Focusing Your Call to Action
In the most general sense, a call to action is a way to ask your readers to do something. This could be purchasing something, signing up for something, or donating something, or anything else that asks the users to take an action. All too often, though, we see websites which do not utilize their call to action in the right way, making it fairly useless. There are many ways that you can make your call to action something that truly helps you to reach your goals with your website.
Great Ideas
In the popular movie Field of Dreams, the main character hears a voice whisper “if you build it, they will come”. When it comes to a call to action, you’re basically doing the same thing. You need to fill the need of the user before they’ll be willing to complete the call to action. One of the best ways to do this is to explain to the user what they’re going to be doing if they complete your call to action. For example, if they complete your call to action, will they be getting a newsletter, or some sort of a product? If your client knows what they’ll be getting when they do as you ask, they’ll be much more likely to do as you want them to do.
Sometimes you need to offer a little incentive to get them to do as you wish. Incentives can be a variety of things, including discounts, small gifts, or even entry into a competition where they can win something. By offering the user something, you’re giving them a good reason to want to do as you ask them to do, giving you both what you want out of the deal.
One thing to make sure that you do is to avoid using too many calls to action. If you have too many on the site, your users may get confused, or may feel as though you’re asking too much from them. This is a surefire reason for them to leave or to ignore everything that you’re asking from them. When you’re planning out the site, make sure that you only have a few calls to action instead of having dozens of them. This will encourage your customers to do what you’d like them to do and will give you a greater chance of getting the results that you’re hoping for from your users.

There are many basic concepts that go into the creation of a webpage; when starting from scratch in a field of white waiting to become something impressive and attractive, web designers consider elements such as color, form, and the little artistic details that serve to make a page truly stand out. But one of the first things that goes into the design is the consideration of page layout. On the modern web, content management systems such as WordPress and Joomla are equipped with a range of pre-made layouts, allowing users pick and choose among well-thought out designs that speak to their own personal aesthetic. And since the dawn of mass interest in the internet, specialty programs like Dreamweaver and even the classic Pagemill have been created and distributed with the intention of helping users easily and efficiently arrive at a sound layout scheme. But the majority of professional web design firms and individual artists are able to tackle page layout in a more organic way.

Just as a search engine optimization expert should have the ability to thoroughly explain the mechanics of SEO, so should a designer interested in the field for its concepts and power as a medium be able to craft a page from the ground up. Templates and programs designed to quickly produce them can help boost efficiency in some applications, and are not necessarily bad things; in fact, some designers work entirely with creating new templates for use among the public. But at its core, page layout is involves important design principles that, if well understood, can bolster a designer’s skill in other areas.

Traditionally, the primary goal of page layout is to balance text-based and visual elements within the context of the page as a whole, creating a visual harmony that also allows for easy reading and usability when the page is visited. Text-based items can include a page’s basic copy, as well as interactive textual elements such as menus and titles. Advances in coding and scripting capabilities are gradually producing truly astounding results in terms of what can be done with these items, letting designers play with structure and balance rather than being tightly limited by words.

Many modern designers work with grid systems when composing the layout for a page, relying on the steady geometric lines of a grid and placing elements according to the golden rule observed so often in the beautiful objects of nature. Still others prefer to visualize a page without aid, arranging elements according to what feels right. While riskier and sometimes more time-intensive, this method can result in truly unique pages.

When the perfect balance of a page’s basic elements has been achieved, page layout is a success. The web design department at Nu Artisan’s Austin Texas base knows that quality page layout is an essential part of any effective design, and whether working with firms in their native Austin Tx town or branching out to other communities, starts website projects on the right foot with page layouts that reflect a deep understanding of this concept.