The Call to Action

Third in an ongoing series of small business online marketing tips, this post covers web site design, specifically the importance of having clear calls to action throughout your site. Read last week’s small business online marketing tip.

Summary: Most small business web sites violate a basic tenet of online marketing: Make your calls to action direct, prominent and plentiful.

Action. It’s what separates window shoppers from paying customers. So it’s strange that many small business web sites don’t do anything to spur the conversion from passive visitor to active customer.

Issuing a call to action, or CTA, does not make you a pushy salesperson. In fact, clear CTAs help visitors.

“What you have to remember is that people don’t go to the web to window shop,” observes copywriter Demian Farnworth. “They go there to drive 60 miles per hour—and look at billboards.”

If your site lacks clear CTAs, you force visitors to hit the breaks, something they’re loath to do. (In fact, most refuse to slow down, choosing to accelerate—away—instead.)

Visitors should know exactly what to do on your web site and why. Marketer Jack Abbott writes:

Self-interest is the motivating lubricant that drives most human behavior. Responding to a CTA is no exception… Don’t just tell your prospect what to do. Tell her what’s in it for her when she does it. This isn’t the time for guessing games or cleverness. Define the benefit or set the expectation right there in the CTA in plain, unvarnished English.

The noteworthy absence of CTAs in small business web sites indicates an outdated view of a web site’s purpose. In the early days of the Internet, just having a web site was an accomplishment in itself. As for the actual site, expectations were low. It was seen as nothing more than a digital business card or brochure.

Times have changed. The technology needed to create dynamic, interactive web sites is readily available, yet many small business web sites have retained their static nature.

Ironically, many small-business owners discount the value of their sites because they haven’t generated much revenue. They should consider this maxim from noted web designer Joshua Porter:

“The behavior you’re seeing is the behavior you’ve designed for.”

File under: Small business online marketing > Web site development > Design