You may think that people like options, but it’s quite the contrary when it comes to landing pages.

You want your online visitors to be able to look at the landing page and have their eyes immediately drawn to the action that you want them to take. If you add peripheral offers or navigation on the page it could draw the user into doing something else.

3 reasons to have only one call-to-action:

1. Deliver what’s expected
2. We are lazy readers
3. Don’t make them think

Calls-to-action are meant to stand out and direct visitors to one desired course of action. If there are multiple messages shouting out at them, nothing will stand out.

Here are 3 reasons you should only have one call-to-action per landing page:

1. Deliver what’s expected

They clicked on a hyperlink or an image from an email or website page that took them to your landing page. They have a certain expectation on what they will see based on what triggered them to click. For example a form to get a free ebook or a webinar registration page. They should immediately know what they are supposed to do.

2. We are lazy readers

Have you ever opened an email or an article (link form Facebook post) to see a bunch of paragraphs and thought -- that will take too much time to read – and closed it? I think we all have. To really get someone’s attention, we should provide:

• Bulleted list
• Occasional use of bold to prevent skimming
• Short sentence fragments
• Explanatory subheads
• One action that you want them to take as a result of reading your content

3. Don't make them think

K.I.S.S. – Keep It Simple Stupid!

We have enough distractions in our surroundings (phone, email, co-workers, etc.) and don’t need additional distractions when reading content online. Think of YouTube… you go there to watch one video and get sidetracked and end up watching multiple videos. To that point, embed your videos on your landing page, don't send them to another website. 

In the case where you have several choices (multiple webinar dates), there is still a single goal (choose a date), just make sure that they are grouped in a region that can be considered the action area.

I know it's tempting to put multiple call-to-actions on a page, hoping that they will at least click one of them. Just keep in mind that you only have about 5 seconds to grab their attention.