Call to Action is “a strong calling you invoke to make your customer perform an action”.  It’s a critical tool for selling but most web designers don’t understand it.  They ignore it for wimpy reasons:

• The client should write this..I don’t know anything about blue widgets
• Who cares!  If the design is great, people will buy cause they love the image dropshadows!
• We just love designing, don’t ask me about content.. ugh!
• Maybe I should hire an SEO from India/China and outsource this..hrm.. or that fat guy with a beard
• Call to Action is so 2001..it’s old… I make web2.0 sites now
• I just build it man, I don’t put you at the top of Google.
• Client’s won’t pay me to write

To all designers: Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!  Don’t be a wimp.  Guess what though?  Call to Action should NOT be the ultimate goal - even though our clients think so.   Instead, we should focus on understanding the sales process and how people buy, and put that into simple terms for our clients. We need to teach clients about the fundamentals of selling.  I know what you are thinking: “Oh god, ONE more thing…”. Don’t worry.  I am going to make this easy for you.

I have been listening to an Anthony Robbins product called Power to Influence recently and I believe if you teach clients some of these basics of selling, the “call to action” becomes self-evident:

• Create a want
• Buying means pleasure
• Not buying means pain
• An undisturbed web site visitor will NOT be persuaded to a call to action
• Persuasion is the process of getting your customer to clearly associate their most desired feelings or emotional states to your product or service
• People don’t buy products, they buy an “emotional state”
• People do more to avoid pain then they ever do for gaining pleasure
• People buy for emotional reasons, and rationalize with logical reasons
• Ask for a committment using positive and negative motivation (everyone thinks differently)
• Ask for a committment
• Get commitments throughout the sales process

See whats happening?  Don’t just think about the “call to action”.  Instead, realize that if you clearly understand the sales process, you won’t even need a fancy “call to action” at all.  In other words, If your website is written properly and the content is thought through, visitors will be ready to buy, even before they see the “Buy Now!” button.

In simple terms, the way you can integrate this into your business is to do this:

1. Identify the top 10 pains you can remove for your customer
2. Identify the top 10 pleasures you can provide for your customer
3. Write all the areas of your site to ENGAGE customers with text, audio, and video
4. Ensure you have a smooth commerce/subscribe process.  Remember: keep the barriers low.

Don’t just put calls to action on your home page either.  Think where your web sites visitors might be:

1. Home page because thats always a key starting point from new visitors
2. Your Services/Products page because customers want to learn more
3. Your Contact page because some customers are at least ready to commit a little time
4. Your FAQ page because some clients want more detail
5. Your Portfolio page because some clients like to think in pictures/video
6. Your Testimonials page because some clients like to know others are happy
7. Your Case Studies page focusing on specific problems/solutions and pain/pleasure

The call to action is always an important part of your Sales and Marketing program.  It’s even more important online:

1. Customers can leave your site easily
2. The more your product/service is like a commodity, the greater the available choice online
3. Entry costs for your competitors are getting lower
4. Most web sites don’t think about this, so thats an advantage for you

How about designing your web site to create customer interaction or tiny committments throughout each page/area of the site?  When you involve/engage the web site visitor, you create committment. For example:

• Create an interactive “pain-picker” or “pleasure-picker”
• Give more content as customers give more personal info
• Let customers profile themselves with rich/photo/video web forms
• Satiate the customer appetite with some initial feedback or product sample
• Integrate video and audio into your commerce cart
• Provide a 30-second video at the end of your commerce/questionnaire process

Need more info?  I highly recommend that you absolutely read or listen to Anthony Robbins Power to Influence.

Good luck and remember: Call to Action is King!

So, I’ve started to learn about podcasting since I have a client, pannakaria.com. Ken Robinson would say she thinks when she talks.  She isn’t much of a blogger in the traditional sense and I don’t blame her one bit – typing your thoughts out is so much slower than a person’s thought process. It also doesn’t help she types slowly.

Anyways, there is much to learn about podcasting. I know the fundamentals and that you can use a podcatcher to have it appear automatically on your blog.  I’ve been thinking about using a richer way of communicating with clients.  In my Google searching, I found this fantastic video about podcasting from the creative folks over at commoncraft.com

Enjoy

I had a first looks session with a new client, Myra Gonzales from www.mystylesense.com,  using Wordpress recently.  I suppose because I have used Wordpress for some time now, I take it for granted how easy it is to use.  I thought listing a few videos would be useful to explain some of the basics about wordpress

Enjoy!

I also have all my customers use Windows Live Writer as well which is a great piece of software