You can spend all the time you like, and all the money, more to the point, building a beautiful and powerful website, but unless you focus on elements like a great eCommerce call to action, you’ll be missing out on actual conversions and revenue. In order to thrive, every online business needs a website that makes it explicitly clear to its visitors exactly what it wants from them.
It’s all well and good stumbling onto a website that sells the service/product you’re looking for, but if it’s not clear what you should be doing, there’s a much higher chance you’re just going to click away from that site. This is why every online business website needs to have strong calls to action throughout.
What is a Call to Action?
An eCommerce call to action, or CTA, is simply you telling your customers exactly what you want from them. Instead of letting them float around your website aimlessly, you’re laying out a clear path forward, being assertive and letting your potential customers know exactly what you expect from them. It can be as simple as “click here to buy today” all the way over to more inventive approaches.
Focus on Value
A good call to action is always going to be simple, so you can’t be using line after line of text. What you can do is put it on the page somewhere relevant and punchy. Putting it near text that demonstrates the value of your product or service as well as potentially including a short piece of information within the CTA can be powerful.
Use Action Words in Your eCommerce Call to Action
This is obvious CTA stuff. Make sure to use assertive, authoritative action words, such as “click here to buy today”, with “click” being the action word.
Utilise Curiosity and Anticipation
When it comes to building quality CTAs utilising psychological approaches is key. Understand the roles of curiosity and anticipation in order to build a truly irresistible CTA. A great example of this is sites using a game as their opt-in form. Spin the wheel and get codes for money off and other “prizes”.
Numbers and Authority
Being able to make hard statements and facts is always going to be a powerful marketing tool, useful when it comes to crafting a potent eCommerce call to action. For instance, low stock level figures or total number sold can be powerful stats, useful in and around CTAs.
On-Page Positioning
You should always think about CTA position on your webpage. What text is it near? What do you say after it? You want to make sure it is in the best possible page location. Think about the flow of the text around it and how that impacts the way the customer reaches it.
Button Design for eCommerce Call to Action
Another simple one. You want nice, well-designed buttons. Obvious, aesthetically pleasing and well-placed. Think about colour, font, size and overall design.
Test and Refine
Lastly, you want to think about testing and tweaking the ways in which your CTAs work. Test the way people respond to them, refine and change them. Play around with different options and see what difference it makes. You can have a great eCommerce call to action but that doesn’t mean you should stop looking to improve either. Keep tweaking, keep refining and you’ll end up with spectacular CTAs.