When visitors come to your company website, what action do you want them to take? What do you hope will be the end result of their visit?

Ultimately, you probably want website visitors to become paying customers—but what steps need to happen first? Do you need your visitors to submit their e-mail address or join your newsletter list? Do you need them to sign up for a membership? Download an eBook? Pick up the phone to call you? Or simply purchase a product directly from your website?

Whatever you want your visitors to do, it’s important that you make it clear—first in your own mind, and then to your users. Start by thinking about the goals and expectations you have for your website, and what you ultimately want online traffic to yield. But then take those goals and expectations and spell them out to users—in the form of strong calls to action.

Why Calls to Action Matter

The call to action is a piece of text—usually just a sentence or so—in which you urge readers to take a particular step. Learn more about our products by calling us today. Click here to download our free eBook. Join our mailing list to receive more updates. Call today to place your order.

The basic idea behind the call to action is that—in marketing as in life—if you want somebody to do something for you then you have to tell them. Your teenage son likely won’t take out the trash without you asking him to. Similarly, for your website visitors to take a particular action, you need to give them a little boost, a little push in the right direction.

Ultimately, this is how you make website traffic valuable. Many companies invest big bucks in getting traffic to their website—and if you amass a huge number of website visitors, that’s great! But what is it really worth to your company unless you can turn mere website visitors into something more?

The Basics of the CTA

As you think about implementing calls to action, here are some important tips to keep in mind:

• Every page of your website should have a call to action. You never know how people are going to find your website, or when they might reach the tipping point and decide to become a paying customer, so make sure your invitation is always right there in front of them.
• Along the same lines, we highly recommend having contact information—including and especially a telephone number—on every page of the site, perhaps close to the CTA. Keep it right there in the face of your visitors, ensuring it is always easy for them to reach out to you.
• For some pages—especially longer pages—you may want longer calls to action, which can give structure to a page and help lead your customers through the site and through the sales cycle.
• Clearly, your call to action should match the specific page it’s placed on—you don’t need a CTA for Product A on the page showcasing Product B—and on the home page you should be judicious, remembering to pick a call to action that’s a bit more general and not pushy. You don’t immediately want to scare away visitors with a hard sell, or press them to make a decision without informing them first.

When used correctly, calls to action give meaning and structure to your website and to the customer journey—and they turn your website traffic into something even more valuable.