Spending money on a great website design, search engine optimization, and professional copy without strong call to actions is like buying a five star diner and not eating it.  If visitors are not driven to do something when they arrive at the website, why send them there at all?  I called a prospective client many years ago about redesigning her website.  Her response to me was, “I don’t need any help.  I get over a million hits a month on my website.”  Hard for me to believe that a small scuba shop in central Ohio was getting that kind of use, I asked how much sales she generated from the site.  She said, “None.”  Judging the success of a website by the number of people that come to a website rather than what they do when they get there is another topic.  Imagine if 1 million people came in to your store and none of them bought a thing. 

An effective call to action drives a user to stop what they are doing and change their intended course of action.  That could include acting on a special, buying a product, email for support, or signing up for a newsletter.  What is the secret behind creating effective calls to action and getting those 1 million visitors to act?

Your call should be as simple as A, B, C and 1, 2, 3.

• Be direct
• Have a clear message
• Get to the point
• Make it pop out
• Make it easy for your visitor to find what they need

Write your call to action so it is specific to the readers wants.

• Tailor  the message to the readers wants
• Deliver a solution to the markets wants
• Understand where in the cycle your reader is in – are they looking for product information or are they ready to buy.
• Cross sell your products

Make it stand out to the reader

• Short and to the point
• Reward the reader for taking the action

Make the benefit obvious

• Use limited time offers
• Incent with free bonuses
• Deliver value added opportunities

Good products and servers are plentiful.  A good call to action can be the difference between a viewer becoming a customer and one that hires your competition. It can be the difference between smaller total transaction amounts and larger transaction amounts.  It can be the difference between success and failure.

If you need help devising a good call to action strategy, contact Goodfriend Solutions today for a free consultation.

Spending money on a great website design, search engine optimization, and professional copy without strong call to actions is like buying a five star diner and not eating it.  If visitors are not driven to do something when they arrive at the website, why send them there at all?  I called a prospective client many years ago about redesigning her website.  Her response to me was, “I don’t need any help.  I get over a million hits a month on my website.”  Hard for me to believe that a small scuba shop in central Ohio was getting that kind of use, I asked how much sales she generated from the site.  She said, “None.”  Judging the success of a website by the number of people that come to a website rather than what they do when they get there is another topic.  Imagine if 1 million people came in to your store and none of them bought a thing. 

An effective call to action drives a user to stop what they are doing and change their intended course of action.  That could include acting on a special, buying a product, email for support, or signing up for a newsletter.  What is the secret behind creating effective calls to action and getting those 1 million visitors to act?

Your call should be as simple as A, B, C and 1, 2, 3.

• Be direct
• Have a clear message
• Get to the point
• Make it pop out
• Make it easy for your visitor to find what they need

Write your call to action so it is specific to the readers wants.

• Tailor  the message to the readers wants
• Deliver a solution to the markets wants
• Understand where in the cycle your reader is in – are they looking for product information or are they ready to buy.
• Cross sell your products

Make it stand out to the reader

• Short and to the point
• Reward the reader for taking the action

Make the benefit obvious

• Use limited time offers
• Incent with free bonuses
• Deliver value added opportunities

Good products and servers are plentiful.  A good call to action can be the difference between a viewer becoming a customer and one that hires your competition. It can be the difference between smaller total transaction amounts and larger transaction amounts.  It can be the difference between success and failure.

If you need help devising a good call to action strategy, contact Goodfriend Solutions today for a free consultation.

Improving your SEO is not a sprint.  It is a marathon.  It takes a minimum of months, if not years.  Here are some tips that should be employed in any campaign.

• Hire a professional.  SEO is not complex, but the skills and knowledge around what is important and what is not, cannot be obtained quickly.  Spend your time on what you do best, not running in circles trying to improve your SEO.
• Spend time in your initial site content development deciding what your key words should be.  Analysis on keywords is critical in the beginning of your efforts.
• Value the importance of people entering your website through something other than the home page.
• Place your company name in your meta-tags and page titles, but put them at the end.  People who find your website by searching on your company name will easily find you in other ways.
• It can be very valuable to use derivatives of the more competitive keywords.
• Make sure a sitemap is used.
• Ensure that your website is search friendly.  Use robots.
• Vary the anchor text in the links to your website. 
• Request that links point to more pages than just the home page.
• Remember that your SEO efforts are not a onetime occurrence.  Keyword evaluations must happen routinely and follow up on your link requests.