The term “call to action” is a bit of a buzz­word in the web design/development indus­try and has been for a few years. Call to Action is a term that describes ways to get the user of your web­site to do some­thing — an action — that is part of the pur­pose of your website.

Depend­ing on your web­site, it can be a con­tact but­ton where you’d like peo­ple to sub­mit their name and email address for a spe­cial offer. Maybe your web­site is a ser­vice that you want peo­ple to sign up for. It could be that you have an e-commerce web­site where you want peo­ple to place an order. Or maybe you have a coupon or some sort of dig­i­tal down­load that you’d like some­one to get.

It’s a tech­nique that’s still pop­u­lar because it does work really well to draw your eye to the thing the business/web designer wants you to do or take action on.

It’s a good idea to:

1. Fig­ure out what you want peo­ple to do when they visit your web­site. Maybe top two things?
2. Does your web­site make it clear how to com­plete those one or two things you defined in step 1?

Webdesignerdepot.com has a list of do’s and don’ts of call to action pages. Take a look at some of their sug­ges­tions and com­pare to your web­site to see how you’re doing.