Learnings from a website review – 4
In this article in our series on website review revelations, we’ll look at other elements from the website homepage which had issues – in this case, we’ll discuss ‘call to actions‘……
Random acts of content
There were other areas on the homepage which almost seemed random.
This was probably a side effect of using WordPress.
The site was using an off-the-shelf theme (not necessarily a bad thing, we don’t tend to use them though) and such themes come with a prescribed layout – website admin teams can almost then be led to follow that route – whether or not it makes sense for them, their messaging, or their website target audience.
This ‘fill in the blanks‘ approach to web design messaging is a very common problem sadly. Website visitors have such short attention spans – why make life hard for them?
The point?
A key question you need to ask when you consider the target audience for your website is this:
What do you want them to do?
When you have a clear idea of what you want people to do, this can be reflected in the design.
We refer to these as ‘call to actions‘ (CTAs) – we are ‘calling‘ the website visitor to do something. Typically we want the website visitor to perform an action which takes them one step closer to fulfilling their goals which is ideally aligned also to putting money in your bank (whether now or at some future point).
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As we mentioned above, the steps involved depend on product/service/sector/geography etc. However, as a general rule, the following are classic call-to-actions on a website:
- Learn more about a product or service
- buy a product or service
- request a demo
- use a contact form
- download an e-book/whitepaper
- signup to a newsletter
- Attend a free WordPress Q&A webinar ;)
- etc
The website in question had no obvious call to actions. Nothing. If the medical product were not available yet then the obvious call to action would be “Sign up to be amongst the first to hear our release date” etc. That way the website is then an active part of the sales and marketing process for the company – helping turn anonymous website traffic into leads.
Got any questions?
So that brings to an end this our learnings from this mini-series, I’m sure we’ll launch it again though when I come across points which I think can help you with your WordPress site.
In the meantime, don’t forget we have free WordPress Q&A webinars every fortnight – a perfect place to ask questions.
Joel