Your Customers Are Leaving: How to Make Your Website Convert Using CTAs

Does your Website convert? If not, you are losing customers. I guarantee you that your competitor is converting visitors, some of whom are those you failed to convert due to not having a call to action (CTA) on your Website.

Imagine this. You walk into a restaurant and see plenty of empty tables. You smell the food, and see people having a good time. No one comes to greet you, nor does anyone visit your table when you decide to seat yourself. In fact, you’re not even sure if anyone realized you were there.

How long do you plan on staying? Exactly. And the same happens for your Website. Similar to a restaurant, people are there for a reason. If you don’t lead them to the water, they will never have a chance to drink.

“If you build it, they will come.” A famous line from a famous movie turns out to be true in many cases. However, just because someone comes doesn’t mean that person will stay. Here are some tips on what you can do to help convert visitors into customers.

• Make sure people know how to contact you
• Collect email addresses for future contact
• Tell people how to engage with your content
• Make the buying process easy

Do People Know How To Contact You?

Your Website must be easy to navigate. When people are ready to contact you about your product or service, they must immediately know how to do so. If you have a phone number, it should be displayed at the top of your Website. Your email address or contact form should also be easily accessible.

The screenshot above is from an article on a prescription drug lawsuit Website. Not only does the phone number stand out, but the email contact button is right below it. This site takes things a step further, as it uses a CTA contact box on the right-hand side of the screen. People reading content on the Website know immediately how to contact the site for more information.

Mostly Serious is another good example. Their project page lights up with contact information. You have the phone number, address, project inquiry, and general email contact all above the fold.

Are You Collecting Email Addresses?

If people don’t contact you today, it is always good to find a way to contact them in the future. If people provide you with an email address, they never really leave. You always have the opportunity to reach out to them at another time. However, if they leave and you don’t have the email address, you’ve likely lost them to a competitor who will ask for the contact information.

Above you see a popup from BusinessTown that asks for your email address. Keep in mind that people don’t come to your Website planning to give you this information so you will need to ask for it. Delayed popups like the one above are great for collecting email addresses.

If you want to take it a step further, don’t simply ask for an email. It’s pretty dry to simply ask for an email address. Spice up the call to action wording with something that gets people’s attention.

“Are You Serious About Building Your Business?” That’s a little more enticing than “please give me your email address.”

Groupon uses an entry popup that requires visitors to take action prior to entering the site. They can either provide their email address (for a nice discount by the way), or click the “no thanks” tab. Either way, you can’t say they aren’t asking for the email address.

Do People Know How To Engage Your Content?

Just because you write a great piece of content does not mean people will engage with it. For social signals that help you rank higher in Google, you want people to share your content across social media and also provide comments at the end. If you don’t tell people to do it, they won’t.

So how do you accomplish this? First, you make it easy to share by using social sharing buttons.

My personal Website, as shown above, includes social sharing buttons. When you click on the social network you want to share the content on, a dialog box opens up with the URL and title of the article. It only takes two clicks for people to share my content as opposed to copying, pasting, formatting, adding an image, etc.

There is a debate among marketers as to whether using social share icons leads to more shares. My opinion on this is simple. If it leads to at least one additional share, then it’s worth doing.

Next, you need to tell people to engage. What better way than to ask a question. From the screenshot above, you can see an engagement question at the end of an article on HubSpot. It simply asks people how they plan to incorporate visuals into their content marketing strategy.

And, yes, this question generated responses. A total of 15 comments were on the post when I grabbed the screenshot. Notice how they snuck in a call to action for collection of email addresses as well (giving away free stuff such as eBooks or guides is a great way to collect email addresses).

Even better, the above statement is from an article roundup previously published in TweakYourBiz. It doesn’t ask a question but rather tells people what to do. Quite simply, it says to share the content on social media and also submit it to BizSugar, a business news aggregator. It even includes the BizSugar submit button in its social sharing buttons at the top of the page.

If Selling, Is It Easy For People To Buy?

People can likely buy the same product or service you are selling on another Website. That is why you must make it easy for people to purchase from you. It is an incentive to spend their money with you as opposed to someone else.

The first thing you need is a way to make it easy for people to find what they are looking for. Websites such as the discount arts and craft retailer shown above are too full of “buys” and likely cause people to leave and find someone else. Having a Website that is “too busy” is one of the main reasons why certain Websites annoy people.

Amazon.com is about the best example of simplifying the buying process. It allows you to choose quantities, styles, and shipping options without leaving the page. But, Amazon takes it a step further.

When scrolling on the main product page, Amazon.com keeps a purchase CTA in front of the visitor. No matter how far down the page you scroll, the purchase button is right in front of you for one-click ordering.

The Website Antique Farmhouse keeps people from clicking off sale items by answering all the questions a customer may have. First, it bullet points the main features instead of putting them on a separate page. Then, it shows anticipated shipping dates at the bottom. Customers simply click the “add to cart” button and are less likely to abandon the site as they don’t have needless navigation.

Another way to make it easy for people to buy is to give them what you know they are looking for. On the main NFL tickets page for Ticket Liquidator, you can see the “best deals” tab on the right of the screen. It provides the best deal for the area you are visiting from so you don’t have to go through a search process.

If you don’t think that simplifying the buying process is important, just ask yourself why Amazon.com is now using dash buttons and might soon be delivering your products by drone.

Final Thoughts on Website Conversion

You don’t have a Website to simply entertain. You need to convert your visitors into paying customers in order to pay the bills. All of the examples shown herein are a form of call to action. Using CTAs on your Website is the best way to convert visitors into customers.

If you don’t ask or tell them to do something, they won’t. I will tell you what they will do … leave. Failure to call them to action will lead them to taking action on their own, which will be in the form of going to a competitor’s Website. And guess what? I will bet that your competitor uses CTAs.

What are the best calls to action you have seen while surfing the Web? Which CTAs do you currently use and which ones have the highest conversion rates for your Website? Let us know on Twitter by using hashtag #bestCTA and tagging @1BusinessTown.

Brian Horvath is a freelance writer from Michigan and founder of MyBusinessTalk. He is a journalism graduate and a regular contributor to numerous online magazines and journals.