Are you relying too heavily on hard call to actions?

One thing we have always emphasised to our partners is the importance of making sure your call to actions across your site are as prominent as possible.Customers simply won’t do business with you unless you make that process as easy as humanly possible. Your call to actions and ease of progressing from one phase of the buyer journey to the other should be both foolproof and obvious. When it comes to choosing call to actions, it’s easy to stick to stock text such as buy now but, are you being too one dimensional?

Every business will have its primary call to action. This relates to the path you really want your visitors to take. If you’re in retail, then it’s going to be a ‘buy now’ button. If you’re a business consultant you might rely on ‘book a consultation’. Either way every business has that hard call to action. It should be prominent across your site but, it’s important that you balance your call to action with other text that speaks to those who aren’t quite ready to make a final decision.That balance involves the introduction of alternative call to actions. These are known as soft call to actions but are also sometimes called transitional call to actions. These alternatives exist so that potential customers who are not ready to do business right now can engage with you and your brand with the possibility of converting later. As such, these soft call to actions are less comital and usually involve an exchange of the customer’s information or agreeing to an ongoing contact method with the brand in exchange for something. These call to actions can be varied but will typically include things like:·Sign up to our newsletter or mailing list·Subscribe to our YouTube channel·Download a brochure·Follow us on social mediaAll of these actions give the potential for an ongoing relationship between the brand and the customer. You then have ample opportunity to continue to persuade the customer to do business with you.Clever designers and marketers will ensure they have multiple soft call to action alternatives all around their website. These will often be placed in close proximity to the hard call to action to ensure that there is always a more ‘easy going’ alternative available to the customer.