Do you have a clear call to action on your functional medicine website? Meaning, does a potential visitor immediately know what you want them to do when they land on your site? For example, maybe you want them to fill out a form for a free discovery call. If that’s the case, then you need an obvious button that points them in that direction. Whatever it is that you want your potential patients to do next, it should be clear.
What Is A Call To Action?
A Call to Action (CTA) is a text hyperlink, image, or button on a website designed to encourage visitors to take a desired action. Common examples include navigation bar buttons, in-page buttons, in-copy text links, page footer banners, and site overlays. CTAs are effective in driving conversions, but not all are effective in the same way. Creating and placing an active CTA in healthcare is a bit more complicated. Different audiences, including visitors, patients, and referrals, need different actions to achieve different goals. For instance, an effective CTA for visitors could be ‘Schedule a Consultation.’ A CTA for patients might be formatted as ‘Request an Appointment.’ Referral CTAs coils sound something like ‘Refer a Patient ‘. To achieve this, creating different types of CTAs for different audiences is essential. This will help guide and motivate them to take the next appropriate step.
Why Is A CTA Important?
CTAs are crucial for guiding users through key content and pages on a website. They also empower visitors to make informed decisions. Without them, visitors may feel lost and leave due to confusion. CTAs clarify what actions visitors should take and the mutual benefits of doing so. Research shows that well-placed CTAs can boost conversion rates by over 80%. Additionally, 90% of visitors who read your headline also read your CTA copy. CTAs with emotional motivators may also help to generate twice as many conversions.
How To Add A Call To Action To Your Website
Here are the steps we take to help our practitioners create a clear call to action on their website:
1. Speak To Your Target Audience And What Motivates Them
Understanding your target audience and their motivations is crucial for creating effective calls-to-action (CTAs). You can tailor your messaging and design to resonate with them by analyzing their needs, wants, and desires. Conducting thorough research and developing detailed buyer personas helps you craft CTAs that resonate with your audience, increasing conversions and improving website performance. Ultimately, understanding your audience and their motivations is the foundation for designing powerful CTAs that drive results.
2. Decide What The Visitor Should Do
Do you want people to call you? Fill out a form? Take a quiz? It’s important to get clear on what sales process you want them to get plugged into. If you are an office that tends to put your phones on hold, then a call button may not be your best bet. It would be better for you to focus on getting people to fill out a contact form or schedule through your online scheduler.
If you are a practice that can work with patients outside of your immediate office area, you may consider offering a health quiz or survey. Once they fill out the survey, they are put into a sales process where someone in your office follows back up with them and they are put into a newsletter list.
Once you know what you want them to do when they get to your site, it is easy to create a call to action that will entice them to take the next step.
3. Add A Button With Active Language
For some of our practitioners, we add a button in the menu that tells the potential patient to click here for a discovery call. Other practitioners use an announcement bar that slides down from the top of the site to catch their visitors’ eye. Also, we add a premium pop-up to our clients’ sites to advertise their discovery call or act as a contact form.
All of these are examples of a clear call to action. The key to a converting website is to make sure it is clear what you want your potential patient to do next and make it easy for them to do that. Then, once they reach out, don’t forget to follow up!
4. Make Sure The Call To Action Renders On Mobile And Desktop
Once we create the button on the desktop version of the site, we check to see how it works on mobile. Some of the plugins and scripts we use have to be specifically coded for mobile. Once we see how it renders on the mobile version, we make changes so that it doesn’t look cluttered or overwhelming.
Creating a call to action that gets people to click or take the next step shouldn’t be intrusive. In fact, it can hurt the SEO on your website if you have a full-screen takeover for a newsletter sign-up. It’s best to have small pop-ups, buttons that stay sticky at the top of the site, or buttons that are visible at the top of the page.
5. Test The Call To Action And Make Changes As Needed
If you have a call to action on your site and it isn’t getting clicks but you are getting traffic, then it might be time to try something else. For example, we have added call buttons to our practitioners’ sites and they immediately started getting more calls. Or, we have added small contact form pop-ups, and more people started filling out their forms.
If you have a call button and you aren’t getting many calls, then you can try a pop-up form. Maybe you need to try a different pop-up form.
Contact Us Today For SEO Services
If you would like for one of our SEO experts to look at your website, get in touch with us today. We’ll look at your site and give feedback on whether or not your call to action is clear. Fill out our free strategy session form, and we’ll get back to you in about 24-48 hours. We look forward to working with you!