When traffic is increasing on your website, but conversions are not, it may be because you have not optimized your calls to action. Calls to action are important in persuading consumers into converting whether that means making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or contact your sales team. With calls to action, it is vital to consider quantity, quality, and placement for calls to actions. There is a sweet spot in quantity where you are not underselling or overselling to your customers. As for quality, word choice has a large effect on how likely someone is to convert. Lastly, placement, above or under the fold, can change the odds of a client conversion. Aside from these key factors, you also need to consider what type of calls to action your business needs.
Phone Numbers
The first call to action every website should present is a clickable phone number. This is one of the most important calls to action for mobile devices. Your phone number should always be “above the fold”. Above the fold means that it appears on the page before the person scrolls down. Aside from a clickable number, it is common to write a call to action, including call now or schedule an appointment. Call to action copy should always be direct and encourage customers to act now.
Hours of Operation
Another piece of information that should be above the fold is hours of operation. Unless your company serves eCommerce products or doesn’t have set hours, it is best to display the hours your business is open in the header of your website.
Address
Similarly to hours of operation, you should keep the address to your business in the header. Some suggest a call to action such as “get directions” with a hyperlink to the Google Maps directions page to your address. This information also works well on a contact page with a usable map plugin.
Contact Forms
If possible, contact forms should be above the fold. Although it is also common to place them to the side of your content in the sidebar or underneath your content. Contact forms are important for getting new sales opportunities and email marketing and should contain a variety of fields including name, contact information, message, and zip code. To avoid being harassed by spam contact forms, adding CAPTCHA will lower the chances of robotic entries for your forms.
Book Appointments
If you own a business that takes people by appointments like an auto shop, restaurant, or medical facility, it is recommended that you have a book or schedule an appointment call to action above the fold.
Messages/Text Messages
If your company prefers, you can also have a call to action for your customers to text or message you instead of email or call. This is very dependent on your business’ contact preferences.
Live Chat
Another common call to action is live chats. Live chats are run by bots to direct people to content on your website based on the answers to preprogrammed questions. It can take some setting up, but it definitely improves conversions and helps customers find the information they are looking for quickly.
Throughout your content, it is important to host calls to action every other paragraph to improve conversions. You should never overoptimize to the point that your content no longer feels natural, but when possible you should always encourage users to call, schedule, or buy. For more information on digital marketing, read on in our marketing blog. To get an individually run website audit for your company’s website, contact Boston Web Marketing’s sales team.