Add to Basket! Click Here! … and other Calls to Action


In a way, it’s the simplest bit of marketing you can do on your website. You’ve got the punters there, now get them to do something! The ‘Call to Action’ can be very obvious on some websites (‘Buy Now’, ‘Apply for this Job’, ‘Get a Quote’), but so often it’s something that can get missed in the ml©e of website design.

Calls to Action come in all shapes and sizes and you don’t often know when you’re looking at one. This is One for example (HTML text in anchor tags – ‘click here’) Text links like that are also essential where Search Engine Optimisation is a consideration – they are useful for search engines, which can ‘read’ the text held in anchor tags and help them understand the ‘context’ of a link (search engines can’t understand an image ‘button).

Buttons, however, do have their place. Sometimes, the call to action is so simple and clear that a well designed graphic is essential. This could range from an all-singing, all-dancing Flash advertisement banner, to a simple, ‘Add to Basket’ button.

Read more about Calls to Action in this great blog article.

  • http://www.reversedelta.com Dave Bancroft

    Interesting to note that still by far the highest click through rates are achieved by using the good old fashioned plain blue underlined text link.

    This is especially true of email marketing where you really only have a very limited opportunity to get visitors to click through to your web site.

    This tends to conflict with most peoples ideas of a good looking site (or email), where buttons and styled text have come to replace the standard blue hyperlink.

This entry was posted by Dave Haygarth in Marketing, Website Design.