Getting consumers to your website is only half the battle in marketing. Once there, consumers need to be seemlessly guided through the website in order to earn and increase the company’s KPIs. One of the easiest ways to do this is through call to actions (CTAs).
What are the main types of KPIs?
The two main types of KPIs are volume and engagement. Volume KPIs deal with the number of people who visit your website. Volume KPIs are mostly used to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns that drive users to the website. On the other hand, engagement KPIs measure how the user interacted with the website once there. (There is of course overlap. For example, a marketer often drills down to view engagement across channels and creatives that brought the user to the website. However, we’re going to keep it simple and have the two KPI groups represent two distinct parts of the consumer journey.)
Why do KPIs matter?
Engagement KPIs can give a marketer (or a website owner) valuable information on which content is beneficial to the visitor. This is done by analyzing metrics such as number of pages per session, average time on page and the bounce rate. Specifically, to increase the number of pages visited, a marketer must structure the website in a way that will promote further action. The main way to do this is to provide links to other parts of the website. The easiest and most simple thing that accomplishes this goal is the main navigation menu. It comes standard with any website. However, a menu doesn’t actually encourage a user to click to another page. A menu is intended to be used by users who know exactly where they want to go and which information they want to gain. If you are looking to increase engagement with users who weren’t planning on spending a lot of time on your website, adding CTAs will be your best bet (after creating interesting content of course.)
How do CTAs help your website?
CTAs, when used judiciously, can help increase user engagement by promoting interesting content. Due to their colorful nature, CTAs encourage the user to click on them and proceed through the website. Yet, if there are too many CTAs on your site, the user will likely get overwhelmed and leave the site altogether. Thus, CTAs will only get the job done if they are used in moderation.
After attending the recent WordCamp conference in DC, I learned a few skills in order to add navigation buttons to my two blog reels. I had been trying to add navigation buttons to my blog reels for a while, realizing the value that they bring, but couldn’t find an elegant plugin that would navigate between my separate blog categories. So I ended up building it myself with flexbox syntax. At the bottom of this page, you will notice my navigation CTA. While the blue navigation bar is rather simple, it it much more colorful than the rest of the webpage. You will also notice that I only have two CTAs on my webpages: the page navigation and the subscription widget in the right sidebar. I have kept my CTAs to a minimum in order to encourage engagement with my KPIs. My aim for this website is to garner a loyal readership (hence the subscription button), who are involved with my entire website (hence the navigation buttons).
In sum, CTAs are useful when it comes to increasing user engagement by removing user pain points. Without the navigation button, users would most likely leave my website because having to scroll up and find another article to read from the main menu requires too much effort. By having navigation links with post titles, users are encouraged to stay on the website and read more posts. Moreover, if they decide that they like my content, they can easily subscribe to monthly mails with new content instead of having to check back manually or follow my posts on social media.
Now it’s your turn. What are some CTAs that have managed to keep you on a site for a longer period than you had intended?