Does your website have a primary call to action? I hope so. Getting your website to “do something” should be a goal for all website owners. Getting new visitors to see your call to action, or to even act on that call to action though, is the real trick to having a successful website.

You’re Paying for that Call to Action More than Once!

Assuming you have a call to action on your website, are you tracking how often it gets clicked? A call to action on your website should be managed as if you were paying for every impression of it being there. You are after all,  paying for it in several different ways.

Having a call to action on a website often equals revenue for the owner by some means or another. Having it fail or perform poorly could be a major cost. Consider some costs: server fees, site maintenance, cost of marketing the website, time, maybe even credibility. Your call to action needs to perform, which means you need to watch it carefully.

Example of Call to action on BWI

When to Get Busy

So when do you fix, how do you fix, and how bad is my call to action really working? The when part is easy. Always manage your call to actions, and always monitor its performance, and this works into the how bad is it part.

What are normal expectations? If you are trying to improve your call to action, your expectations should simply be better than what you currently achieve. If you are looking for numbers, 1-3% is a great start. It really depends on the site and the objective. That is why I always like to say, “Stop looking at others sites to improve yours!” Unless you are comparing apples to apples, other peoples numbers mean nothing.

If you do want your site to perform as good as most sites, then know this. Most sites have really poor numbers, and you may want to reconsider competing with their figures. Step out of the pack, and start to lead.

The how to fix can be done a couple of ways. You can simply change it on the site or pages. You can create a duplicate page with a different call to action running, and run the comparison that way, known as split testing. Whatever you do, log you changes, and even take screenshots of your site if you can.

The next thing to figure out is how much testing is enough. Advertisers on Google often like to wait until the get 100-300 clicks, and then see which ad had the better click thru ratio. On a site with a limited budget, time, or traffic that may not be so easy. Take the time to look at your website stats. Know where your visitors are coming from, and if they returning or new. If your primary audience is 90% new, and you get 500 a day, running a call to action for a week with just a few clicks may indicate time to improve.

Every site is different, and but having an effective call to action is important for all of them.

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