SEO vs Call to Action

As part of the optimization process for a site, many clients (as well as optimizers) fail to look at the different aspects of optimization. Many go as if they were blindfolded to top 10 or even top 3, but if your site sucks and does not convert, it does not matter how much traffic you get (or spent to get your ranking), you will not see much income.
One factor that makes a big difference for a site is the “Call to Action” on product pages. There is, in fact, two calls for action, primary and secondary. Primary is the obvious “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now”,

However, shoppers might not be ready to click “add to cart.” The product in the desired size or dimensions may not be in stock. The color might not be the one the shopper wants. Maybe the shopper doesn’t want a shirt that’s dry clean only.

In this situation, shoppers might return to a category/gallery page and engage in pogo-sticking to find a desired product. Unfortunately, according to Jared Spool, forcing users to pogo-stick greatly decreases the chance a site will convert the shopper.

Secondary calls to action are therefore a great information architecture solution. Not only do they decrease pogo-sticking, they’ll communicate to search engines that all of the product (or service) site pages are important.

I can tell from experience, one of my clients seems to have selective hearing when it comes to conversion, analytics and improving the process, all they want to see is top ranking…

Read more about Calls to Action and SEO.