Create Perfect Call-to-Actions for Your Website
Call-to-actions are designed to look good, much like celebrities on a red carpet, but they are also what will lead your visitors to a goal you have determined (e.g. purchasing your product or service). Of course, there are no actual rules about how they should be, however, businesses must ensure that their website visitors reach the goals they have set out and turn into customers.
You’re probably wondering what makes a good call-to-action. What are the most important traits of a call-to-action? Where can you find inspiration? Well, today we are going to show you the six most important traits of a good call-to-action to inspire and inform how you implement them on your website, or you can pass them onto your website designer to implement.
Colour and Contrast
It is important that your call-to-action button stands out by using a colour that contrasts with your website’s background. If you follow this example on the WordPress homepage, you will see that you need to choose a colour that ties in with your website’s existing colour palette. As you can see, the result is much more attractive than if you were to choose a completely random colour.
Negative Space
Usually, non-designers are afraid of using white space on their website, but as you can see on this example from the Moz homepage, the white space really helps readers to make visual connections between page elements. This use of negative space enables you to differentiate the call-to-action as a standalone element that is important for the viewer to see.
Contextual Placement
No matter how good your call-to-action is, it needs to be easily viewable by the visitor and if there isn’t relevant content around it, they are less likely to click it. For example, on Act-On’s website, they keep their call-to-action exactly where the user’s eye is likely to head after reading the rest of the copy directly above it, leading them exactly where they want to go.
Visual Hierarchy
Visual hierarchy is very important for call-to-actions and they should have the weighting they deserve and stand out from other elements of the page. A key call-to-action button (e.g. ‘Buy Now’) should never have the same weighting as other buttons on your website, like ‘More info’ or ‘Read more’.
Create Urgency
You need to communicate with a sense of urgency through your call-to-actions, such as offering a limited-time offer or special discount for those who click right at that moment. This can help you to overcome buyer hesitation and a great example is Splice who offers free sample packs for people that take a trial at that moment.
Communicate Value
Apple’s website is a great example of how to successfully communicate value through their call-to-actions. By simply adding a few more words they make it very clear to the user what will happen when they click the call-to-action and the value in them doing so immediately.
We will leave you with this quote from Sid Bharath from Crazy Egg, “Ultimately, the best way to really increase conversions is to test each component of your call-to-action. Try different hooks, designs, copy, and placements to see which works best.” Why don’t you try some new things with your call-to-actions? Come back and tell us whether you were able to generate more leads.
