There’s only one thing on your landing page more important than your call to action — and that’s your headline. Since your headline is automatically also the most visible part of your page (unless you hide it), it doesn’t really need that much help from your web design. Your call to action (CTA), however, totally does — so here are five things your web design can do to improve your call to action:
Encapsulation
Encapsulation, or ‘framing’, is something that photographers and other artists do all the time. Basically, you get a shot (or paint a canvas) such that the thing you want people to look at is surrounded by some other element. If you’ve ever seen a picture like the one to the left (by Tambako the Jaguar on Flickr), you’ve seen what I mean. On the web, it’s slightly simpler: if your CTA is just hanging out in white space, it’s not encapsulated. If it has a frame or is on a panel of a different color, it is. Simply put, encapsulated stuff gets noticed more, plain and simple.
Color and Contrast
If you’ve ever seen an elementary school color wheel, you know by now that every color has a compliment — red to green, yellow to purple, blue to orange. What you might not know is that complimentary colors are some of the most violent visual contrasts that you can create without inducing epilepsy. If you have a page that is predominantly Color X, you want your CTA to show up in the complimentary color. That way, the eye is drawn directly to it, and more conversions happen.
Directional Cues
This is the fancy web-design way of saying “if you like it, then you should’a pointed a big ol’ arrow at it.” OK, so maybe ‘big ol” is overstating it — but the fact remains that simple directional cues like arrows do an excellent job of moving a surfer’s eyes to where you want them to go. Remember, surfers skim, they don’t read, so if you have a series of bullet points that end with an arrow pointing directly at your CTA, you’re pretty likely to get the eyes that were looking for awesome among the bullets to land straight on the button you most want them to push.
Blank Space
Put simply, blank space around any element on your page makes that element stand out more and look more important. Now, this may seem to clash with the notion of encapsulation, but it doesn’t really — you can surround your call to action with a capsule, but that capsule may well contain a few bullet points or even paragraphs of text along with the actual button that moves the customer onto the next stage. Separating those bullets/paragraphs (and the edge of the capsule) from the button with simple blank space can increase your conversions.
Add Supporting Statements To Your Button
A big fat “Buy Now” button works — but a big fat “Buy Now” button with a supporting statement either on or directly below the button works even better…especially if you set it up using all of the other design tips above. An encapsulated, contrasting button with plenty of blank space and an arrow pointing at it is great — adding a small bit of text to it that gives one final reason why the customer should buy is awesome.
There are a lot of ways that excellent web design can help your online business succeed — improving conversions is just one of them…but it’s a great one. If your CTR is quite what you’d like to see, drop me an email or call me — I’d love to consult or even redesign your website to improve your bottom line.
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