You have created a great website for your ecommerce business. It has the most aesthetic design with beautifully shot product pictures, catchy descriptions, and seamless navigability. Then what is it that is discouraging your visitors from adding your products to their cart?
It could be the lack of a good call-to-action, one of the most underrated elements of an ecommerce website.
What Is A Call-To-Action?
A call-to-action is an invitation by brands to their users to take their desired action on their website. It is usually in the form of a link or a button.
Why Should Ecommerce Businesses Have A Call-To-Action On Their Website?
In addition to purchasing products, ecommerce businesses can use calls-to-action to get their users to:
- Avail of free trials or offers on their products
- Find out their new product details
Features Of A Good Call-To-Action
- It should have an attractive color to grab the visitor’s attention. Its color can be coordinated with the theme of the website or even be bold and contrasting in order to make it stand out.
- Apart from using vibrant colors for the text, leaving white space around the CTA also helps to make it stand out.
- Having it in unique sizes and shapes like a circle as opposed to the regular square and rectangle can also help to attract attention towards it.
- It need not necessarily be at the bottom of a page. Unique placement like the sides of a page can easily direct visitors to it.
- A faster way to grab attention can be to have it “above the fold”, i.e., on top of the page in the form of banners so that viewers do not have to scroll down too much to see it.
- It is very important to optimize your call-to-action for mobile users. Fit it to the width of mobile screens to make it prominent.
- Adding a social sharing button for your products can help you to spread the word about them and increase your customer base
- Ensure that it echoes with your brand.
Tips To Create A Good Call-To-Action Text
Build Urgency
CTAs that instill a sense of limited availability in your visitors with phrases like “limited edition”, “sale end”, and “clearance sale” will compel them more to buy your products. These words can be paired with action verbs like “order/buy/avail/get it now” and “start today” to make CTAs more effective.
Get Personal
Address visitors directly using words like “you” and “your” or create first-person CTAs using “me” and “I”. E.g., “avail of your free home trial now” or “Send me my free sample”. This helps visitors to build an immediate connection with your products and brand and boosts conversion rates.
Write Negative CTAs
Unlike many CTAs that directly try to sell the benefits of products to customers, you can try using those that alert them or instill a sense of fear in them. For example, if you are a haircare brand then you could start your CTA with “tired of losing hair?” and ask visitors to try out your new product range.
Avoid Vague Text
Words like “Continue” will leave visitors confused about the next steps. Instead, write detailed CTAs like “continue to cart”.
Testimonials
There is no better way to get your website’s visitors to buy your products than to share stories of its success. Sharing experiences of your previous customers next to the CTA link will instill faith in your customers in your brand and encourage them to instantly buy your products.
Conclusion
As seen above, an effective call-to-action plays a very important role in converting the visitors of an ecommerce website into customers for the brand. However, there is no hard and fast rule for writing a good call-to-action. Companies need to test a few out and go with the one that works for them and be consistent with it.