A call to action is the door between an interested visitor and a customer. Most small business websites leave the door half-shut. This eBook gives you the words, the placement and the path that opens it.
Members ebook·7 chapters· 35 minute read
Chapter 6
Secondary Calls to Action
What to offer the visitors who aren't ready for the main call to action - and how to keep them in the conversation.
For every visitor ready to fill in the main contact form, there are three or four who aren't. They're interested but not yet decided. They want to know more before they'll commit to a conversation. If your only call to action is the main one, you lose all of those visitors silently.
Secondary calls to action are the smaller alternatives. A free guide. A newsletter. A short video. A pricing page they can browse without giving up an email address. Each one is a smaller commitment than the main action, but each one keeps the visitor in the conversation rather than letting them slip away.
This chapter is about choosing, designing and placing secondary calls to action without diluting the main one. By the end you'll have a clear secondary path for each main page on your site - and a sense of how it joins back up with the primary path over time.
The full chapter covers the right secondary actions, where to place them so they don't compete with the main call to action and how to nurture visitors who took the smaller step.
Why secondary calls to action exist
Most visitors aren't ready to act on the first visit. Some need more information. Some need to compare options. Some need time to think. If the only path you offer is the main contact form, those visitors leave with nothing and probably don't come back.
A secondary call to action gives them somewhere to go. They take the smaller step - download the guide, sign up for updates, watch the video. You stay in their world, even quietly. When they're ready to take the bigger step weeks or months later, you're still there.
Good secondary calls to action
Three categories work well for small businesses.
Useful content. A guide, a checklist, a calculator, a comparison chart. Something the visitor genuinely wants and would value enough to give an email address for. The lead magnet category, covered in detail in 'Creating Irresistible Lead Magnets' over in Offers and Pricing.
Ongoing value. A weekly or monthly newsletter, a podcast, a YouTube channel, a regular blog. Something with a low ask now and a steady relationship over time.
Browsable information. A pricing page that doesn't require contact. A list of completed projects. A frequently asked questions page that genuinely answers questions. These let the visitor keep researching without you needing to capture them.
Bad secondary calls to action
"Like us on Facebook" - sends visitors away from your site to a feed where they'll forget you.
Generic newsletter signup with no description of what they'll get.
Pop-up that interrupts reading with a discount on a first purchase, before the visitor knows what you sell.
"Follow us on social media" with five icons - dilutes the visitor's choice and rarely produces real engagement.
Placement that doesn't compete
Secondary calls to action should be visibly less prominent than the primary one. Smaller buttons. Quieter colours. Different positions on the page.
A common shape: the primary call to action sits in the hero and at the bottom of the page, in the brand's accent colour. The secondary call to action sits in a single line at the end of the page or in the sidebar - a quieter button or a text link.
Don't put primary and secondary side by side at equal weight. Visitors freeze when they have to choose between two buttons that look the same. One must clearly be the main route.
Pop-ups, banners and exit-intent
Pop-ups have a bad reputation, often deserved. Used carelessly, they interrupt reading, frustrate visitors and damage the experience. Used carefully, they offer the right secondary action at the right moment to people who'd otherwise leave with nothing.
Three rules. Don't show a pop-up before the visitor has been on the page for at least thirty seconds. Don't show one to anyone who has already taken the action you'd ask for. Don't show one that's hard to dismiss. Within those rules, an exit-intent offer of a useful guide can lift email signups noticeably without harming the visitor experience.
If in doubt, leave them off. The cost of an annoying pop-up is real and immediate. The cost of not having one is invisible and slow.
Following up on the secondary action
When someone takes a secondary action - downloads the guide, signs up for the newsletter - the work has only started. Now you owe them ongoing value. Every email should be useful first and salesy a distant second. The same visitor who downloaded the guide today might be ready for the main call to action in three months, but only if you've earned the inbox space in between.
There's a separate book in Sales and Leads called 'Lead Capture and Follow-Up' that goes deep on the rhythm. The principle for now: a secondary action with no thoughtful follow-up is wasted.
When to skip secondary calls to action
Some pages should have only a primary call to action and no alternatives. Pricing pages. Final-step booking pages. Cart and checkout pages. Anywhere the visitor is clearly close to acting, secondary actions are distractions and should be removed.
The rule of thumb: secondary actions belong on pages where the typical visitor is browsing or comparing. They get in the way on pages where the typical visitor is deciding.
What to do this week
Pick three pages on your site. For each, decide what the right secondary call to action is for the typical visitor. Add it as a clearly secondary element, not competing with the primary action. By Friday you'll have an alternative path for the visitors who weren't going to take the main one anyway.
Use low-cost channels intelligently. Secondary calls to action turn drive-by traffic into a slow-building list. The next chapter pulls the whole eBook together by mapping the conversion path end to end.
The rest of this chapter walks through the practical steps, the templates and the checklists you need to put it into action. It includes worked examples, copy frameworks and the small decisions that make the difference between a plan that sits in a drive and one that gets used.
Inside you'll find a step-by-step playbook, a downloadable template, a checklist you can run this week and a short list of common mistakes to avoid before you start.
The full action plan, broken into weekly steps.
Ready-to-use scripts, templates and checklists.
Worked examples for different sized businesses.
Common mistakes and how to avoid them.
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