A call to action can do many things. Usually, it conveys the value of whatever it is that you have to offer. That could be your special services, low prices, or whatever else it is that makes you unique. Calls to action are also used to create a sense of urgency, like when a banner warns you that a sale is ending this week. Most of all, a call to action can create a focus to your site and provide a forward momentum to visitors who are enticed by your landing page and want to see more.
Traffic Boosting Calls
One of the most effective calls to action is the free gift, the substance of which might include anything from whitepapers and e-Books to coupons or gated content. When you provide free content, norms of reciprocity are engaged and visitors are encouraged to leap over minor barriers for entry like registration or subscription. When the right information is presented as to completely describe whatever problem it is that you intend to solve, the content that you deliver can also be a call to action in itself.
Depending on what it is you do, you might also consider offering a limited time free trial or equivalent. Apart from being a great way to create a sense of urgency, free trials allow visitors to get a feel for your service. They’re also an excellent way to drive traffic because they’re ideal content for social media sharing.
Social Networking
Social sharing buttons are everywhere, which might make you think that a landing page is a good place to cash in on networking traffic, but you would be wrong. Nobody shares a landing page, and while social sharing buttons should be on your site, steer clear of putting them on content that isn’t share-worthy.
Newsletter
Another popular way to drive traffic from your landing page is the newsletter. Frequently attached to blogs, newsletters are ideal for promoting a campaign, informing consumers about new products, or simply touching base with your readership. They’re also fairly simple and cheap to produce, so long as you remember that your newsletter has a goal (in this case generating traffic) and that goal is clear and capable of being realized once it has been read.
An Effective Landing Page
With a need for compelling visuals, an attention grabbing headline, minimal text, and access to further information (such as an FAQ), developing an effective landing page isn’t child’s play. It’s also proven to be a never-ending battle for perfection, because you can improve the effectiveness of your call to action with very minor and apparently superficial tweaks. For instance, the folks at Unbounce found a in click through rate when they changed the phrase “Start your free 30 day trial” to “Start my free 30 day trial.” This goes to show that you don’t need big changes for big improvements.
For many years, folk wisdom has held that a call to action should always be in the upper fold of your page. Browsing around the Internet, you’d struggle to find too many sites that ignore that simple principle of design. The same study found a 304% increase in conversions in a case that broke this rule. Experts agree that calls to action should be delivered wherever they best complement the specific page that they’re on rather than adhering to a rule of thumb.
Similarly, a study carried out by Marketing Experiments’ Daniel Burnstein that lengthy and well-developed landing pages with a call to action on the lower fold of a page raised conversions twofold (compared with a top-fold call to action). This is partially because more complete and robust landing pages help to rapidly create a sense of authority and trust. Effective pages are highly specific; they talk about one product or one idea and ask the visitor to take one specific action at the end.