{"id":2166,"date":"2017-05-18T11:00:31","date_gmt":"2017-05-18T10:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/?p=2166"},"modified":"2017-05-18T10:32:07","modified_gmt":"2017-05-18T09:32:07","slug":"calls-to-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/2017\/05\/18\/calls-to-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating Effective Calls to Action"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In our planning for the web training, we told you all about <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/2015\/10\/01\/how-to-use-the-core-model-to-improve-your-web-content\/\">the\u00a0core model<\/a>; web pages that\u00a0<strong>direct\u00a0users to\u00a0business goals or further information<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The paths through these pages can be highlighted as\u00a0<strong>calls to action (CTA)<\/strong>. Today, I&#8217;m going to talk about them in a little more detail.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Transactional vs navigational<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There are <strong>two types of CTA<\/strong>, transactional and navigational.<\/p>\n<p>Transactional CTA achieve <strong>business goals<\/strong> by getting your users to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>buy<\/li>\n<li>order<\/li>\n<li>book<\/li>\n<li>enquire<\/li>\n<li>pay<\/li>\n<li>apply<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Navigational CTA provide users with\u00a0<strong>forward paths <\/strong>by\u00a0linking to further\u00a0information or a logical &#8216;next step&#8217; in the user journey.<\/p>\n<p><strong>When you need to button it<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Navigational CTA generally only need a<strong> hyperlink within the text<\/strong><strong>.\u00a0<\/strong>For example, &#8216;visit our Postgraduate website to find out more about funding opportunities&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Transactional CTA require something with more impact. That&#8217;s where the\u00a0<strong>T4 content type<\/strong> <strong>08. Button\u00a0<\/strong>comes in.<\/p>\n<p>Buttons are larger and more eye-catching than hyperlinks. The text on them should be active, and <strong>encourage the user to do something<\/strong> like &#8216;buy now&#8217; or &#8216;sign up&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s examples of CTA buttons on our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/demo\/content-types\/buttons\/#overview\">Go Mobile Demo<\/a> website.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Storytelling<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Think of your web page as a story, with the call to action as the epic climax. The narrative or your page (ie the rest of the content) should <strong>build anticipation for the call to action<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>You should tell your users:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>what the page is about<\/li>\n<li>what the problem\/issue\/benefit is<\/li>\n<li>a little of what the user will get out of pressing your button<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Get it right<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You can find out about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/demo\/content-types\/buttons\/#identifyingcallstoaction\">different types of CTA,<\/a> what types of pages to use them on, and even\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/demo\/content-types\/buttons\/#goodpracticetips\">our top tips<\/a>\u00a0for using buttons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In our planning for the web training, we told you all about the\u00a0core model; web pages that\u00a0direct\u00a0users to\u00a0business goals or further information. The paths through these pages can be highlighted as\u00a0calls to action (CTA). Today, I&#8217;m going to talk about &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/2017\/05\/18\/calls-to-action\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1916,"featured_media":2168,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[41,53,46,78,39,96,36],"class_list":["post-2166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-content","tag-content-management","tag-content-prioritisation","tag-content-strategy","tag-site-purpose","tag-usability","tag-user-tasks","tag-website-performance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1916"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2166"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2298,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2166\/revisions\/2298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}