The One Thing Missing from Your Website That’s Costing You Sales

Could a simple tweak on your website be the key to unlocking higher conversions? Join me as we uncover the often overlooked power of a clear call to action (CTA). With over two decades of expertise in e-commerce and web development, I've seen firsthand how a compelling CTA can serve as a guidepost for your visitors, steering them from indecision to decisive action.  Join us and learn how to harness the full potential of CTAs to turn your website into the sales powerhouse it was meant to be.


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Transcript

Carrie Saunders: 0:44

Your website is your business's online storefront, your sales tool and often the first impression your customers have of you. But what if I told you there's one thing many websites aren't missing or aren't doing very well at, and that missing element is quietly costing you sales. Today, we're diving into what that missing piece might be and how adding it could transform your website into a high converting sales machine. So, whether you're running an e-commerce store, whether you're a business coach or a service-based provider, this episode will help you identify what's holding you back and how to fix it. So let's get started. Welcome to the e-commerce made easy podcast. I'm your host, ker Saunders. When we started this business, all I had was a couch, a laptop and a nine-month-old. My main goal To help others. Now, with over 20 years in the e-commerce building industry and even more than that in web development, I have seen a lot. I love breaking down the hard tech into easily understandable bits to help others be successful in their online business. Whether you're a seasoned e-commerce veteran or just starting out, you've come to the right place. Business. Whether you're a seasoned e-commerce veteran or just starting out, you've come to the right place. So sit back, relax and let's dive into the world of e-commerce together. Welcome back to the e-commerce made easy podcast.

Carrie Saunders: 1:56

Today, we're focusing on one of the biggest questions of website owners. Ask us why aren't my visitors converting? You might have great products, you might have excellent services, you might have excellent services or an incredible content on your website, but if you're missing this one crucial element, you're leaving money on the table. So what is it? It's actually one of the core topics we talk about in our converting website course, and that one thing is a clear and compelling call to action and making sure you have these CTAs on your website appropriately and in the proper places. It's a step you want your visitors to take next, and without this clear call to action, your audience is left guessing on what to do next, and when visitors don't know what to do, they basically do nothing. When we're on the web and the internet, we kind of wanna be told what to do next, and that can be costing you sales. So think about it when someone lands on your website, are you guiding them towards the next step that you want them to take? Are you making it easy for them to take action on what you have to offer, whether that's buying a product, booking a sales call or signing up for a newsletter.

Carrie Saunders: 3:08

If your CTAs aren't clear, or if they're uninspiring, or if they're hidden and you can't find them very easily, you're losing out on conversions and you're losing out on your customers. So let's dig into why they're so important. They are there to help guide your visitors. Your audience needs direction, and a strong call to action tells them exactly what to do next, removing any confusion and hesitation from the buyer. Think about it people coming to your website may not be familiar with you or your website, so they may not know what you have to offer, what you might be able to have them do next, and making this clear helps guide your visitors. They can also help create a sense of urgency. A well-written CTA can add urgency, encouraging your visitors to take action now rather than later or really never, and they also help keep the customer journey moving.

Carrie Saunders: 4:03

The customer journey is something else we talk about in our Curb of Erdene website course. It's very important and our students in there have absolutely loved and been shocked by that lesson and haven't expected that to be in the course, and they love how much it has helped them picture what's going on. And so call to actions help people move along that customer journey. They're like stepping stones that lead visitors through your site and towards a conversion, and without them, people might wander aimlessly and leave your site altogether. As you can think about it, as in, somebody drops you out in the woods and you don't know which way to go. But if you see a path, you're going to probably likely follow that path. So call to actions can be like that path in the woods that helps lead you out of the woods and leads you to where you want to go. So, for example, a coaching website might have a call to action that says book your free discovery call today, while an e-commerce store might have something like add to cart limited stock available. So those are very clear call to actions, just like that path in the forest of where you don't know where else to go, and they help lead the customer along their journey.

Carrie Saunders: 5:17

There's also some psychology behind called actions, so let's take a moment to look into that as well. Ctas can leverage human psychology by tapping into principles like clarity. People want a simple website. They want something that's very clear and not clever. We talk about that a lot on the podcast is making your website clear and not clever. So instead of using a button that says a sign up here, you might want to consider using a button that says sign up to get your free 30 day planner. That's a lot more clear on what they're going to get if they click that button. Whereas sign up here they're going to have to reread, probably, the paragraph right above that to figure out what are they actually signing up for. So when we put those keywords and the button, that helps them understand exactly what they're signing up for right away, without hesitation.

Carrie Saunders: 6:08

Without question, we can also put some fear missing out in our call to action buttons to create some urgency. This type of urgency helps make people feel like they're missing on an opportunity if they don't act now. So, for example, you could have in your button order by midnight for free next day shipping. So that creates some urgency. It creates a benefit they may want, which is free shipping. Everybody loves free shipping, right? And so you can create a little bit of a fear of missing out in your call to actions as well, especially when they are limited time offers Also social proof.

Carrie Saunders: 6:44

Adding trust elements near your call to action helps reassure visitors that others have benefited from taking the same action. So mixing in some social proof near your call to actions can be very helpful. So pairing a call to action with testimonial like I've seen incredible results in just two weeks can really boost your conversions near that call to action button. So having that near it can really really help. So understanding these psychological triggers can also help up-level your call to action buttons and make sure that they're not only just functional but they're irresistible.

Carrie Saunders: 7:22

So I want to give you some great examples of some call to actions for different types of businesses. As I know, we have several different types of businesses that listen to our podcast. We have e-commerce, traditional businesses, we have coaches and course creators, and we also. So some example call to actions for an e-commerce business would be shop the best sellers before they're gone. Or another example could be get 15% off your first order. Shop now. Those are very clear, they provide benefit and they know exactly what they're going to be doing.

Carrie Saunders: 7:56

So then a couple examples for coaches would be book your free strategy call today. That's a lot clearer than just book a call right, we know it's going to be your free strategy call today. That's a lot clearer than just book a call right, we know it's going to be a free strategy call. And then another example is unlock your potential, join my coaching program now. Again, that helps make it really clear what that button is going to do. They're going to get the benefit of unlocking their potential and the button's going to help them join your coaching program now. And then for service providers, a couple examples are schedule a free consultation to learn how we can help. That's a lot more clear and direct than just schedule a call with us, right? Think about it. Which one would you click on more? Then another example is get your custom quote in 24 hours. Click here. You know that you're going to get a custom quote right there within 24 hours by clicking on that button rather than just having the words click here. So when we tailor our call to actions to our audience's needs in your business goals, you make it easier for visitors to take action and to know what action they're actually going to be receiving and taking with that button.

Carrie Saunders: 9:07

So there's a few common mistakes that call to actions can have when we're placing them on our website, and I want to make sure that we go over those briefly, some of the common ones, and we go into more detail in our converting website course as well. But one of the things is we want to make sure we're not hiding our call to actions and having them below the fold. So you want to have them at the top of our website. So your most important call to actions should be prominently on your website, towards the top. That way it's visible without anybody having to scroll to get to it. Also, when you have a long page, particularly long sales page, we want to have call to actions sprinkled throughout that page. We don't want to just have it in one place and then force the user to have to scroll up or down to find the call to action again when they are ready to buy. So having it multiple times isn't pushy, it's just convenient. And then having an inconsistent design your call to actions button should look the same across your site to build familiarity. See, we want to make sure we're using consistent colors and styles there and we really want a color that stands out a little bit. We obviously don't want it to be like awful looking, but it needs to be a unique color. That's typically meant for your button color. And then there are a few advanced call to action tactics For one.

Carrie Saunders: 10:27

On some websites you can personalize your call to action. So when you have this available, you can do this. This is typical for an e-commerce site that you should be able to call the person by name, if they've ever logged into your website. So you can do something like welcome back Alex, ready to complete your website. So you can do something like welcome back Alex, ready to complete your order. So then your person would know that you were on the website before they recognize their name and they feel a little bit more personalized on that. So some people like to put that in there. So you just really have to read your audience to know if that's a good idea. You can also have exit pop-ups.

Carrie Saunders: 10:59

If this is done well, it can be very productive and that can help capture visitors who are about to leave your website and give them a compelling call to action, such as offering a discount or a free resource for stopping by. So as long as you're not spammy with that, that one can work really well. And then, if you want to get really advanced here and some software makes it really easy, like one of the softwares we work with makes this really easy you can do A-B testing. So basically that's experimenting with different wordings for the same buttons and it's going to send half of your visitors one way and and the other half of your visitors the other way the other wording that you have and then you can figure out which one works better, based upon whether the A or the B side of the test gets more clicks throughs than the other one. So that's something a little bit more advanced, but I will say that software currently some of them are doing a much better job with this and making it a lot easier for the everyday user administrator to be able to set this up.

Carrie Saunders: 12:04

All right, so let's go over what we talked about in this episode. So the one thing that your website might be missing is a clear and compelling call to action. We talked about some examples on how to make it more clear and make it not clever but more clear, and also like where to place them and how they can create urgency and how you can drive conversions with them, and we want to avoid vague language and overwhelming options too. We want to make sure our call to actions are very precise and concise on the website, so just remember where you place your CTAs and how you design them is just as important as what they say All right. So that's all we have for this week's episode of the e-commerce made easy podcast.

Carrie Saunders: 12:48

Thank you so much for listening in and if you are listening on YouTube, drop us a comment. We'd love to hear what you think. And if you're on a podcast app, there is a button there, a text button, that says you can click to text Carrie. So drop us a message. We'd love to hear from you, hear what you think. If you have a topic that you'd like to listen about, or if you'd like to be featured on the podcast, drop me a text message and I will get back to you. And if you have any questions, you're always welcome to email us at podcast at bcsengineeringcom, and you can always find our show notes on our podcast website, e-commerce made easy podcastcom. Again, that's e-commerce made easy podcastcom, and we will see you next week.