Searchers have some interesting habits. COVID-19’s influence on nearly every market has caused us all to frequent our computer and mobile screens even more often than before. Oddly enough, even in a pandemic, behaviors stick out across all groups, whether social, economic, or demographic.
Universally, we want our web browsing to be a seamless and smooth experience, and we dislike things like progress bars and load times that interrupt our established routines. We like websites that direct us where we want to go without friction, but we don’t like feeling like we’re being led around by technology. We’re fine making purchases online, sometimes without even seeing the product we’re buying, as long as it happens in three clicks or less.
Three clicks or less is an industry rule for how effective your website is at making interactions happen with consumers. If your website takes three clicks or less to get to a checkout page or contact form, you have an efficient website design. Even if that fourth click takes a matter of seconds, you’re losing the attention of a potential sale. Those first three clicks are the most important.
This is where we use a call-to-action. Rather than hoping traffic leads to a conversion in three clicks or less, a call-to-action proactively drives website traffic to convert. The call-to-action is the most simple and efficient form of interaction with your website, and tracking them is the lifeblood of collecting your website’s data. Having a strong call-to-action enables clicks to directly influence the volume of conversions on your website.
A call to action could be a shopping cart ‘Buy’ or ‘Checkout’ button, or it could be a phone number to call. Without them, you could have an amazing-looking website and it would produce very little for your business.
Call-to-actions can seem gimmicky. Things like “Buy today!” or “Shop now” or “Find out more” can carry the whiff of everything people don’t like about advertising. But a call-to-action does exactly what consumers want, which is why they’re a staple of advertising design. They don’t make decisions for consumers, but they do allow the decision to be extremely simple.
The good news is that implementing calls-to-action on your website is fairly simple. Ask yourself what you want consumers to do when they reach your website, and give them the option to do that action front and center. Purchase buttons on the homepage for ecommerce websites or a large form fill to collect an email address and return phone number for lead generation; these things will have a clear impact on how well your website generates business, and that’s the whole point of a commercial website.
Make sure your call-to-action is easy and seamless to use – front and center, on desktop and mobile devices – and you’ll see an immediate increase in how well your website performs for your business.
