Posted By Industrial Web Solutions Marketing Team on June 22, 2010

'Calls to Action' Guide Site Visitors Through Conversion Process

Website conversion is about persuading your targeted site visitors to take a desired action such as fill in and submit an online form, place a call to you, register online for your event, or even make an online purchase. Unless your website is strictly an information site and you have achieved your conversion goal just by attracting your targeted site visitors then there is probably something else you want them to do before they leave.

There are many factors that influence the effectiveness of your website for converting your site visitors. One of the ways you may be able to enhance your website conversion rate is through the strategic use of ‘calls to action.’ Provided your website is well-architected with clear, highly focused information that is easy to navigate, then strategically placing strong ‘calls to action’ within the body copy, or alongside it, helps to guide your site visitors seamlessly through the conversion process, particularly if there are multiple steps to complete conversion.

A ‘call to action’ can be graphical or text-based and informs the site visitors of the step they are to take next. For a simple example, if the conversion goal of your website is to persuade your site visitors to submit an RFQ (request for quote) then a ‘call to action’ may read as follows:

Submit an RFQ for ‘stop valves’ online now.

Composed of instructional ‘anchor text’ that points to the next stage of the conversion process, the above text link would appear on the specific product page and would take the site visitor to your RFQ form. It is always a good idea to search engine optimize your links to include the relevant keywords. If you are using a graphical link, then be sure to search engine optimize your ‘alt text,’ which is the text placed in the ‘alt tag’ associated with the graphical link on your HTML web page. This ‘alt text’ (alternative text) is read aloud by an electronic screen reader for the visually impaired as well as scanned by the search engines. The ‘anchor text’ I used in the above example for the hypertext link would also suffice as the ‘alt text’ in a graphical link.

(You can learn more about ‘anchor text’ and ‘alt text’ at DeMicco.com, where there is a helpful “What is” glossary that contains many terms pertaining to search engine optimization and marketing.)

Write down your site conversion goals first. Then write out all the steps a site visitor must take to successfully convert. If you are using a web analytics tracking application (and you should be!!) then be sure to track each step of your conversion goal so you can understand where respondents are dropping out and make the necessary adjustments. Strategically place ‘calls to action’ where it makes sense for site visitors to be taking an action to get what they want from you. The idea is to include an easy to follow, instructional ‘call to action’ for each step in the conversion process so that your site visitors are never in question about what you expect them to do next.

Categories: industrial marketing
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