Optimize Your Website Content with Calls to Action: Tips for Small Businesses

By Mike Murray published September 1, 2013

Many small businesses have a long way to go when it comes to providing the calls to action that are essential for driving conversions from their content marketing efforts.
For example, I regularly find websites that lack easy-to-find phone numbers; or they fail to display offers targeted at engaging prospects who may leave after a few seconds without picking up the phone or sharing their names and email addresses.
To document the issues I’ve come across, I randomly selected 200 U.S.-based small businesses from the ReferenceUSA database (including companies with fewer than 100 employees in such industries as construction, manufacturing, and professional services), and compiled my findings into the Small Business B2B Call to Action Study.
The study, presented by Small Business Trends, also includes a small business B2B call-to-action checklist, which details more than 30 conversion topics that small businesses should review and implement when optimizing their website content.
Here are some of the key observations on how small businesses are failing to benefit from calls to action:

• 96 percent don’t feature any industry how-to guide or white papers on their home pages.
• 70 percent don’t reference any notable calls to action on their home pages (other than a phone number and a “contact us” option in the navigation).
• 72 percent don’t have any calls to action on their interior pages.
• 82 percent don’t reference their social media profiles (text or images).
• 27 percent don’t include a phone number on their home pages.
• 70 percent of websites with a phone number don’t display it in a prominent place.
• 68 percent don’t include an email address on their home pages.
• 38 percent of websites with an email address bury it on the home page (often in the footer).

These findings are somewhat surprising, given that commercial websites have been around for
about 20 years — ample time to have begun to put best practices in place.
You can get excellent tips by reading Mark Sherbin’s CMI post, Are Your Calls to Action Missing These Proven Formulas? Among other ideas, he offers three steps based on conversion experts’ experience:

Step 1: Write copy that gets specific, touts benefits, and uses keywords

Actionable, specific language is the most important part of writing your call-to-action copy. For example, a specific call to action might mention the number of pages in an eBook or the length of a webinar.

Step 2: Design contrasting buttons and shallow navigation

Call to action buttons and banners should stand out through contrasting colors — but which colors you use may be less important than you think.
“Someone once told me, ‘I’ve never not clicked a call to action because it was deep purple instead of bright blue,’” Katherine Griwert of Brafton explains in the article. “Content marketers should consider other design priorities, like using brand-appropriate colors or creating a recognizable custom icon to pair with your CTAs.”

Step 3: Weigh your call to actions and prioritize them

Assuming your “Buy Now” command is your most important isn’t always correct. Your highest priority call to action should be paired with the content, depending on where your prospect is in the sales process.
For example, if your visitor reads an introductory blog post, chances are they are unfamiliar with your brand and not quite ready to buy. The call to action should point them toward more advanced content — instead of the contact page or shopping cart.
You can also get great pointers from Brian Massey in his article, Landing Page Basics: Making Your Content Marketing Convert.
In my small business call to action study, I found that typically nothing stands out on the websites. Even the “Contact Us” statement is often just another navigation option among many page elements (a different color or larger font would help call attention).