Have you ever shopped at a retail store that didn’t have someone working behind a cash register? Of course not! In most stores, cash registers are easy to find. They have a light with a number on it, a sign that says check out or pay here, or some other way of letting you know where you can trade your money for a service or product.
Each page on the website should have a purpose (usually selling something).
The “purpose” for each page can also be called the call to action. Placing a call to action on each page gives the website’s customer a place to trade his or her money for a service or a product. The call to action may be “give us a call to find out more information!” It might be “To sign up for an appointment, please fill out the form below.” You may be trying to get the potential customer from the home page to the services page. No matter what the call is, you should work it in to every page of text. If there is no call to action on the page, then why even have the page on the website?
In many cases, a call to action is associated with contact information. Because of this, you probably want to include contact information in a visible spot on the page, not buried beneath (or mixed with) a lot of text.
For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.
Showing posts with label Call To Action. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Call To Action. Show all posts
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Competitive Advantage and Call to Action Part III
Competitive Advantage and Call to Action Part I
Competitive Advantage and Call to Action Part II
Your call to action ties in directly with your competitive advantage. Think of your website as another marketing piece. Even if you are not selling products or services through your site, you are selling yourself and your organization. Use your landing page to guide your visitors along, and encourage them to take some kind of action.
Do you want your visitor to fill out a form? Purchase a product? Learn more about your company? Make that your call to action. Once you have identified what you want your visitor to do, make that the focus of your landing page. Say it in words, use an attractive graphic, and do not be afraid to repeat your call to action.
Offer an Incentive
A great way to make an effective call to action is to create a sense of urgency with your message. Here are some common techniques used in a call to action.
Don’t Be Passive
Do not be afraid to tell you customers exactly what you want them to do. Use phrases like “Call now!” rather than “Contact us when you’re ready.” Spell out exactly what they need to know, “Mail us at…” instead of “you know how to reach us.”
Stay current on the latest products and web trends at www.hitnewsfeeds.com .
Competitive Advantage and Call to Action Part II
Your call to action ties in directly with your competitive advantage. Think of your website as another marketing piece. Even if you are not selling products or services through your site, you are selling yourself and your organization. Use your landing page to guide your visitors along, and encourage them to take some kind of action.
Do you want your visitor to fill out a form? Purchase a product? Learn more about your company? Make that your call to action. Once you have identified what you want your visitor to do, make that the focus of your landing page. Say it in words, use an attractive graphic, and do not be afraid to repeat your call to action.
Offer an Incentive
A great way to make an effective call to action is to create a sense of urgency with your message. Here are some common techniques used in a call to action.
- Deadlines for ordering.
- Free gifts for ordering within a certain time frame.
- Notification of a future price increase.
- Offer a free trial / introductory rate.
- “No Risk” trial.
- “Not available in stores.”
- Limited availability.
- Free accessory with purchase.
- Free upgrade for ordering within a certain time frame.
- Create a race. “First 100 respondents…”
Don’t Be Passive
Do not be afraid to tell you customers exactly what you want them to do. Use phrases like “Call now!” rather than “Contact us when you’re ready.” Spell out exactly what they need to know, “Mail us at…” instead of “you know how to reach us.”
Stay current on the latest products and web trends at www.hitnewsfeeds.com .
Monday, February 1, 2010
Competitive Advantage and Call to Action Part I
Competitive Advantage
As defined by BusinessDictionary.com, competitive advantage is:
“Superiority gained by a firm when it can provide the same value as its competitors but at a lower price, or can charge higher prices by providing greater value through differentiation. Competitive advantage results from matching core competencies to the opportunities.”
This definition might sound a little academic, but competitive advantage is what sets you apart from your competition.
Your competitive advantage could be:
Price
Quality
Shipping and handling fees (or lack thereof)
Experience
Customer service
Credibility
Something unique to your industry.
It is important to understand that having a competitive advantage is not an event, but a process. In other words, making and keeping a competitive advantage is ongoing. It becomes a game of trying to stay one step ahead of your competition. You should never feel comfortable with the status quo, but continue to find ways to improve your advantage.
Determining Your Competitive Advantage
The first step to determining your competitive advantage is to know your competition. Take time to research the main players in your industry. A good way to learn about your competition is to do several product keyword searches on Google. Look at each website listed on the first page of the results, both the sponsored and natural listings, to review their products and services.
Now rate your competition based on the list of possible competitive advantages listed above. One of the best ways to do this is to organize a spreadsheet, listing the possible competitive advantages across the top of your page, and then list the companies down the left side of the page, with your company as the top listing. To make things simpler, you might just focus on one top-selling product per spreadsheet.
Compare price, quality, shipping options, and so on. You should start to see some areas where your product or company outshines you competitors, and some areas where you can make simple adjustments that would give you an advantage.
For example, many years ago, when Heritage Internet Technologies started out in the web design industry, this process was used to determine what we had that was unique and different. One glaring item stood out: pricing. No one in our industry could design a custom website for the price point we were offering. For HIT, price became a strong competitive advantage. It is still used today in all of our advertising.
As defined by BusinessDictionary.com, competitive advantage is:
“Superiority gained by a firm when it can provide the same value as its competitors but at a lower price, or can charge higher prices by providing greater value through differentiation. Competitive advantage results from matching core competencies to the opportunities.”
This definition might sound a little academic, but competitive advantage is what sets you apart from your competition.
Your competitive advantage could be:
Price
Quality
Shipping and handling fees (or lack thereof)
Experience
Customer service
Credibility
Something unique to your industry.
It is important to understand that having a competitive advantage is not an event, but a process. In other words, making and keeping a competitive advantage is ongoing. It becomes a game of trying to stay one step ahead of your competition. You should never feel comfortable with the status quo, but continue to find ways to improve your advantage.
Determining Your Competitive Advantage
The first step to determining your competitive advantage is to know your competition. Take time to research the main players in your industry. A good way to learn about your competition is to do several product keyword searches on Google. Look at each website listed on the first page of the results, both the sponsored and natural listings, to review their products and services.
Now rate your competition based on the list of possible competitive advantages listed above. One of the best ways to do this is to organize a spreadsheet, listing the possible competitive advantages across the top of your page, and then list the companies down the left side of the page, with your company as the top listing. To make things simpler, you might just focus on one top-selling product per spreadsheet.
Compare price, quality, shipping options, and so on. You should start to see some areas where your product or company outshines you competitors, and some areas where you can make simple adjustments that would give you an advantage.
For example, many years ago, when Heritage Internet Technologies started out in the web design industry, this process was used to determine what we had that was unique and different. One glaring item stood out: pricing. No one in our industry could design a custom website for the price point we were offering. For HIT, price became a strong competitive advantage. It is still used today in all of our advertising.
Monday, January 4, 2010
E-mail Marketing Tips, Part IV
Get More Clicks
Newsletters Should Encourage Clicks
In the world of Internet e-mail marketing, the more clicks the better. Clicks mean your message is getting across, and someone is interested in finding out more. Once someone opens your newsletter, the next step is for them to dig deeper and follow your call to action. This means they will ultimately click on the links in your newsletter and end up on your website's homepage—or, in Internet marketing terminology, end up being “captured.” If they buy, fill out your subscription invitation, or in some other way fulfill the purpose of your newsletter campaign, they are then “converted.”
A “click” is the act of someone responding to a link. The “click through rate” (commonly referred to as CTR) and how it is determined depends on whether your e-mail is text only, HTML only, or a combination of both. By using a combination of both, you can make sure your message is attractive graphically and also accessible to those recipients whose e-mail may not handle HTML messages—a customer with a portable device, for instance. Also, e-mails designed with HTML have more sophisticated tracking abilities.
The formula for an HTML, or text and HTML, click through rate is—
(total # of clicks / total # of newsletters sent)*100
For example, if you send out 500 newsletters and of those that open the e-mail, 75 people actually go to the next step and click on the link or links in the open newsletter itself, then your click through rate is 15%.
(75 clicks / 500 newsletters)*100=15%
Ways to Get More Clicks
By increasing the number of clicks, you can improve your chances of getting conversions. In the book Sign Me Up! written by Matt Blumberg, Tami Monahan Forman, and Stephanie A. Miller, the following suggestions are offered to improve your click rate. (See pp. 37, 39)
Keep Actionable Items in View: The field of view varies depending on the browser in which your e-mail is opened. On top of that, people naturally ready from the top left, downward and across the middle, to the bottom right of the screen. Therefore, if you want to catch your reader's attention, the call to action should be in that field of view. If it is at the bottom of your newsletter and the viewer must scroll down to see it, the chances are they won't do it, and your opened newsletter will lose its value. To help in the design of your newsletter, Google recently released a tool called the “Browser Size Tool.” This tool will allow you to compare how different browsers will display your content. It will be the subject of a future article from HIT Web Design, so stay tuned. In the meantime, you can read about the tool at Browser Size.
Offer Other Avenues to Convert: Suppose someone reads your newsletter, but then can't get back to the computer to act on it. To help in this situation, give your subscriber some other way to contact you. For example, offer a toll-free number, a fax number, or a physical address to visit . Also, prominently provide a memorable e-mail address so that if your subscriber is on an airplane or somewhere that they can compose an e-mail on a portable device, they can take advantage of your offer.
Use Some Marketing Savvy: Do some marketing research on your target market, and make offers accordingly. Take into account buyer preferences, expressed interests, as well as lifestyle, behavior, income, and other demographic information. You might also consider breaking up your campaign by geographical area.
Give Stuff Away: Let's face it, everyone loves to get stuff for free. As the authors of Sign Me Up! put it, “Tell your readers about something they can't resist and require that they come to your site to retrieve it. Maybe it's a coupon, music download, cool game, or a hot new screen saver. Whatever it is, let them know why they must have it and why they need to click through to get it.”
Provide Mini Reviews of Other Content on Your Site: One way to get people to your site is to give a glimpse of what it has to offer in the newsletter, a teaser, so to speak, so that the interest of the reader is piqued and they want to see more. One idea is to write a newsletter about a particular subject, and then have that story link to your website for more information.
The clicked through rate for your e-mail campaign is a critical metric that translates into results. Careful attention to increasing your clicks will ultimately net higher fulfillment of your website's purpose.
HIT Web Design offers an effective tool to create and manage e-mail newsletter campaigns called Stay-N-Touch. For more information, see Stay-N-Touch.
• Newsletters Should Prominently Display Calls to Action for Optimal Click Rates
• Increasing Your Click Rate Translates into More Conversions
• Giving Alternative Ways to Act On Your Call to Action Helps Boost Conversions
• Use HIT Web Design's Stay-N-Touch marketing tool to create effective newsletter campaigns.
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