Having a modern website is the first step to generating sales online. With a good marketing plan, a well designed website can persuade visitors to perform actions and generate more business leads for a well trained sales team. Encouraging visitors to do something on your website that results with them entering into a sales funnel is an essential strategy. The marketing term for this is called a “call to action” or “CTA”.
When an online marketing campaign is designed and launched, the website should have call to actions placed in prominent positions in order to convert visitors into paying clients. Phone calls, form submittals and “buy now” buttons are the three types of call to actions that I like to focus on.
In the last couple of years, the number of users conducting searches from mobile devices has increased to over 65% of total search engine queries. Google has now emphasized the importance of mobile first websites in its search algorithm and business websites need to take advantage of this. Mobile technology allows users to click on a phone number or a “call now” button from a website to place a phone call to a company using their mobile devices. This call to action is both measurable and trackable through analytic software and provides a lot of insight into how affective a business website is at generating interest for the products or services that its selling. A clickable phone number or “call now” button also provides important insight when planning keyword campaigns in Google AdWords. A digital marketer has the ability to track phone calls as conversions in AdWords and generate reports for keywords that produce the largest volume of phone calls. This is very valuable when working to figure out the importance of each keyword in a campaign and allocating a larger budget to keywords that convert into a call to action.
A form submittal is another lead generating call to action. There are many different call to action names or buttons that can use a form to complete an action. A “contact us” form is the most common call to action that websites use to gather information on a visitor. However, there are more complex examples of form completions that should be examined for different business models. Some commonly used ones that have good completion rates are: request a quote, learn more, download now, sign up, free trial, get started, and free business report. The purpose of the form submittal is that it captures all the lead data that a business requires to make a sale. Therefore, keeping the form minimally simple is the best method to have users complete the required fields before hitting the submit button. A user’s contact info and some other basic information such as “how did you hear about our company?” is all that is required for a salesperson to close a deal.
Guiding visitors through the buying journey using strategically placed CTAs on a website will make a company’s sales process a lot more effective. If done in a thoughtful manner, a “buy now” button can streamline the sales of a company and funnel the visitor to a shopping cart. An ecommerce check-out page is an easy integration to fulfill purchases and process payment information. With the right logistics in place the “buy now” CTA will produce results and conversions that will be easy to track with analytics related to all the different online marketing channels.
At RanWorks, we are dedicated to providing a solution and making your business stand out online. We employ digital marketing methods that will attract targeted visitors, and this will make it easier for clients to find your business when conducting an online search. RankWorks WaaS (website as a service) was developed with the exact purpose of helping small to medium size companies grow online. WaaS is everything a business owner needs to get and keep a professional web presence. This service covers the design, development, hosting, maintenance and periodic updates that every website needs. The extra value that WaaS provides is that every two years RankWorks will redesign your website at no extra cost. This way, your website never gets old and stays current along with any new Google rules updates.
