Welcome to Angelsgeek Today, a small blog dedicated to exploring topics related to website marketing. As a company dedicated to website marketing we see SEO as just one aspect and we treat it as just one part of the bigger picture. While I will post topics that relate to SEO I try to focus on issues that most people tend to ignore or not blog about commonly.
Today’s issue I will discuss the importance of creating solid calls to action.
Lets us say that your site is ranking well, many sites link to your website and in general you are generating quite a bit of traffic. Life seems to be good but one thing is missing! Leads. It is good to have visitors exploring your website, but any company will tell you that while they are glad people discovered their website, they are hoping that some of these people will sign up for a service, buy a product or help the community grow. Turning a visitor in a lead happens when a visitor contacts you in some form or another. Most people think of this as a simple contact form, but it can go into more detail then just a contact form. Lets say you run a service based business and you are trying to attract new clients. It is good to have a general contact form, but think outside the box. Does your company offer a free appraisal or a free on location estimate? If so this can become another call to action as you can add a form to your website for visitors to fill out and request a quote, proposal, on-site visit or whatever. Now you have a general contact form and a request for more info form, which increases the ways your customers can contact you.
Simply having action forms is not the only thing that will increase lead conversions, it also matters where these forms can be located. If you place your call to action form on the bottom of a page then chances are many people are not even aware of this form. Studies show that people upon first visiting a web page will scan the page to determine what content is being offered, and anything that does not appear on screen is not known and has a good chance of never being seen.
So placement is very important and it is also important that your call to action stands out, is simple and gets to the point. If you throw a bunch of information into a simple call to action form, then people will see it as spam and quickly leave your site. A good example of a call to action form can be found on the main page of HubSpot(http://www.hubspot.com/) where if you will notice the request a demo on the right-hand side. It is simple, to the point and does not overwhelm the visitor with a bunch of useless information.
The last important part to building a call to action is the amount of information you collect. In keeping with our example lets say you want to offer visitors the opportunity to contact you for a free proposal. You have a simple layout, placement is one the main screen and you are giving just the basic information, so what do you really need to know to contact someone? Name and contact information is all you need to start the conversation, and studies show that the more elements you add to a form after these two will decrease your chances of a visitor filling out the form. Keep it simple as this is a form to get the conversation going. Once you have been contacted by a visitor you can get more details, but for getting a lead start with just the basics.
If you have any questions on lead generation and calls to action, please feel free to contact me.
