Are Your Site’s CTAs Optimized?

Being a business owner, it’s easy to feel like you have so many bases to cover.

You have to convince people to: visit your website/store, buy your product, sign up for your email list, like your page on Facebook, come back and shop again again next month, the list goes on.

And when you’re putting yourself out there on multiple platforms (social media, your own website, advertisements, etc.), you might be tempted to throw all of these calls to action at the wall just to see what sticks.

You don’t get what you don’t ask for, right?

Wrong—if you’re asking for thirty different things, that is.

Because here’s the thing. When you’re shouting at your customer to make a purchase, sign up for a mailing list, follow you on social media and share the post with a friend, the customer gets confused.

What happens when a customer gets confused? They go bye-bye.

When it comes to calls to action (or CTAs), the only way to succeed is to get super-duper clear about what you what your target customer to do. You have to pick just one thing, and give them a crystal clear incentive to do it.

Does this mean you can’t promote your new product and get new Twitter followers at the same time? Of course not. It means you can’t do both in one place at the same time.

For a clear explanation of what I mean, read on.

On-page CTAs

These appear on various pages of your site, often in the form of buttons, and prompt your reader to take an action.

Each page of your site should have a singular CTA, and the content on the rest of the page should support that goal.

TurboTax’s home page contains is an amazing case study of a laser-focused CTA.

Unless you navigate to another page of the site, you literally have no other option but to Start For Free. Your on-page CTAs should mirror this level of focus.

Landing Pages

A landing page is nothing more than the page a visitor lands on when he or she clicks on a link to your site. For business purposes, landing pages are generally used to promote a specific product or service, like this landing page for my free e-book.

Each of your site’s landing pages should have a single goal. The goal of the page mentioned above is to get people to download my e-book, and all of the elements and CTAs on the page support that goal.

Notice how I’m not simultaneously asking people to follow me on Facebook and share the book with their friends?

However… once a visitor successfully downloads the book, they’re taken to a “Thank You” page. Guess what the CTA is on that page?

You guessed it—please share the book with a friend. Each singular call to action falls into a logical place within my download process.

So, let’s say you’re a service provider that offers free quotes to gather leads. Your site configuration might look like this:

Facebook Ads

CTA rules aren’t just for the pages of your website; they apply to ads as well. I want to talk about Facebook ads in particular because there are so many different elements that it’s easy for these little suckers to get confusing.

When you’re developing a Facebook ad, you should go in with your end goal in mind. Ask yourself, what’s the one thing I want the customer to do when he sees this ad?

Your ad objective, button, copy and image should all be chosen based on that goal.

To give you an example, let’s go through the process of creating an ad for e-book downloads.

Since I want people to convert into e-book downloads, I’m choosing the website conversions objective.

When I set up my ad creative, I’m going to make sure the button matches the action I want my visitor to take—in this case, Download.

Finally, I’ll ensure the actual ad headline and copy reinforce my goal: get the reader to download the dang thing!

The photo I’ve used is alright, but I could definitely make this ad even stronger by using a photo where I’m holding a tablet with the book on it or clicking a mouse to download the book.

Marketing Emails

Marketing emails are your lifeline to your customers, so it’s very tempting to want to use them to announce everything you’ve been up to since your last email blast.

Avoid the temptation. Stick to one main message.

This is particularly important with email because you’re always working to avoid the dreaded unsubscribe that can be caused by information overload. The subscriber has so kindly invited you into their inbox. Don’t abuse the privilege by talking their ear off!

Retail emails serve as a great example of this. They’re often light on copy, with a few choice words to get you to click (and oh, how I always click!).

Here’s one from Express.

It’s likely that your own emails will contain quite a bit more text, but the idea is the same.

Focus on one main thing you want the email to accomplish, whether it’s announcing a sale (Shop the Sale Now!), reminding of a discount (Claim It Before It’s Gone), announcing a new service (Book Your Appointment Now!), or sharing your latest blog post (Read It Now).

Commercials

Next time you’re listening to the radio, keep your ears open for the ads. It’s actually pretty amusing how repetitive they can be; they’ll repeat the same phone number three times or more.

Why do they do this? Because it works. People have short attention spans, and zeroing in on your goal is critical to getting a return on your advertising dollars.

If you’re writing a commercial, avoid the urge to try to pack it to the brim with information about your company. Focus, focus. Settle on one clear call to action, and repeat it at least twice.

By getting crystal clear on your CTAs you become like an air traffic controller, guiding your customers in for the perfect smooth landing (AKA closing the deal!). Are the CTAs on your business’ platforms optimized?