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Creating Great Calls to Action on Your Web Site

We have our web sites for a reason. We want visitors to do something. We want them to get in touch with us because there is no way that we can know who really is coming to our site.

If I have a retail store you know who the person is and you can direct them to the area of the store that they would be interested in. On your web site you do the same thing through your navigation and your Calls to Action.

This is one of the most important aspects of the site is the Calls to Action because this is where you tell people what you want them to do. You want them clear and prominent. Don’t hide them on secondary pages or just in links. Put them in as many places as possible. Applying this can make a world of difference to your site.

On a web site for a company that does yacht charters had a lot of good pictures and a good design. At first we didn’t have very good Calls to Action. After we implemented two of them to the site they had three leads in first weekend and continue to get leads on a regular basis.

Here are some Calls to Action that I think are important for a web site:

Phone Number

This is probably the most important call to action for a service oriented web site. You want people to call you as soon as possible and having a prominent phone number is the best way to do it. Don’t hide the phone number on the contact page – put it in the header of each page on your site.

Buy a Product

If you are an ecommerce site, you’ll want to make sure your products get the greatest prominence on your site. This would be in the navigation, as well as graphics throughout the site. And you’ll want to highlight your biggest sellers on the home page so you can continue to get more sales. Many ecommerce sites have a Discontinued or Discount Items area to get rid of merchandise that is taking up space.

Fill out Contact Form

This can be a great thing to have, especially if people are visiting your site outside of office hours. And you can use the contact form to track your marketing budget through your web analytics/web statistics program.

Download a White Paper or Informational Brochure

You’ll want to get your visitor’s contact information if possible and develop a system for keeping touch, whether by email newsletter or autoresponder.

One of our clients used to have people interested in an informational brochure fill out a contact form with their entire mailing address and then send it to them in the mail. They were getting a ton of response but it was costing a lot in mailing expenses. We created a PDF of the brochure and people are able to download it after filling out the same contact form. This has been saving them a lot of money since the information packet was about $10 a piece. They still send the printed information packet to people who have expressed greater interest.

Do a Demo

You can create an online demo using Flash or other tools. It’s a good way for people to see your product in action. You can also have people fill out a contact for and then do a one-to-one demo using webinar software like Gotomeeting or Webex.

Calls to Action really are the lifeblood of your site. It converts your web site from just being an online brochure to being great lead generation tool. Experiment with several Calls to Action and track your results as best as you can. You’ll be pleased to see the results in a short time.

Dave Carlson owns Green Chair Marketing Group, an Internet marketing firm in Denver, Colo., specializing in driving visitors to web sites by search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, and web site design/redesign. Call 720-922-3124 or visit his web site at http://www.GreenChair.net.

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