Marketers and copywriters love to talk about calls-to-action (CTA). But they’re not the only ones that need to worry about getting customers to act on goal conversions – CTAs are also the domain of professional web designers. Sure, they need good copy and marketing testing; but calls-to-action featured on your website need to be organically built into the design. We call this process, ‘optimized calls to action’.

Defining Call-to-Action

Before we really get rolling here, let me take a second to define what I mean by call-to-action. It’s easy to get carried away before we define our terms and end up talking past each other. For this post, I’ll be defining call-to-action as a web based feature that drives users toward your intended conversion.

Most of the time, this will come in the form of a button (or form and button) on your website. You’ve probably seen thousands of these – email list sign ups, buy now buttons, contact forms, and service sign ups are just a few examples. It seems simple enough, but there are several design decisions that must be made with every call-to-action on your website.

Broad CTA Design

For businesses, calls-to-action are the most important part of your website. Your continued success requires consumers to take the necessary action to become customers – and how will they do that without a call? This means that you should have a CTA on every page of your site. Every page. No exceptions. Did I stress that enough?

Every page should have a goal – and that goal should be driven by a call-to-action. From product pages to your About Us page, determine what you want visitors to do on that page and build a call-to-action around that goal. Building pages without a CTA means building pages without a purpose – and that’s just a waste of resources.

Beyond just slapping a CTA on every page, they need to be featured in a piece of prime real estate (and well designed – but more on that later). Visitors to your website should never be confused on what to do. Make it clear, make it easy, and watch your conversions skyrocket.

Specific CTA Design

So, you need a clear call to action in prime real estate on every page of your website. But you also need to design those CTAs so that they are attractive, eye-catching, and organic. There are hundreds of ways to approach designing a call to action, but I’ve gathered six of my favorite design factors to highlight here:

1. Use Action Verbs: This is vintage call-to-action advice, but it always bears repeating. If you want people to act, you should use action-packed verbs. Ditch words like ‘submit’ for more exciting verbs: start, join, learn, discover, get, and find.
2. Stand Out: You want eyes (and clicks) on your CTA, so make sure they stand out from the rest of your design. Color, font, placement, and size should all be optimized to ensure that visitors are getting the message loud and clear.
3. Create Urgency: Get FOMO (fear of missing out) on your side by creating a sense of urgency. The most popular way to is offer limited time discounts, but you can also highlight popularity against a diminishing supply or offering limited free resources.
4. Maintain a Sense of Flow: Western audiences will scan a website left to right, top to bottom – trained by thousands of years of western languages. You don’t want the CTA to be the very first thing (or the very last thing) a visitor sees – instead put it in position two or three and maximize your conversions.
5. Use White Space: The human eye is naturally attracted to blank spaces. Don’t pack your call to action with unnecessary detail; instead, give it some room to breathe. This will create an oasis for your visitors’ eyes to take a rest – and while they’re there they can take in your CTA
6. Test and Optimize: You could read every CTA article and blog post on the internet, but what you really need is what works for you. That’s why we always recommend A/B testing your calls-to-action. Colors, copy, fonts, and locations should all be tested and optimized.

Web Design that Converts

There are a thousand ways to build a beautiful website, but if you’re not converting customers then your website doesn’t work. That’s why Fusion Group USA doesn’t separate our marketers from our web designers. We understand that we all have things to teach each other, and we are stronger if we allow that to happen naturally.

We work together so that your website grows your business by converting customers. We do this through professional design, engaging copy- and content-writing that comes together as a cohesive whole. If you’re interested in combining marketing know-how with high-end web development, give us a call today. We can set up a totally free, no-commitment consultation to show you how we can help you grow your business.