Don't forget to help your visitors become customers

We review a lot of websites. In fact, the majority of our new clients start with some kind of website review. There are several common problems we run into, but there is one problem we run into nearly 100% of the time, and it has a serious impact on performance.

What is this systemic and pervasive problem? No clear call to action.

Let me elaborate. You do so much work to get the attention of your visitors and bring them to your site. Once there, you plead your case with compelling, benefit-focused content. But then you let them flounder.

Are you hoping they’re so compelled by your message that they track you down and beg to do business with you?!

Take advantage of your efforts and close the deal! Strongly nudge them to the next step. That might be a sale, a phone call, free demo—anything that you believe advances the buying and/or qualifying process.

Photo Credit: Charles Haynes, via Flickr

Your conversion pages, all of them, should perform like a funnel, driving your prospects to your desired goal. Don’t confuse this with being deceptive or pushy. A good call to action seems obvious to the visitor. They’ve just read an interesting article, case study, product description or watched a video, and now they are sincerely interested. While they’re engaged, they’re looking to do something, maybe even make some kind of commitment. It’s your job to funnel them to the next step before their attention fades.

To make our point crystal clear, every page of your website should be examined to determine what the next logical step should be. If this is a landing page (first page they see), you might only want to prod the user to view a demo of your product. But, once that demo is complete,  you might want to offer them a free custom quote. And, if this is a simple product page, the call to action will just be a resounding “buy now.”

It took us a long time to actually realize this warranted a blog post, because it seems obvious. But, if you understand many marketing department’s resistance to appearing sales-y or cheap, it is understandable why this fundamental mindset of internet marketing is often overlooked.

Identify the mindset of your audience by page, and advance the relationship with a clear and compelling call to action. Resist trying to eat the whole elephant with in one bite, but instead know which bite to take next.