A simple but often overlooked design requirement is to make sure there is a ‘call to action’ on your web pages. One of the website optimizer tests you should always run is to determine the best text, graphic and placement of your call to actions.

A few hints for your initial testing: Use clear short concise statements. use colors of high contrast that stand out on the page. Place the call above the fold so that every visitor sees it (not all visitors scroll down on each page). There is no right answer for every website. We seen significant differences between what works on different sites. It depends a lot of the nature of the site, how it is typically navigated and I believe it also has a lot to do with the demographic of your visitors and their predominant preferences. Text links can work surprisingly well, you don’t have to always create elaborate graphics. For some sites, we’ve had the most success with a very clean site with minimal graphics and text links. For other sites where the customer expects graphics, text links don’t work near as well.

As with everything on websites, testing is everything.