Show Them the Way

To be an effective marketing tool, your web site should lead your customers and potential customers to take some sort of action. Whether it’s signing up for your newsletter, visiting your online store, calling your toll-free number, or simply remembering your company or your brand, it’s the customer’s action that ultimately results in new leads and increased sales for your business.

Sounds like a no-brainer, but all too often small business web sites lack a clear call to action. When creating content for your site, think about what your potential customers are trying to accomplish. What types of questions are they asking? What specific information do they want to find out? What are the potential objections they may have? What do you want your customers to do as a result of visiting your web site?

Although sites can differ in their purpose, they all should have a clear path to a most desired action. For instance, if you have an e-commerce site, you want your visitors to purchase something from your online store. If your site is informational, you probably want visitors to join your mailing list to receive updates or news.

To lead customers to take some action, try these tips:

1. Clearly state a call to action on each page of your site. If you want to sell something, don’t ask visitors to call you for more information, directly ask for the sale instead.
2. Make sure it is obvious how to get in touch with your business. Always use a Contact Us page that gives complete contact information including phone and fax numbers, email address, snail mail address, map to your location, etc.
3. Highlight the benefit that your product or service offers. Customers typically buy because it will make their lives better in some way.
4. Don’t talk about yourself or your company; instead talk directly to your visitors, about meeting their needs. For example, “Our products and services can help you increase your bottom line…” talks about you and your products. Instead, try something like “You’ll save hours of monotonous work and reduce your overall costs with our products and services.”
5. Present your key concepts using bulleted lists and break up page content with headings and sub-headings. It makes the page easier to “skim,” improves overall readability, and helps direct the reader to your call to action.

By showing your visitors a clear call to action, you can lead them to the information they are looking for, answer their questions, resolve their objections, and move them toward taking the action that you want them to take.