Your Content Won’t Convert Without Well-Placed, Obvious Calls-To-Action
As Martech Zone has grown over the years, I’ve been investing much more time in both user experience (UX) as well as monetization. As the site was growing over the years, I wasn’t seeing the monetization growing, either from ads or on referral or affiliate links within the content. It’s a careful balance… do I bug the heck out of visitors with ads? Or do I forego monetization of the content and miss out on lost revenue?
The answer is something in between, of course. I’ve been optimizing the advertising side with the team at Ezoic, which allows me to dial in the number and placement of ads, as well as how intrusive they are with each visitor.
Where To Place Calls-To-Action
As we optimize our client’s sites, we focus a lot of our attention on the visitor’s ability to convert on the site, primarily through calls-to-action (CTA). That is… on any page, are there obvious calls to action to connect with the client in some way? Too many people focus in on a home page or a contact page… but every page should have a variety of calls to action. Not too many to confuse or irritate the visitor… but enough to help them understand the next steps they can take and how to take them.
There are several placements for your calls-to-action on any given page within your site:
- In-Stream – this is the strongest CTA, placing a link, button, or image that’s relevant to your content will convert those who are interested who are reading the content you’ve shared.
- Notification Bar – notification bars have become commonplace on sites. It’s one of the first visual elements that a visitor sees, so it’s a very useful tool to drive conversions.
- Sidebar – while they don’t get as much attention, a well-placed CTA on your sidebar or a display ad of some sort can also garner attention and drive more conversion. This is a great location for alternative CTAs for visitors.
- Footer – these are where you often find general CTAs specific to the products and services your business offers.
- Chat – an automated chat that prompts the visitor to assistance is a great way to both qualify and capture leads.
- Popups – Timed popups, popups based on scrolling, slide-ins, and exit intent popups are much more intrusive but often motivate the visitor to act more than other types of CTAs.
Landing Pages Are The Exception
Landing pages are an exception because they are the destination for clicking a call to action, not a place for other CTAs and options. There should be no question about what the action is that you wish a landing page visitor to take. We typically insert a short form or checkout, and we will add exit intent popups in for those visitors that are showing signs of leaving.
More CTAs = More Conversions
We aren’t done yet, but we’ve increased our number of leads from ~5 per month to over 140 leads per month. That’s an off-the-chart improvement! And without us changing the volume of people visiting the site. Same site, and the same content… but a 2,800% improvement in conversions simply by ensuring there are calls to action on every piece of content that we produce. These aren’t in-your-face blinking banner ads… they’re just simple buttons, graphics, or even textual links.
Finding a call-to-action within your content and site should be easy. Your audience shouldn’t have to wonder about what action they might do next, be sure to tell them what to do next. If you do tell them, they will come.
Disclosure: Martech Zone is an affiliate of Ezoic and we included our affiliate link in this article.
