For marketers and companies who use Twitter to drive business, the most beautiful sound can be a click of the computer. Getting click-throughs is key to increasing sales, leads, and website traffic in a direct response marketing plan. Twitter’s been working to pump up their features for business over the past year, and they’ve added another resource to the Twitter arsenal: the Website Card.

Twitter’s New Website Card

What it is

The Twitter Website Card is a new feature that began at the end of April and is designed to drive a higher volume of click-throughs by giving users a preview image, related context, and a call to action with a URL link.

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Why it’s useful

Have you ever been cautious when clicking on a link because you don’t know where it will take you? With all of the spam and inappropriate content on the web, people like knowing what will happen when they click. With the Website Card, users are able to see an image in conjunction with a short blurb about the site before clicking the link. This preview helps establish trust with an Internet user and assure them that they will see the content they want to see. Plus, the preview also serves as a teaser to the content a website offers; it not only establishes trust, but it entices the user to click-through for more. These factors can help marketers increase website traffic by using this feature.

Marketers can also use the Website Card with conversion tracking to help measure when their marketing is most successful in getting a signup or a purchase, and, as a result, give more insight and ability to drive the right traffic at the right time.

Test runs

Before releasing this new feature, Twitter completed tests with a few brands like Citrix and Betabrand and discovered that those campaigns saw notable decreases in cost-per-click than campaigns that only used an image and a URL to drive website traffic. A mobile company involved in the test also saw a 26% higher engagement rate and a 64% increase in URL clicks with the Website Cards.

How to get it

To access this feature, you need a Twitter Ads account. From that account, log in to the Cards Manager section, and you will be able to create a Website Card from there.

More info

For more information on the Website Card, see the article on the Twitter blog; it’s full of useful links!