Using Call To Actions On Your Website

A ‘call to action’ or CTA is a statement that asks your visitor to do something. Examples include things like “search,” “subscribe,” “download,” “click here,” and “contact.” The goal of many, but not all CTAs is to get the viewer to interact with your website and leave you their contact information.

Some CTAs, like “search” are there to help the user make a better use of your site. Although some agents insist on getting contact information for even a search you risk angering of potential client when you do this.

Contact is the most important CTA

Some will disagree but I’m convinced the contact or contact me button or page is the absolute most important called action any website can have. If you’ve ever tried to find out how to contact someone from a website and been frustrated you know what I mean.

I think it makes sense to have your contact information at the bottom of every page – placing it in the footer means you only have to do it once and it will repeat. It also makes sense to have a contact me page with a highly visible button toward the top of every page of your website.

Your contact me page should have a picture of you, your email address, and your office phone number. You certainly can include a cell or mobile number or you can be scrupulous about forwarding to your mobile number when you’re not the office.

Some will suggest trying to disguise your email address to reduce spam. That’s why you see some emails with the at and dot signs spelled out instead of shown as symbols. I preferred to make it as easy for the potential client contact me as possible. Ideally your email address will be linked in a way that it can actually send an email and it can be copied by the client into their own email program.

The goal of the contact CTAs is to make it as easy as possible for the client and potential.

It helps to have your office address, perhaps linked to that address on Google maps or other mapping program.

Download can generate good contacts

Having something interesting and valuable to give away for free can generate a great many contacts for you over time. It doesn’t have to be complicated. A list of “10 Ways to Prep Your House for Sale” or “The 5 Most Important Questions to Ask a Real Estate Agent”are easy to create an offer for free download in exchange for contact information.

If you create a weekly or monthly newsletter you’ll want a subscribe free call to action button. Both of these need to be set up in a way that when the customer provides their information they receive their download or their newsletter automatically.

Text or buttons?

Calls to action can be created in text which gets link to the appropriate place. You can make text attractive by picking easy to read fonts and making their size large and coloring them.

There is there are there is a huge variety of buttons available for free on the web. My favorite way to find them is to use Google and search for free web buttons. If you know you want a download button and that term to your search.

In terms of effectiveness both text and buttons work. Keep in mind that you want either to have plenty of white space so that it’s easy to find obvious to the user what to do.

Other uses for CTAs

CTAs of course are not limited to websites. Any time you put up a real estate sign or do any kind of marketing it should have a call to action. In fact when you’re attempting to close of a potential buyer or seller and you ask them to sign a contract, that’s called action.

Start noticing the CTAs around you and you’ll soon see how they are used well and, surprisingly how often they are skipped or used poorly.

What’s your favorite call to action? 
(By the way, that question is also a call to action – a call to make a comment or interact with this blog.)