action visible on the screen at a time. One is preferable.
• Color – Use colors that contrast the website, but don’t clash with the overall design the website. I would suggest complementary colors.
• White Space – don’t overcrowd your call to action
• Language – use active conversation phrases; let the visitor know that if they do not perform this action they will regret it. Create a sense of urgency.
• Text – make the call to action short and sweat; no more than 8 words.
• Every page should have a call to action

 

Don’ts:

• Don’t overpower the website
• Don’t clash too heavily with other website elements
• Don’t have too many calls to action; the user will not know what to do.
• Don’t use red; red means stop and that is not what we want the visitor to do.

 

Here is a few good examples of strong call to action on websites:

As you can see most of the calls to action are using complementary colors, the buttons are centrally located, and the text is under 5 words.  Hope this help you on your next web project.