Boost the conversion rate of your Call-to-Action

Category: Call tracking
It’s a small thing… but your conversions depend on it. An effective call-to-action (CTA) is an essential part of any communication: It provides focus to your content, direction to your prospects and a way to measure success.

Whatever the desired outcome is, whenever you create a piece of content make it obvious what you want your audience to do.

Make your call to action clear

The language and placement of your CTA are important factors to consider:

  • Your copy needs to be clear, active and convey a sense of urgency, for example, “Subscribe before December 31st for 30% off”, or “Start my free trial”.
  • Generally, in an email or website, visitors shouldn’t have to scroll too far down to reach the CTA.
  • The size, using a contrasting colour or plenty of white space, should ensure that it stands out and make it evident what your visitor needs to do next.
  • Sometimes it’s necessary to have more than one call-to-action. You may have a complex page layout that contains different sections or promotes various features, so you’ll need to carefully consider the placement and types of CTA to use. A prospect might not be ready to request a demo or make a purchase, but they may be ready to subscribe to your blog or download an eBook.

Avoid common mistakes:

  • Don’t make your CTA too lengthy or complicated. Multi-step forms, asking for too much information or laborious verification processes can put people off completing forms.
  • Don’t over-sell and under-deliver. If you promise something, make sure that’s what you deliver. This type of bait-and-switch tactic can destroy confidence in your brand.
  • Forgetting to use CTAs. It happens! Make the most of every single opportunity: blog posts, emails, LinkedIn, tweets, Twitter background, Facebook posts, eBooks, whitepapers, presentations, online and offline adverts. The lead generation opportunities are staggering!
  • Not tracking response. Ultimately you’ll rely on the numbers to understand what’s working. If you’re not generating the response you anticipated, tweak copy, designs and placements and find what works best for you.

Tracking response to improve conversions

Tracking online response – form fills, checkouts, etc – is easy enough with the majority of standard web analytics software. Offline response, however, is a different story. How many businesses can confidently say that they know how many calls they receive – and what marketing generated those calls?

Using call tracking data in addition to your web analytics software and other UX methods, such as multivariate and A/B testing provides you with a more complete picture of how your visitors engage with your communications.

Your call-to-action is there for one thing, and one thing only: To get people to act. Whether it’s a number to call or a button to click, if conversions depend on it, you need to make sure it’s optimised

About the author - Natalia Selby

Marketing Executive at Mediahawk, with 20 years experience in analytics and content management.