CTA stands for call-to-action, and in the realm of your website, CTAs are the actions you request your site visitors to take at any point on your website.

More pointedly, your CTAs are how you direct your visitors to do what you want them to do next.

And I usually find that website designers and owners get the intricacies of CTAs all wrong.

Here's how you can do it right:

1 - Keep it simple.

I prefer to only have one CTA on the screen at any one time. I know this can be difficult, but it's a good rule to live by, even if it's just 75% of the time.

Your customers can only handle one action at a time, before they go wandering off on your website, so make your CTAs count by keeping them simple.

If your homepage has more than one CTA above the fold (the part you see at the top before you have to scroll down), then you're starting your website all wrong. Scrub it down to one.

2 - Make them stand out.

I like to reserve a brand color that I only use for CTAs. Check the sales pages for Online Course Alchemy and Rock Your Web Design Business to see how we use our red color as the CTA section for buying/subscribing.

This acts as a visual cue that when you see this color, you're being asked to stop and pay attention, because there's something you can do.

3 - Make it the most important next action.

If you are presenting the CTA to "subscribe," "buy now," and "contact us" all at one time, there's only a 33.3% chance that you'll action get the action you really, truly want. So choose wisely, and direct your customers to do the thing you really want them to do.

TO-DO FOR YOU:
Scan your website's for CTAs and make sure they follow the guidelines above. Adjust as needed.