In today’s post, we are continuing to look at gfcto.org‘s home page. You can read the previous blog post about this website here. Today, we look at another strong component of this well-designed website: its use of a CTA feature.

(Note: We will not be discussing best practices for CTAs in this blog post. Today we simply want to introduce the CTA and explain why you need one.)

What Do You Want Your Visitors to Do? Yes, You Have That Kind of Control.

In the picture above, you’ll notice that the website we’re examining features two buttons at the top of the picture: “Directions” and “What to Expect”. Both of these buttons are set in a purple box labeled “Join us for worship on Sundays at 10:00 am.”

Clearly, Grace Fellowship wants visitors to their website to plan a visit to their church. This is the purpose of CTAs: to strategically drive people to take a desired action.

Ginny Soskey of Hubspot defines a call to action this way: “an image or line of text that prompts your visitors, leads, and customers to take action.“

There are at least three reasons your website needs to use a call to action.

1. When you use a CTA, you establish and effectively communicate your website’s primary purpose.

Your website needs to be simple. If it isn’t, visitors will notice. It will be a chore to navigate. Visitors will feel lost.

Grace Fellowship invites visitors to take one of two actions: view directions or learn about what you can expect from a visit to their church.

What do we learn from this design? Grace Fellowship hopes that visitors to their website will plan a visit to their church. This makes sense. This is one of the key purposes of a church website.

When you have a clear call to action on your website you establish your priorities. Visitors will act accordingly. What you request is often what you will get.

2. When you use a CTA well, you have a website that converts.

Your goal in paying monthly and yearly fees to host a website is probably to connect with your desired audience. A well-designed call to action makes that connection by inviting visitors to take a specific action. Once a visitor has taken that action, they have become more then a mere visitor to your website.

To illustrate, visitors to Grace Fellowship’s website will hopefully be converted into visitors to Grace Fellowship’s church.

3. Using a CTA ‘de-clutters’ your website.

Using a CTA does more than simply drive visitors to act. It benefits you in the design of your website. Knowing your call to action will help you organize your website appropriately and strategically.

Organization and good strategy will simplify the design process and give you a refreshing, clean, uncluttered website.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of why your website needs a call to action feature. I hope that these few reasons listed have been motivational.

What action would you like your website’s visitors to take? Let me know in the comments section below!