How to create Effective Call to Action

The most important component of your landing page, or your website as a whole, is the call to action (CTA). Here are some techniques to help you come up with an effective call to action:

1. Communicate the Value
Although your landing page copy should have already done this, your call to action should reiterate a summary of the overall value of your product. Visitors should realize the need to avail of your offer with your call to action, that even when they do not read the entire text on your landing page, they will still do the action asked of them. This short text in your call to action should always be right next to, or above, the call to action button.

2. Use Active Verbs
Your call to action should clearly define what you want the user to do next. Gone are the days when the popular call to action is "Click Here." The phrase just doesn't explicitly define what the user will expect next. Use action words such as Buy, Register, Contact, Donate, Subscribe, Sign Up, etc. The action word should also be specific to the type of offer that you have on that landing page.

3. Add Sense of Urgency
It will be much beneficial to your conversion rate if you add an urgent tone to your call to action. Some phrases you can add are, "Limited time only," "Offer good while supplies last," "Offer valid until December 31 only," "Register now and receive a free gift." This will have a positive impact on your conversion rate as visitors will not think twice anymore especially if your offer is indeed irresistible.

4. Give Small Incentives
This will be more effective if used with the urgent tone. Consumers, whether online or offline, have greater tendency to buy a product if they will get a small gift. There are just a lot of people who are sucker for freebies.

5. Clearly Define Different Actions
As much as possible, try to have just one action that visitors should do on your site, i.e. just to buy the product, or just sign up for the newsletter. But if you must have different actions, limit it to just two, or three at the most. If you do this, though, make sure that each action is clearly defined to avoid confusion. If you should have Register Now and Buy Now call to action buttons, your visitor should know exactly when they should be clicking on Buy Now as opposed to Register Now.

6. Place CTAs Strategically
The location of your CTAs also plays a big role in their effectiveness. If possible, place your CTA at the center of your website. Have at least one CTA before the first fold and one on every succeeding page of your site. Also, do not limit your CTAs to HTML buttons. You can also hyperlink texts within your copy that relay your CTA. Images that are incorporated in your site may also be used as CTA; just hyperlink them with the URL leading to the form page.

7. Design CTA Thoughtfully
Your call to action should instantly pop out of the website for visitors to easily see them. Use bold fonts for the short CTA text and a bold, larger font for the CTA button. If you can, try to add a touch of 3D to the buttons. Use white space well with your CTA. Your call to action message will easily be identified from the rest of your landing page if there is sufficient enough white space surrounding the CTA. Use contrasting colors with your CTA buttons. For example, your landing page's color scheme is somewhat grayish, your CTA buttons can be bright orange, yellow or other strikingly bright colors for them to get noticed easily. And try to put more emphasis in your CTA by making it larger than the rest of the text, and the button also large enough.

These are just some basic tips on how you can have an effective call to action for your landing pages. Another important thing you have to remember is to consistently test your site. For any modification you do, no matter how small it is, test the effectiveness of the change. This is much easier to do as you can easily pinpoint what works and what doesn't.