Ideas from Campaign 08: Provide clear and obvious calls to action throughout your Web site
Posted by:
Tompkins Spann on
June 26, 2008 at
1:07AM EST
(This post is part of an eight part series focused on lessons learned from the 08 Campaign. Read the parent article published in Convio Connections
Idea #2 Provide clear and obvious calls to action throughout your Web site
I’ve seen your web site and it’s beautiful, really it is, and there’s so much fantastic content and information I found myself clicking around for minutes! But to be honest I don’t recall being asked to do anything while I was there. Hillary Clinton’s campaign web site mastered this art. During her campaign she prominently displayed on her home page links to “5 Things You Can Do”. By explicitly calling these out, and providing a diverse list of options, no visitor could say they did not feel they were given ideas for how to get involved. This lesson has also been embraced by other media, ABC News has a new campaign titled “The Power of 2” that suggests two new things you can do to impact the environment, your health, your finances, your diet and your community. Regardless of your mission, virtually all nonprofits could do something similar. Consider the following tactics for your web site:
- Provide some easy options. Not everyone is able to come to a house party or give money, so offer a low-effort option or two (e.g. tell one friend this week, place a widget on your MySpace page, or send an eCard to 5 friends).
- In subsequent interactions, be sure to acknowledge the actions they have taken or have committed to take.
- Customize the calls to action based on prior actions and what you know about the visitor. This tactic requires some sophisticated tools (Er, got Convio?) but is a very powerful approach.
- Segment your visitors into 3 or 4 groups and design your action calls based on a quick persona of these groups.
(2) Comments
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great ideas here, Tompkins. I would add another bullet-point encouraging folks to ensure their Navigation provides an entry point for learning about these calls to action. In the screenshot of Hilary's site, there's a "Take Action" link. You could also go the "How to Help" or "Get Involved" route depending on your cause and the personality of your organization.
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Great idea. Join Together has done this well, and even taken it a step further by categorizing "what can I do?" by the type of site visitor. Check it out here: http://www.jointogether.org/getinvolved/what/
The team at Join Together continue to deliver an excellent web site.
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