How to make sales through your website call to action buttons

I’m Holly Christie, surprisingly. I am a website designer, founder of two website companies, and a mentor to website designers just like you.  And this episode is dedicated to you, the website designer, but also to small business owners who are looking to make more sales through their website.

And trust me, it’s If you have not got there yet, it is totally possible to get pretty much all of your sales through your website. And it’s a big topic, obviously, because we’re looking at the design of websites, we’re looking at the content, we’re looking at SEO, we’re looking at updating things regularly.

So instead of having an episode that goes on and on and on and on,  I thought I would focus specifically on calls to action because there is absolutely no point in having a website that looks beautiful, that’s well written, but that doesn’t call people to action, that doesn’t tell them what to do next.

And trust me, this is a really important one because even as a very seasoned and experienced web designer, I’m I can go onto a website and I can think, Oh, I really like this. I feel really engaged by what the person’s written, all that sort of thing. But if there isn’t a call to action, I will click off the website, not through stubbornness thinking, Oh, it’s, uh, you know, they haven’t got a call to action.

Off I go. But because I genuinely don’t know what it is that they want me to do. And it’s one of the reasons, and I’ll do a whole other episode on contact forms, but it’s one of the reasons that I am one of the web designers who is a fan of contact forms. And that’s because it’s a really clear guide that the person wants to hear from you and how they want to hear from you as well.

It’s not just Drop us an email. What are you going to put in the subject title or anything like that? You know, a contact form is a really lovely way of pop your name here, put your email address here, what do you want to talk about? Is there a service, you know, all that sort of thing.  And these are really crucial parts of making sales through your websites.

And. Sometimes websites can have too few calls to action, but also they can have too many. And that’s what I really want to talk about today because I was talking to a sales professional recently who, uh, who works with people who, on sales funnels about their,  What their products are, and then how to get, um, their products kind of through.

And they focus particularly on selling through email lists. And email lists are fantastic. I have had one for about seven years. I send out an email every single week, without fail. If you’re not on that email list, go to thisdemandinglife. com forward slash email. Or you can download, actually. I have a free e mail.

free ebook for web developers, which is called turn negative feedback into a winning website. And that’s going to websites made simple. co. uk forward slash ebook. And if you  go there, you will get the ebook, but you’ll also get put onto my email list. And you can see how I communicate with potential clients and how I drive business through that.

And email lists are brilliant. You know, they help you to stay in touch with people who aren’t, um, ready to buy from you yet. It lets you showcase yourself in a way that you’re not necessarily going to be able to do on your website. Because  Email lists tend to be a little bit less formal than a website.

So, there are lots of opportunities to do that.  So, we absolutely do want people to go onto our email list, but it is not the main call to action that we should have on our website. And the reason for this is, if someone has come to your website, your website’s already done that hard graft of getting them there in the first place.

Yeah, they’ve typed something into Google, Google have thrown up the website results, you’ve had to Compete with all the sponsored and pay per click stuff so that you’re so that they can get on your website in the first place. The last thing you want to do is say hey join my email list. Don’t worry about looking around.

Just come here Just get on the list No  Getting on the email list is for further down the page once they’ve seen everything else because if they go on your website And they’re not ready to be called to action. That is the time to join the email list but There may be a time that they are ready to be called to action and you want to capture that on your website and on your client’s websites as well.

So if a client comes to you and they say to you, you know, make all my above the fold content, join my email list. That’s great, but it’s not necessarily going to do the job that they want it to do.  Nurturing people through an email sequence is a kind of specific art for industries and your website call to action should be. 

A point of contact. So it should be get in touch, book a call, let’s talk, let’s meet on Zoom. Whatever’s right for you and whatever’s right for your client.  For me, I like to meet clients on Zoom because it means as we’re talking about website stuff, I’ve got the ideas percolating in my head and I want to be able to share that with the clients.

Because, you know,  It means that then I can show them my thinking, I can gauge really quickly what type of website they’re looking for, I can gauge quite quickly what type of design that they like, and they start to feel very confident in me because I’m showing them real on the ground examples. And it also means that they can show me real on the ground examples of what they’re looking for, what they’re hoping for.

It’s a really nice way and it works very well for me. And I know that people come to me through my website because I have a specific link where I say, Book a call with me and I have a specific link on the website for them to do that. So when I get an email in my inbox and it says, you know, someone’s booked a call with you, it’s a 15 minute inquiry call.

I also just have a couple of questions that they fill out at the time of inquiring that just say, what would you like to talk about? If you have a website URL already, please share it so that I can gauge how ready they are when they come on the call with us.  as well. And it means that as well, I can leave my website to do the job that it’s meant to do, which is to bring in leads and make sales.

Cause of course, I’ve also got my courses website, which is courses for website designers and small business owners. And you can find those at courses. thisdemandinglife.  com. And those just make sales literally while I sleep because lots of The sales come in from abroad, from America and Canada and Australia and things like that.

And so I will literally be asleep and I’ll wake up and I’ll get the email notifications that these people have bought your course and stuff. And this is exactly what websites are designed to do. So when people come and they say, Oh, I’m just looking for a shop front. I’m just looking for a landing page.

I’m just looking for this, that, and the other. No, no, that’s not what you’re. What are you meant to be doing? You know, how can you ever see your website as an investment if you don’t expect a return on that investment? And trust me, we can get such good return on investments from a website, but we need to be really clear in calling the people to action of what it is that we’re asking them to do. 

So with that in mind, you want to look at having your call to action pretty much every couple of containers down. Now depending on how you build your website, I build using a structure of containers and then you set up the container and then you put the columns and the rows in and the elements and all that sort of thing.

And so I generally will have a container for each section of the page. So we’ll have the header, we’ll have the intro, we’ll have, you know, the services, the this, the that, in those containers, every couple of containers. I don’t want a call to action in every single container because that’s overkill, but I do want one in every couple of containers. 

Now, the other thing to really bear in mind as well, is you don’t want to muddy the waters with your calls to action. So you don’t want to have one is download this and another one is get in touch here and another one of join my newsletter and stuff. It’s just It’s too much. But something that’s really important with your calls to action is that you do offer an alternative.

So for example, I have book a call  as my call to action. You’ll see sometimes it’s called book a call. Other times it’s called let’s talk. Sometimes the button on the website will be pink. Another time, which is my main color. Another time it will be the inky blue or the gold, which is a secondary color I use because the more that we just repeat the same thing over and over and over again.

The less someone is likely to see it. And when it comes to website repetition, we are looking for a design to be very predictable, but we don’t want to have the entire page with the same colour button all the way down as well. And so I have the Booker Call, which books a Zoom call straight away. But someone might think, I’m not very fond of Zoom calls, or I’d rather just ask a question about this and that.

And that’s what my contact form is for. And my contact form also allows people to Offer voice notes as well as dropping information and typing information in there. And so I also offer that. So you might see on my homepage, for example, let’s talk, book a call, but you’ll also see get in touch, which leads to.

the viewer there as well. So it’s really important that you do offer a couple of ways that someone can contact you that, so, so that it suits the person, the website owner, but it also suits the person who is contacting you as well, because you don’t want to miss out on leads and miss out on making sales just because you’re using the wrong website.

method of contact for that person’s comfort zone at the time. And then in terms of join my newsletter, this is particularly pertinent if you do actually send out a newsletter and if you don’t, I would say what’s stopping you. Look at getting started. I have a sign up to my newsletters in all of my blogs.

I try and keep blogging very regularly. I also have some different offers on websites like, uh, your website reimagined, which is a course for people to do five day email course, which just walks them through how to really kind of ramp up their website and that sort of thing. So whatever works for you, but.

definitely have a look at your calls to action and see where you can make them a little bit more pertinent a little bit more palatable and a little bit more direct as well so that people know that you’re expecting them to get in touch with you so that’s all for today if you have any feedback you Or anything like that, I would love to hear from you.

It’s holly at  thisdemandinglife. com and we will continue this series, not every episode from now because obviously I like to mix it up, but I will be walking you through the other ways to make a lot of sales and get leads through your website by making very small but very pertinent changes. But until then, I’ll see you next time.