There’s no denying it calls to action are important and increasingly so in a world of infinite choices. We have less and less time to give people a reason to choose us.

Calls to action matter, not just because we want people to do what we want them to do when they visit our websites, but because people like to understand what they need to do next. Your readers and your customers appreciate it when you make life easy for them. But we all know how annoying it feels to experience the ‘hard sell’ even when the salesperson isn’t in the room with us. Popups that appear before we read a single word and BUY NOW button mania, only serve to make us do the opposite of what was intended.

So how on earth do you find a balance? How do you make people click?

You need to start by asking a better question. Your website shouldn’t be optimised just to make people click what you want them to click. Your website needs to make people feel like they belong. It turns out that when people feel like they belong they want to return and to become members, customers and advocates.

Helping people to feel like they belong is a better long-term strategy than finding ways to make them click and pay.
Don’t make people click. Find ways to make people care.

Image by Ben Terret.