Stupid business mistakes #6 :: No clear call to action (button)

A friend forwarded me an email, asking me (and other undisclosed recipients) to sign a petition to continue German support for Nepal.

I decided to support her and her cause, spending a minute of my time on this.

But this minute turned into this blogpost. And it has a valuable lesson for all of us:

if people actually want to engage with you and your goals, make it easy for them to do so!

Have a clear call to action

The person responsible for this has created a funnel – their idea is that you watch the video first.

By the way – rereading this I see that there IS a link in there, in the e-mail already  – but the link is hidden in a block of text which I did not bother reading.

Rule of thumb: the call to action must be massive.

Because this is a friend, I clicked on to the YouTube page. And again, no link was found:

On re-reading the YouTube description carefully, I noticed that the link is in there, but it is not visible as such. Do you notice it?

It’s here:

Yes, kind of hard to notice – and you get quite distracted by all the other links. Links which will actually work if you click on them.

And of course, on their homepage and the download area, there are no backlinks to this important cause.

We get distracted, we click away – and Nepal does not continue to get support.

Because people do not understand human behavior / psychology / the modern speed of interacting with user interfaces.

I want to sign!

By the way, for anyone who really wants to sign the petition, here is the required link:

https://www.openpetition.de/petition/online/solidaritaet-zeigen-deutsch-nepalesische-zusammenarbeit-fortfuehren

This platform has a good UI, which makes it quick and painless to sign the petition once you get there.

My call to action for you

Here is an example of my call to action for you (single-minded. My goal is to make me more money, and to give you an equivalent or greater benefit in return):

You gotta lead by example. Seriously, consider hiring my services as a consultant – I bring a wide range of knowledge, capabilities and ideas. And compared to hiring Sokrates I’m a bargain.