Many home service businesses spend time and resources getting people to your website. But once they land on your site, are they confused by what you want them to do? Do they look around, hesitate and leave? It’s most likely because you didn’t incorporate a strong website call-to-action.
A critical mistake in most home service business websites is not having a call-to-action that encourages a visitor to take a specific action. You end up wasting all that traffic you get from your lead generation efforts.
An effective call-to-action targeted at what you want your visitors to do, helps people take action and establish a connection with your company.
What is a Website Call-to-Action?
A call-to-action is simply telling your visitor what to do next. Your website shouldn’t feel like a brochure. It should guide people. When someone lands on your website, they are usually thinking: “Can you help me? What do I do next?”
If that next step isn’t obvious, they’ll leave without any information from you.
A strong call-to-action answers that question quickly:
- Schedule Your Service Today
- Request a Free Estimate
- Call Now
Sounds simple enough. But most websites either forget to ask or over complicate it. You need to understand your customer and should know why most visitors go to your website.
Where Your Website Traffic Comes From Matters
Organic Search
These visitors are just finding you. They don’t know you yet. Plus, you aren’t quite sure where they are landing.
When you design your website, you need to have a clear goal about what you want your first-time visitor to do. The goal is to:
- Build trust quickly
- Offer something simple (like a free estimate)
- Guide them to take the next step
Think through how you want to weave an effective call-to-action into your website. Use a clear call-to-action on every page of your web site and throughout your copy as appropriate. Don’t leave the path to success up to the visitor. You need to guide them through the process with a flow that helps them make a decision.
Ads or Marketing Campaigns
These visitors clicked on something specific to arrive at your website, giving you more control over where they land and the specific call-to action that you want them to take.
Your ad, whether it is Facebook or Google Ads, piques your target audience’s interest and makes a compelling offer. When someone clicks on your ad, the job of the landing page is to continue the journey, from stranger to acquaintance to lead.
Your job:
- Match the message from the ad
- Keep it focused on ONE action
- Make it obvious why they should follow through
Make your landing page help the visitor make a connection with you and encourages them to click on your call-to-action. If your offer and message are not relevant to your visitor, you won’t convert that visitor into a lead.
What Makes a Call-to-Action Work
This is where most home service websites miss the mark. It’s not about fancy buttons but about clarity and relevance.
Your call-to-action needs to:
- Be obvious (don’t make people hunt for it)
- Focus on what they get, not what you want
- Use direct, action-driven language
- Feel easy and fast to complete
Also, don’t overload the page. If you give people too many choices, they choose none.
10 Simple CTA Tips That Get More Leads
- Be clear: What do you want them to do? Create your call-to-action to drive that outcome.
- Focus on the benefit: Why should they do it? Give your target audience a reason why they should take the desired action
- Use action words and avoid “click here” whenever possible: “Schedule,” “Get,” “Call,” “Book”. Your call-to-action needs to catch the reader’s eye quickly.
- Create a sense of urgency: “Discount Ends Today” “Book Your Service Now”. Deadlines will encourage people to act sooner than later.
- Make buttons stand out with contrasting colors and strong, action-oriented verbs to ensure it isn’t missed on the page.
- Put a CTA on every page but match the offer to the page content
- Don’t confuse your visitor with multiple competing offers in the same location. If you are driving visitors to a landing page, that page should have one specific action. Too many options will paralyze your visitor into taking no action.
- Keep forms short and ask only for the information you need.
- Repeat your CTA throughout the page
- Include the same call-to-action from the page in your meta description tag. This call to action will appear in search engine results and will encourage searchers to click through to your website from the major search engines.
Turn More Website Visitors Into Real Jobs
Your website has one job: turn visitors into leads. Don’t leave it to chance that they will figure out what they are suppose to do and actually do it. Guide people to take the next step. Give them a reason to act now.
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