A Beginner’s Guide To Calls To Action (And How To Use Them)

Ever heard of a call to action? A call to action is a super effective way to convert your regular website visitors into clients, customers, or loyal readers. But it’s only effective if it’s done right! To help you out, we’ve written a beginner’s guide to show you call to action examples for blogs and websites, and explain some best practices to make your calls to action stand out and work for you!

What Is A Call To Action, Anyway?

A call to action, or a CTA, is an instruction you provide to your reader that tells them what to do next. It could be something as simple as asking them to follow you on social media, or as intense as buying your product.

Ideally, you want to have a clear call to action on multiple pages of your website. If you can manage it, try putting calls to action on every page! If you have a lot of pages, this can be a bit of a challenge (I know the feeling: I have so many pages and going through all of them is a PROCESS), but you can do a little at a time.

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Things You Can Do With Calls To Action

So, maybe you want to add some CTAs to your website, but you aren’t sure exactly what they should be. Here’s my tip: think of the ultimate thing you want your visitors to do. The big thing that’s going to make you money. This is going to be your main CTA. Then you’ll also have other, smaller CTAs that lead up to the ultimate goal of your main CTA.

For example, if you’re a photographer, you want people to book your services. Your main CTA, then, is going to be something like, “Book your session now!” However, you may have other CTAs on other pages that are related to getting visitors to booking their session, like “View our portfolio” or “Check out our packages & pricing”. Make sense?

Here are some more ideas you can use for your CTAs:

• Get them to join your email list
• Offer them a coupon code
• Tell them to share or follow on social media
• Encourage them to learn more or view a demo
• Have them start a free trial
• Encourage them to buy your product or service now

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Best Practice #1. Lay The Groundwork First

You can’t just throw a “BUY MY PRODUCT NOW!” CTA on your website and expect people to do what you say. You have to establish trust first. So make sure whatever page you’re putting your CTA on has enough background information so people are encouraged to do what you say. This includes giving people more info on what they’re getting into by clicking on your CTA, so describe the benefits. If you’re offering a free trial, for example, let them know that there’s no commitment and they can cancel anytime. Netflix does this well:

 

Best Practice #2. Make It Action Oriented

You want your visitors to do something, right? Then you’ve gotta make your CTA action oriented. You basically want to punch them in the face with something they should do. You know….kinda like this:

Okay, maybe not quite that violent, but you get the idea. Start off your CTA with an action word, like any of these:

• Start
• Join
• Learn
• Discover
• Try
• Get
• Shop

 

Best Practice #3. Try To Create a Sense of Urgency

You want to inspire your visitors to take action now, not five years from now (aka never). So try to create a sense of urgency with words like:

• Now
• Today
• Exclusive
• Limited time only
• Hurry
• Don’t wait

 

Best Practice #4. Make It About Them

When you’re writing your CTA, pretend you’re the user. Think from their point of view.

Some studies have shown that just making this change has resulted in a 90% increase in click-through rate. Cool, huh?

 

Best Practice #5. Make It Easy To Find

Don’t make people hunt for your CTA or what to do next. Your CTA should be obvious. Put it in an obvious location where users are going to look next. Make it big and bold and in a contrasting color. Apple is notoriously bad at this:

If you have multiple calls to action on one page, make sure your main CTA stands out by making it larger and more prominent.

 

Best Practice #6. Commit To Trial & Error

Try different CTA variations and see what works best for you. Test out different copy/wording, sizing, color, and placement. If you’re adding CTAs to your email marketing with a service like ConvertKit, you can set up split testing (also called A/B testing) campaigns where you actually send out two variations of the same email and see what works best. Play around with it and see what works best for you!

 

Are you using calls to action on you website? How have your results been?