Mythbuster Monday: Your Site Should Have Many “Calls To Action”

Before we start in on this myth, let’s talk about what a call to action is. Basically, it is the portion of your content that encourages your customers to take action — usually something like buy the product, sign up for the mailing list, subscribe to the blog.

In some ways, the advice to have many calls to action on your site is correct. But the advice is so vague that it can be easily misused and actually work against the success of your site. Just think: If you go to a website wanting to buy a bracelet, but the site is telling you to do 10 other things on every page, you’re going to get confused fast. And what does a confused customer do? Leave.

To effectively use calls to action on your site, you need to follow these tips:

1. Determine what your overall site call to action is. As a physical product seller, your call to action would be buy my product(s).
2. Choose ONE call to action for each page (one exception may be the home page of a site that sells many products and offers lots of information). But other pages should have just one call to action. Tell the customer what they need to know, demonstrate the benefits of your product and then tell them to click the button and buy.
3. Remember, even your policies pages and contact pages need calls to action: Call us for more information, read these policies before requesting a refund, etc.

Keep these three tips in mind and you’ll make your customer’s shopping experience must more pleasant.