You've put a lot effort into making your product images look great, finding catchy product names and descriptions, and choosing a matching theme that underlines your online business. What's more, you've spent time and money into advertising your website, so that it's getting traffic. But maybe you are still a little disappointed, because your effort doesn't really pay off yet? Visitors don't add products to their cart. You may be missing "Call-To-Actions".
No worries, we're here to help. In this article we give you a short overview about what Call-To-Actions are, and what you have to pay special attention to.
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What are "Call-to-Actions"?
The "Call-To-Action" or CTA is a vital element on a website. Literally, it is a "call" to take an "action". It's just a small element, but can be the last decisive impulse to encourage a visitor to buy. It tells your visitors what to do, where to click, what to buy. It guides visitors the way to checkout and turns them into a customer. The probably most popular CTA is the "Buy Now" button.
Crafting an effective CTA
First things first: There's no one-size-fits-all solution for crafting a CTA. It is not enough to just create a button with the words "Buy this" or "Click that", and spread it all over your website.
Crafting effective Call-To-Actions is a broader issue. You can implement CTAs in several ways and test and improve it over years, but you don't need to over-engineer this. Stick to the best practices, and you'll do just fine:
Call-To-Actions on images
Images are much easier for people to process than text. Embedding a CTA on a product image can thus increase its visibility and improve conversion. Anyway, CTAs on product images are very important, as a visitors click on it is their first step in making a purchase.
Keep it short and simple
Exactly that: just keep your CTAs concise. It can be sufficient, to just use "Shop now" to lead visitors from your Home page to a specific product.
Psychology also plays a big role here. When visitors notice that items are limited, they are more likely to buy. This is the method of choice for retail stores: with "Last chance!" or "Stock sale!" they suggest exactly that.
Here's an example:
In May you have produced many glasses of strawberry jam. Now it's August, and you're running out of stock. You can announce this on your website with a CTA "Grab the last jam!", "Last chance", or "Buy today".
Button color
Color has a profound effect on people. A lot of psychological studies out there tell you exactly that. Still it's hard to say, which color to choose, as e.g. women's favorite colors differ from what men favor; or in different cultures colors are associated differently.
Some tips:
- It is important that the color you choose is appreciated by your visitors, and matches your brand.
- Make sure it stands out from the background.
- Don't be too crazy about the combination of colors.