10 techniques for an effective ‘call to action’
Posted in Design on: Thursday, January 22, 2009 by Paul Boag
Every website should have a call to action, a response you want users to complete. But how do you encourage users to act? How do you create an effective call to action.
Jeff from Brighton recently wrote to me asking:
Occasionally I hear you talk about the importance of having a call to action on the show but you never go into much depth. I recognise the importance of having a call to action but how do I encourage users to complete them?
Having an effective call to action is an essential part of any website. A call to action is not just limited to ecommerce sites. Every website should have an objective it wants users to complete whether it is filling in a contact form, signup for a newsletter or volunteering their time.
A call to action provides…
- Focus to your site
- A way to measure your sites success
- Direction to your users
How then do you create an effective call to action? Here are 10 techniques which help achieve just that.
1. Lay the groundwork
Before a user is willing to complete a call to action they have to recognise the need. Infomercials do this very well. Before they ask people to respond, they first identify a problem and present a product that solves that problem.
You also need to communicate the benefits of responding. What will the user get out of completing the call to action?
Take for example the VoIP service Skype. Immediately above their call to action (a download button) they have the following text:
Make calls from your computer — free to other people on Skype and cheap to phones and mobiles around the world.
They clearly explain what the user will get by downloading Skype.
2. Offer a little extra
Sometimes you may have to sweeten the deal to encourage users to complete a call to action.
Incentives could include discounts, entry into a competition or a free gift. This is the approach Barack Obama used on his fund raising website. If you made a donation of $30 or more you got a free t-shirt.
Of course the beauty of this offer was that not only did he pursued you to donate, he also turned you into an advertising billboard!
3. Have a small number of distinct actions
It is also important to be focused in your calls to action. Too many and the user becomes overwhelmed. Studies in supermarkets have shown that if the shopper is presented with too many varieties they are less likely to make a purchase.
By limiting the number of choices a user has to make we reduce the amount of mental effort. Effectively you guide the user around the site step by step.
The number of appropriate actions will vary from site to site. However, it is not so much the number of actions as the distinctiveness of each.
Take for example pbwiki.com. They have three calls to action:
- Create a wiki
- View Demo
- Buy now
Although three is not an unacceptable number, there is not a clear distinction between ‘create a wiki’ and ‘buy now’. What should I do first – buy a wiki or create one? I am confused. A better approach would be to push the buy option later in the process once the user has committed to building a wiki.
4. Use active urgent language
A call to action should clearly tell users what you want them to do. They should include active words such as:
- Call
- Buy
- Register
- Subscribe
- Donate
All of these encourage users to take an action.
To create a sense of urgency and a need to act now, these words can be used alongside phrases such as:
- Offer expires March 31st
- For a short time only
- Order now and receive a free gift
Carsonified use this approach when selling their workshops. To create a sense of urgency they offer discounts to those who signup early.
5. Get the position right
Another important factor is the position of your call to action on the page. Ideally it should be placed high on the page and in the central column.
picsengine.com does this well placing their ’see in action’ centrally on the page above the fold.
6. Use white space
It is not just the position of your call to action that matters. It is also the space around it. The more space around a call to action the more attention is drawn to it. Clutter up your call to action with surrounding content and it will be lost in the overall noise of the page.
PlanHQ does an excellent job of focusing users of their calls to action by surrounding them with a lot of empty space.
7. Use an alternative colour
Colour is an effective way of drawing attention to elements, especially if the rest of the site has a fairly limited palette.
Things (the GTD application for the mac) does this expertly on their website. While the rest of their site is predominately muted blues and grey, their calls to action are highlighted orange. This extreme contrast leaves you in no doubt as to the next thing you should do.
Of course never rely solely on colour because many users are colour blind and will not see the contrast.
8. Make it big
As web designers we often get annoyed with clients who ask us to make things bigger. It is certainly true that size isn’t everything. We have already established that position, colour and white space are equally important.
However it cannot be denied that size does play a large part. The bigger your call to action, the more chance it will be noticed.
Mozilla have certainly taken this approach to heart on the firefox homepage where their download link dominates the page.
9. Have a call to action on every page
A call to action should not just be limited to the homepage. Every page of your site should have some form of call to action that leads the user on. If the user reaches a dead-end they will leave without responding to your call.
Your call to action does not need to be the same for each page. Instead you can use smaller actions that lead the user towards your ultimate goal.
37 Signals understand the importance of having a call to action on each page. At the foot of every page of their Basecamp website they clearly display links to their tour and signup pages.
10. Carry the call through
Finally, consider what happens when a user does respond to your call to action. The rest of the process needs to be as carefully thought through as the call to action itself.
One particular word of warning – if you require users to provide personal data about themselves, resist the temptation to collect unnecessary information.
Marketing people in particular like to build up demographic information. Although I can appreciate the value of this, it brings a danger users will drop out of the process.
Wordpress.com is an excellent example of how to minimise the amount of data collected. They only ask for the minimal information required to setup a blog.
Conclusions
An effective call to action is the linchpin of a successful site and involves drawing together best practice in usability, creative visual design and powerful copy writing.
However, if it is done right it can generate real measurable return on investment and in the current economic climate that is what we all want.
Many thanks to Lee Munroe who found most of the examples I have used in this post.
33 Comments
Comments are for the discussion of this post. If you have other questions / comments then post them to the forum or send me an email
Superb well written article, thank you.
Useful stuff Paul! Oddly enough I was just facing this very topic with one of our clients’ homepages yesterday. Further to your point 10, I included a tiny message (in a handwritten typeface) next to the action button, that informed the user that hitting the button and completing the subsequent form, was a mere 30 second process – encourging clicks and putting lazy peoples minds at rest… ;)
You know Ted, making an effictive call-through is a lot like making love to a beautiful woman. First you lay the groundwork, maybe offer a little extra. Make sure you have a small number of distinct actions. Use active, urgent, language. Get the position right. Then make it big, and carry the call through!
yeah, I’m totally with Stewart Curry :)
Great post Paul, the idea of “Call to action” on a website is a concept I am trying to push to my smaller clients at the moment. This is a good resource which hopefully will help get the idea across to them.
Cheers
Lmao @stewart
That’s one way of putting it :D
Wow that is a great post! I just discovered your blog with Smashingmagazine Twitt. Keep up the good work!
Good post. As a matter of fact, the folks here at PBwiki are considering removing the Buy Now button in the next restructuring of the Web site. Would love to hear any additional thoughts on how to optimize our site.
This is a good resource which hopefully will help get the idea across to them. thanks
Good stuff, Paul. From my experience:
1) a small number of distinct actions
2) whitespace
3) carry the call through
are the top three if I had to rank them. Without carrying the call through, visitors are left disappointed and will either not come back or notify others not to bother. Doing a poor job of satisfying the latter can instantly kill your site traffic and any possible related revenue.
Excellent advice. One point I’d like to add: if you have a call to action somewhere, make sure it is 100% obvious to a visitor what will happen if they react to that call to action.
So often I come across potentially interesting offers, I’m at the point of clicking the call to action button or filling in a form (or something like that), but what stops me is that it isn’t clear what’s going to happen next.
Do I have to go through a long and tedious sign up process? Am I buying something immediately when I click this? What will they do with the personal info I’m filling in? Etc etc
A big “Sign up now!” button is nice, but only half the story I think.
(this is just personal experience by the way. Maybe the marketing guys have found out that my concerns don’t apply to the general public)
beautiful examples btw.
nice refresher course..the challenge is to design sites that use these design principles AND keep all of your web designs from looking the same. Our challenge is designing thousands of websites and making each one unique while sticking to these great tips.
Made information be felt close to voip
Excellent!
Thats why the little “Share this” icons doesnt work for blogs, they are so many options and services…
Thanks
Fantastic article. Thanks! You just gave me ideas for my next blog update. :)
Hmmm… just last night my friend and I decided to launch the “Brass Balls Radio Anti-Ethanol Movement”, to save the (tequila producing) agave farms of Mexico. I do believe we shall implement some of these ideas as we launch our “Save Agave, Fight Scurvy!” campaign.
Thanks.
Wendy
Very useful article, thanks a lot :)
Thank you for this nice detailed article. I will try and use this for every project from now on.
very nice thank you
I enjoyed the article. Thank you for taking the time to share.
Fantastic and well documented article. It really is true in the world of business or communication, that if we focus on our audience then we will get greater returns. What firefox, wordpress, and others have done by focusing on the call to action is brilliant. I would love to see more websites do the same.
Great post. I’ve been thinking about incorporating a call to action on my site for some time. I am not a large company, with a software type product, but a PR pro and social media guide selling my services to non-profits, small businesses and speakers/coaches. I think those selling services have to make extra sure we are giving enough value and being authentic, that folks can believe in your expertise enough to sign up, contact you or whatever your call to action ends up being. I think customer testimonials are very useful for helping build the authenticity of a brand as well.
Thanks for the good info
Sorry to comment twice, but after re-reading comments, I agree with Matthijs above. Try and use language that gives the potential customer a clue about what will happen when they take the suggested action.
I was just reading a Copy Blogger post (http://www.copyblogger.com/increase-blog-subscribers/) that by changing a word or two increased his entry level jobs blog RSS subscriptions by 254%. He changed the word subscribe to RSS feed to Get Jobs by RSS. Because a large percentage of people equate the word subscribe with paying money, the way subscribing to a magazine costs money, that perception created a barrier to sign-ups. Changing the words clarified the results of the all to action and increased responses dramatically.
I have suggested to my small business clients that we us the words sign-up or free subscription as some of their clients/customers are unfamiliar with RSS feeds, what they do and how they work. The RSS feed button is something that many tech-savvy folks take for gratnetd, but that many potential customers may not.
I personally hate clicking a link, filling out a sign-up form, and THEN finding out that there is a cost or charge. If I know it up front, I’m more likely to buy in (pun intended).
We need to be sure to step outside of our own preconceptions and think like our potential customers. Use their language, not our jargon.
Thanks for posting this, extremely useful for designers.
Very useful post, very well written!
I agree with Cathy, I think you will need to consider your audience and make the call to actions work for them rather than for you. After all, they will be using your site.
Thanks for the mention Paul. Useful guide.
Well written and extremely useful article with good selection of examples. Thanks a lot for this guideline.
Great tips. I like #3. It’s what I call the “Entropy Factor” Don’t let it get out of control.
Really good stuff. This article will the standard by which I judge my future websites.
I like the idea that EVERY website has a call to action – even if it isn’t obvious.
But one major point about CTAs that I would suggest is the need to TEST. If you are using instinct or “gut feeling” to guide your choices about what makes a better Call to Action, then you aren’t listening to what the visitors are saying. You need some kind of testing platform to find out the actual affect that your changes have on the success rate of your call to action.
Thanks for the articles and podcasts!
Very well written. I was just talking to a client and I stated they needed to ask themselves one question : What do you want your website to do? A website is designed to do one thing and one thing only: exactly what you want your site visitors to do. You are also aware that a website is a marketing strategy. Any solid marketing strategy is supported by other strategies.
More sign ups for your email list
More RSS subscribers
Higher conversion rates from visitors to customers
Email inquiries about services
Maybe not in that order but the bottom line remains websites are no longer just a face on the Internet, it has to be designed to do something. Thanks for putting this together.
Brilliant post. Focus is everything, really
Our multitasking brain often makes us forget of it
but it is always good to remember !
Extremely useful, easily digested list with fab illustrations. I will be applying the details to my evolving garden design website. Many, many thanks for sharing!