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Call-to-action placement is integral for conversion. For tech companies, creating valuable content on a website to attract visitors and establish credibility is crucial if you want to gain the attention of today’s savvy customers.
Potential leads will often visit a number of websites before starting any conversations to check out their options and assess who the leader is in today’s competitive marketplace. So you need to make sure you’re ahead of the pack.
But as well as winning them over with compelling content, you also need to make it as easy as possible for a potential lead to continue their buying journey and ultimately make contact with you. There is more information on this in The Essential Guide to a Better CTA.
The obvious way to direct a visitor towards the next step in their journey – whether it’s a contact form or a valuable asset like a case study – is to have a prominent placed Call-To-Action (CTA). This helps the visitor navigate to sections of your website that interest them, while at the same time showing prospects a route that will eventually lead to them getting in touch.
If you haven’t already, make sure you read our blog on how many CTAs you should have on each page of your website.
You don’t want to overload a visitor with CTAs, but at the same time, you want to give them clear directions to get to the content that’s most useful to them.
It sounds like a tricky balancing act, but the good news is that following a few simple guidelines can help you make decisions about your call-to-action placement.
Golden Rules
Assess the value of your Call-To-Actions
If you’re staring at a page and waiting for a lightning bolt of inspiration to hit with the perfect CTA, you’ll probably be waiting a long time.
In fact, the opposite approach is much better. Write down every CTA you can think of that makes sense for that page. You don’t have to get the wording right straight away, just commit to the action you’d like the visitor to take (eg., read our brochure, see our products, contact us now).
Depending on the page, you may end up with a long list. But that’s fine! Most tech companies have a lot to say and a lot to show.
The next step is to rank the potential CTAs. Take your list and decide how valuable each CTA is to you. For example, ‘contact us now’ would be a very valuable CTA. You may want to order them in a Word doc or colour them in on paper.
Next, take your list and order the CTAs by visitor commitment. For example, submitting a Contact Us form is a high commitment, but reading a blog post or news article is a low commitment.
The more valuable CTAs will likely be the ones that expect more commitment from your visitor, so you’ll want to use them in very specific locations towards the end of the buyer journey.
Less valuable CTAs still play a key role, as they demand less commitment and therefore your visitor is more likely to continue their journey – especially if you’ve already gained their interest with great content.
Persuade with your content
Armed with your list, you should be able to decide on the most appropriate CTAs to have on each page.
For example, you aren’t going to place a high commitment CTA like a ‘contact us’ button on your home page or even a services or products page, as you have yet to persuade the visitor with your content to make such a jump.
It’s better to use CTAs with lower commitment expectations on high-level pages, even if they are less valuable to you. Visitors are then more likely to navigate through your website and digest your valuable content, taking a journey towards that final contact us (or buy now!) page.
Make sure that your content is strong and compelling enough to encourage the visitor to follow the CTA.
Avoid Call-To-Action overload
A short and sweet rule to follow.
Ensure that only one CTA is visible on the screen at any one time unless it is a products or services page that requires multiple CTAs.
While you’re here
There are plenty of other tips when it comes to adding CTAs to a website, so here’s a few that we feel are worthy of consideration after you’ve followed our golden rules:
- Make your CTAs visually stand out (buttons are best).
- Be clear as to where the CTA takes a visitor. We don’t like surprises.
- Ensure your CTAs complement your website layout and don’t clutter the screen.
- Avoid ‘contact us’ CTAs too early in the buyer journey.
Is your website generating high-quality leads? If not, then take advantage of our free content teardown which will be the first step to removing any existing conversion barriers.