Are you letting customers become kids in a candy store. . . puzzled by that question? Let me explain further. If you don’t hold a child’s hand when they walk through a candy store they probably will run rampant with no direction. They’ll play with everything and eat anything in sight, you have to reel them back in and this causes tantrums. Now think about your site, are you guiding your customers as soon as they land on your site?
To answer this, you must know if you have calls of action on your site. Calls of action tell them what they should do as soon as they land on your site. These should direct them to where you want them. Causing immediate action and direction when they land on your site is key. Otherwise, your letting them wonder around your virtual store and allowing them to leave within five minutes or less.
Lions Pride Boutique directs customers to shop their clearance section within a minute of landing on their page — creating direction.
How To Create Calls of Action
Think of three areas of your site you want customers to go to immediately after they’ve landed on the opening page. Are you running a sale, launching a new product, possibly a new spring line arrival — maybe more? A great way to draw attention to products or services is shining a light on the fact that they are a “Limited edition,” “Limited Quantity,” or a “Top Seller”. These tactics will perk up visitor’s minds to act quickly so they can get their hands on the products and services. They won’t want to miss out.
Visual Appealing To The Eye
Now that you have narrowed it down to the three areas of your site you want to drive traffic to, it’s time to create visually appealing graphics. If you use a third party shopping cart such as Shopify, Big Commerce, Highwire or others, you have an option in your dashboard to edit your sites “carousel” — often called this by a majority of shopping cart companies. You can easily get the dimensions for the banner you need to create. On the banner, you want to make sure the item or service is shown in a visually stimulating manner. This, along with an action and verbs in the context. Be sure to also add a button that says “shop now” so when they click, it directs them to that page.
You can use Fiverr site to have someone create your banners or if you want to use another small business to help create them, CJW Design Company is great.
Lulu’s does a great job of being visually appealing to the eyes.
Change For Seasons
You do not have to implement new banners every week or month, however, make sure your banners stay updated with your company and demographic. You don’t want a Christmas banner still up in January of the new year, so always make sure you take them down when that season or special is over. General direction banners can stay up as long as you like. These type of banners are typically read as, “free shipping on domestic orders” or “Sign up for our newsletter to receive 15% off your order“. Customers need to see these type of banners no matter what time of year. Another tip is notifying customers to sign up for your newsletter, it helps increase your social engagement. Always be politically correct, no shock value banners as they can cause a PR nightmare. It creates a buzz yes, but you don’t want negative connotations associated with your business.
Are you using calls of action for your companies website? Has it helped drive traffic to product or services that have also increased your bottom line? What are your thoughts on directing your visitors?
