Leveraging User-Generated Content in Your Marketing Strategy

leveraging-user-generated-content-in-your-marketing-strategy

Hey there, savvy marketers and business owners! Ready to dive into the world of user-generated content (UGC)? Grab your favorite social media app and get comfortable, because we’re about to explore how you can harness the power of your customers’ creativity to supercharge your marketing efforts. Even if you’re working with an SEO agency, UGC can be a game-changer for your online presence.

Before we jump in, let me share a quick story. Last year, I worked with a small artisanal coffee roastery – let’s call it Bean Dreams. The owner, Sarah, was struggling to create enough content to keep her social media feeds engaging and fresh. She had hired an SEO agency to boost her search rankings, but she needed more than just SEO to truly connect with her audience. Fast forward six months, and with a strategic UGC campaign complementing her SEO efforts, Bean Dreams had increased their social media engagement by 350% and saw a 75% boost in online sales. How’d we do it? Well, that’s exactly what we’re going to explore today.

Understanding User-Generated Content: What Is It and Why Does It Matter?

First things first, let’s break down what user-generated content actually is. In simple terms, UGC is any form of content – be it images, videos, text, or audio – created by consumers rather than brands. This could be anything from a customer’s Instagram post featuring your product to a review on your website.

Why does UGC matter? Here are a few compelling reasons:

  1. Authenticity: UGC is perceived as more authentic than brand-created content.
  2. Trust Building: Potential customers trust peer recommendations more than traditional advertising.
  3. Cost-Effective: UGC can significantly reduce your content creation costs.
  4. Engagement: UGC campaigns often lead to higher engagement rates.
  5. SEO Benefits: Fresh, unique content can boost your search engine rankings.

For Bean Dreams, we found that customers loved sharing photos of their morning coffee rituals featuring the brand’s beans. This became the cornerstone of our UGC strategy.

Read More »

Comprehensive Guide to Gravity Forms

Managing how users interact with your site through forms is crucial if you have a WordPress website.

Gravity Forms is a standout web form solution among all the other form plugins available. This guide aims to explain Gravity Forms’ usability and overall benefits, explaining why it has gained such a strong recommendation from SEO companies and web developers alike.

Key Features of Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms is designed to enhance the functionality of a WordPress website by allowing the integration of forms on posts, pages, or even sidebars. Here’s a detailed look at its core features:

1. Versatile Form Creation Tools

Gravity Forms supports an array of input options that cater to diverse needs. Users can incorporate:

  • Text boxes for short or long responses
  • Drop-down menus to simplify choices
  • File upload buttons, facilitating document submissions
  • Checkboxes and radio buttons for selection options
  • CAPTCHA fields for security measures

Each of these elements can be tailored to fit the specific requirements of your site, whether you’re gathering user feedback, processing applications, or conducting surveys.

Read More »

Why are WordPress Themes So Popular? Weaving Your Digital Dreams into Reality

Why are WordPress Themes So Popular? Weaving Your Digital Dreams into Reality

WordPress themes are similar to an adaptable instrument that makes it possible to create websites in the enormous field of web design. In the dynamic realm of digital creativity, they represent flexibility and intuitive design. The fact that they are now so well-known is evidence of WordPress’s unmatched status as the best content management system. We at WP Hackz Design use this adaptability to change how people view your online presence. Let’s examine why WordPress themes offer the ideal foundation for creating a variety of website experiences.

Just a Click Away from Flexibility

Imagine embarking on the thrilling task of building your very own website. You might collaborate with a professional web design company to do the heavy lifting when it comes to website development – well consider a WordPress theme as a rainbow, in which every hue adds a different element to your digital creations. This range contributes to their widespread appeal. A theme is specifically designed for your individual story, regardless of whether you run a blog, online store, or small business. It’s similar to picking out the ideal attire to complement your website’s style.

Read More »

How Do WordPress Themes Work? Unveiling the Magic Behind Your Website’s Look

How Do WordPress Themes Work? Unveiling the Magic Behind Your Website's Look

Have you ever asked yourself, ‘What’s making those neat websites on the internet work?’ It’s all because of themes in WordPress. We at WP Hackz Design are showing how these tools bring life to your website.

The Mechanics of WordPress Themes

In simple terms, a WordPress theme is made up of PHP and HTML files. These aren’t just any papers; they are the plan for how your website looks and works. Here’s a breakdown of how they work:

  • PHP Files: Think of PHP files as the people who control your WordPress site. They get information from your WordPress database – everything from the name of your site to the newest blog post.
  • HTML and CSS: These files are where the show takes place. HTML organizes your website, while CSS makes it look nice and colorful.

Read More »

What Should I Think About When Designing a WordPress Website?

Designing a WordPress Website

Thousands of people worldwide build themselves a new website every day. WordPress is one of the world’s most popular website-building platforms, and it comes with powerful design tools and features to streamline the creation process.

However, WordPress web design can still be difficult, especially if you don’t have much experience in the field. as discussed online business advice is so important in building your online presence. With this in mind, I put together a short list of the most important things to consider when designing an attractive website. They include:

Choose Your Theme Carefully

One of the best things about WordPress is that it allows you to base your website on an existing theme or template. The WordPress template library contains thousands of different designs, and you can also explore third-party libraries if you would like.

Now, it’s essential to think very carefully about the type of theme you want you use and how it’s going to work. If you choose the right design template at the start, you will save a lot of time and effort.

Read More »

What is a WordPress Theme? Crafting Digital Experiences, One Theme at a Time.

What is a WordPress Theme? Crafting Digital Experiences, One Theme at a Time.

Imagine wandering through a colorful mall, each stall buzzing with its charm. That’s like looking for WordPress themes. There are a variety of styles and vibes that you can give your website. And think about who your mentor is in this happy world. We, WP Hackz Design, are right here from India!

Understanding the Core of a WordPress Theme

Let’s break it down. What’s a WordPress theme? Picture­ it as your website’s outfit–a mix of files de­termining your site’s appearance to people stopping by. It’s like the­ style choice for your website – between layout, te­xt styles, color combinations, and all the eye­-catching components your site possesses.

Read More »

5 Ways to Speed Up Your WordPress Website

Speed Up Your WordPress Website

There are a wide range of factors that will influence the search engine ranking of your WordPress website. Along with the obvious things like adding better content and building backlinks to your site, one of the best things you can do to improve your search position is to improve your site’s speed.

Fortunately, there are plenty of different ways to improve the speed of your WordPress website design, especially if you know a little bit about coding and web development. Here are five of our favorites:

  1. Use fewer plugins

Don’t get me wrong, WordPress plugins are handy, and you should be using them! However, you need to make sure that you’re only using plugins that actually benefit you actually do the web design. Unfortunately, plugins will slow your site load speed down, mainly if you use a lot of complicated ones.

  1. Optimize your images and videos.

Loading images and videos can take a long time, especially if your site is heavy on visual content. It’s important to make sure that you optimise your visual content before you upload it to your website, otherwise, your site load speed will be compromised.

Read More »

Important Considerations When Buying An Existing Online Business

Important Considerations When Buying An Existing Online Business

When people hear about an individual purchasing a business with the help of, amongst others, their commercial lawyers, the assumption that is usually made is that it is a so-called brick and mortar business. In other words, it is a physical business such as a retail store, a service such as an accountancy firm, or a manufacturing company that produces physical products.

What does not normally spring to mind is that the business being purchased is an online business. When the words “online business” are used, another assumption is that what is being purchased is a website, and whilst a website may be one of the assets of that online business, there is almost certainly more to it than that.

If are considering buying an online business, our first advice is to have the same analytical and cautious mindset that you would have if you were buying an offline business. We would argue that you need to take even more steps to evaluate and validate the performance and the value of an online business.

We would certainly advise you to seek the advice of those professionals who ensure you avoid major issues such as an accountant, your commercial lawyers, and your financial advisors, especially if the value of the online business and thus its purchase price, is high.

Read More »

What Are The Best SEO Plugins For WordPress?

Wordpress Plugins

If you want to build a decent WordPress website that’s easy to find and offers a decent user experience, then you must focus on search engine optimisation (SEO).

SEO refers to any actions that you or an SEO company that you employ take to help your website appear higher on the search engine results pages for relevant keywords. There are a lot of things that you can do to optimise your website, but it can sometimes be hard to know where to start.

It is always a choice whether to use an experienced digital agency to do your SEO work for you, but if you’re an SEO beginner without a lot of digital marketing experience, then you should consider using a plugin or two to get you started. Luckily, the WordPress plugin library contains a wide range of plugins that will help you optimise your website for the major search engines. Some of the best include:

Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is arguably the most famous and widely used WordPress SEO plugin and for good reason. It contains a wide range of tools to help you optimise your website, with an easy-to-use traffic light ranking system. Basically, the Yoast SEO tool looks at a range of things, including keyword density, meta-descriptions, and links, and then rates them. A green light means that you’re doing well, while orange and red lights mean that there’s room for improvement.

Luckily, Yoast also tells you what you must do to improve your SEO scores and rank better – something great for people without a lot of experience.

Read More »

5 Digital Marketing Strategies That Can Help You To Expand Your Family Lawyers Business

5 Digital Marketing Strategies That Can Help You To Expand Your Family Lawyers Business

We are sure you are already aware that for your family lawyers business to remain successful and have the potential to expand, you must have a steady influx of new clients. If not, then your revenue drops, as does your profits, and ultimately you grind to a standstill. To secure those new clients you need some means of attracting their attention and in this internet age, one of the most effective ways to achieve that aim is digital marketing.

Digital marketing covers a huge array of specific tactics and strategies, and it is not surprising that those who know how to create and implement a successful digital marketing campaign are much sought after by businesses of all types and sizes. This points to the fact that one of the most positive features of digital marketing is that there are opportunities for all.

What we mean by that is that the internet offers many ways that small and local businesses with limited budgets can market themselves online just as it does to global corporations with marketing budgets that seem unlimited. In other words, your family lawyers business should be using digital marketing, because you can be pretty certain your local competitors are.

The question is, which digital market strategies should you use, and our answer to that is to stick with core ones that are proven to work. These are web design, search engine optimisation (SEO), paid advertising (PPC), video marketing, and social media. Let us look at each one in a little more detail.

Read More »

Local SEO Tactics For Businesses With Multiple Locations

Local SEO Tactics

The approach that needs to be taken to SEO by businesses that operate on in multiple sites and locations is somewhat different to that for single-site businesses.

The basic principles are basically the same but given that you would want each individual site to rank highly for searches related to that location, there are some local SEO techniques you can implement to help with that cause.

These tactics come under the heading of ‘Multiple Location SEO’ and this can apply in a number of scenarios such as the three below.

1) Your business has more than one physical location/store/site and you wish to optimise for each of them.

2) Your business is online, rather than a brick and mortar business, and you wish to target multiple locations.

3) You operate a franchise business and wish to do SEO for individual franchisees in different towns and cities.

Multiple location SEO can be implemented when there are just two locations, two hundred locations, or two thousand locations that you wish to optimise for. One of the keys to this is to make sure that the search engines and especially Google have accurate and up to date information relating to each location.

In effect, you are creating multiple businesses that you are trying to rank, all under the umbrella of your main website so that they can benefit from the authority that it may have, but at the same time, rank for local searches when they occur on Google and the other search engines.

Here are just four relatively simple SEO techniques and tactics that you can implement if you have multiple locations, and whilst they are not especially difficult, their cumulative effect is powerful enough to help you rank not just one website page, but several of them.

Read More »

10 Web Design Secrets That Separate Great Websites From The Average

10 Web Design Secrets That Separate Great Websites From The Average

As well as designing and creating business websites, web designers also have a very keen eye for assessing and evaluating existing websites and identifying whether a website is poor, average, great, or awesome. The poor or average websites will likely be basic, DIY websites, with few essential web design features that are likely in need of a website redesign.

Moving up the ladder we then have great, and awesome websites, which will probably have been built by professional web designers and include most, if not all, of the web design elements necessary to qualify a website as being better than most. As for what those web design elements are, most are known to the top web designers who might wish to keep them secret. However, we are going to reveal ten of those closely guarded web design secrets below.

Navigation And Site Structure Should Be Self-Explanatory: If visitors have to work out how to use and navigate a website it means they are not focussing on the content, offers, or calls to action. Make using the website so easy, that it barely requires any thought.

Read More »

The Wedding Day Theme: Perfect for Your Special Day

When it comes to creating a website for your wedding, choosing the right theme is crucial. It sets the tone for your big day and ensures your guests have all the information they need. The Wedding Day WordPress Theme stands out as a comprehensive and sophisticated option tailored specifically for weddings. This review explores why it’s particularly well-suited for both novice web designers and experienced developers, highlighting its responsive design, functionality, and unique inclusions such as HD video tutorials and a print wedding invitation template.

Responsive and Functional Design

The Wedding Day theme is built with a responsive design, ensuring that it looks great and functions smoothly across all devices. Whether your guests are accessing your wedding site on their desktops, tablets, or smartphones, the experience is seamless. This adaptability is essential in today’s mobile-first world, as it guarantees easy navigation and optimal viewing for everyone, enhancing user engagement and satisfaction.

Features Tailored for Weddings

1. Visual Appeal and Customization

This theme is designed to capture the essence of your special day. It offers a range of customization options that allow you to personalize the look and feel of your site. You can adjust colors, layouts, and fonts to match your wedding theme. The theme supports high-resolution photos and videos, enabling you to showcase your love story beautifully and vividly.

Read More »

Why There Has Never Been A Better Time For Removalists To Deploy An Online Marketing Campaign

Why There Has Never Been A Better Time For Removalists To Deploy An Online Marketing Campaign

Removalists, just as with any other business type, will know that for their business to thrive, they need a steady stream of new clients. Whether they be individuals moving home, or companies moving to new business premises, without new prospects enquiring about those services it is doubtful any removalists company could survive, let alone thrive.

The obvious question that follows is “Where do inter state removalists businesses find these new clients”, and it might be a question you have asked if you own or run a removalists business. The answer that you receive will differ, depending on who you ask, but for our money, the most effective way to generate new prospects is online marketing.

We say that because a successful online marketing campaign can do more than simply generate new prospects for you. If done correctly it can produce several benefits, all of which help your business to grow. Here are some of those benefits:

  • Increased awareness of your brand
  • Greater insights into who your ideal prospects are and where to find them
  • Greater conversion rates from lead to paying customer
  • Increased revenue
  • A higher income per individual client
  • Outperforming your competition
  • Increased ability for you to invest in your business
  • Business expansion
  • Attract new investors

Read More »

How To Use Facebook To Promote Your Family Lawyers Business

Even if you are not an active user of social media yourself personally, nor have never considered it as a means of promoting your family lawyers business, it cannot have escaped your notice that social media plays a huge role in the lives of many people. Individuals use it to communicate with friends and family across the globe, they get their news from it, and social media  is also a huge influencer with certain posts and stories suddenly going viral and being seen by millions.

At the top of the social media tree there is Facebook, and whilst it often is the target of some justifiable criticism, there is no denying that many people spend much of their lives on that platform. As a business owner,, this should alert you to the fact that many of those people will be those living in your local community and in the areas where your client base is located.

It is a simple fact of marketing that if you want to promote your business then you need to do so where your potential clients will be and can consume your marketing messages. Before the internet existed that would have been  local newspapers, TV, radio, and billboards. Today, it is on social media platforms such as Facebook where those same people can be found.

Read More »

Top 7 Tips For Choosing Plugins For Your WordPress Site

Choosing Plugins For Your WordPress Site

Plugins are an essential part of any successful WordPress website. They can be used to increase your site’s functionality, to add additional features, and to perform tasks that would take hours of coding to accomplish otherwise.

However, it can be hard to choose the right plugins for your website. Using too many plugins can impact your site load speed, which in turn can impact your SEO score and general search engine rankings.

With this in mind, I’ve put together a short list of my top seven tips for choosing the right plugins for your website design project. They include:

  1. Think About What You Need Them To Do

As I’ve already said, there’s no point using too many plugins because they will only have a detrimental affect on your website. What you really need to do is think carefully about the things you need your plugins to do and choose them accordingly.

That being said, don’t be scared of using plugins that are actually useful – their benefits usually far outweigh any negative impacts that they might have.

  1. Use Versatile Plugins

There are plenty of plugins out there that are quite versatile with a range of features. I’d recommend using these, rather than using a number of smaller plugins.

For example, it’s quite easy to find gallery style plugins which also let you add social media buttons and sharing features, helping to improve your social media marketing efforts and presence on social media. Similarly, a lot of the best SEO plugins contain a complete suite of SEO tools.

Read More »

WellnessCenter

Wellness Center is a fully responsive, single-page WordPress theme that’s purposely designed for a salon or spa business. It includes a fully functional booking option, a newsletter subscription form, and comes with a one-page navigation. Some of its best features include the drag and drop visual builder, unlimited color schemes, analytics, and SEO extensions to make it easier for your digital marketing agency.

Wellness center WordPress theme allows you to easily create edit and change pages effortlessly.

Magazine3

WordPress Theme

TechBlog is multipurpose technology WordPress theme that is perfect for  products as well as new blogs. Every aspect of theme is gently crafted so that user can gain maximum potential from their content. TechBlog fits perfect for Blogging & Tech Magazine websites. If you require custom web design or a responsive website design, contact professionals.

More Features

  • Compatible With WP 3.0.5+
  • WP 3.0 Compatible Navigation
  • 6 Widgetized Areas
  • Google Fonts Ready
  • Advertisment Options & an Ad Widget to add banner anywhere in sidebar
  • Headlines News Ticker
  • Fully Seo Optimized!
  • Featured Post Section

Read More »

How Can I Protect My Website From SEO Spam?

SEO Spam

‘All is fair in love and war’, goes the saying. Well, that might be the case in those scenarios, but when it comes to SEO, that is certainly not the case. Unfortunately, there are those who care nothing about what is fair and right, and who are perfectly happy to use dirty tricks to damage the business of another.

We are not talking here about people robbing your business premises, or defrauding you financially, but instead those who use certain tactics, tools and actions that deliberately harm your Google Adwords statistics and the SEO of your website.

In doing so, they are potentially negatively impacting your rankings, and as such are reducing the number of visitors to your website, the number of customers, and ultimately, your profits. They also use spam to take visitors away from your websites to sites that they are not expecting to land on.

These dirty tricks can be called many things such as a black hat, or cyberattacks, but for the purposes of this article, we are going to call them SEO spam.

What Is SEO Spam?

We have already mentioned that SEO spam is used to damage a business, and in particular to adversely affect that business’s website’s ranking in the search engines. What they could do, is convince Google that you are using tactics that they have effectively outlawed in order to rank your site.

Read More »

How Traditional Marketing And Digital Marketing Can Work Together

Traditional Marketing And Digital Marketing

Ever since the internet became a medium by which businesses could sell their products and services, marketing has split into two distinct camps.

In one we have the traditional types of marketing that are consumed offline such as newspaper ads and billboards. The other is digital marketing which takes place online and includes SEO and Pay Per Click advertising.

It may seem that, given they are so distinct from each other, traditional marketing methods would be of no help or benefit to an online marketing campaign, and vice versa, but that is not the case. In fact, there are several ways that traditional marketing can augment digital marketing, so let’s examine how and why.

Benefits of Traditional Marketing

It Has Tried and Tested Methods: Even though the likes of TV advertisements might seem modern, they have actually been around for over 60 years. Newspaper and billboard ads for decades longer. And they all still work extremely well.

They Are The Most Effective In Certain Business Categories: Not every product or service lends itself to online marketing or there are those where traditional methods of marketing work often equally well as digital marketing.

Examples include law firms and car maintenance where local TV, radio, and newspaper advertising still bring them lots of new customers, and often more than their online marketing does.

They Are More Trusted: Given the countless stories you hear about online fraud and data theft, it is little wonder that many people are wary of online advertising. While it could also be said that you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the press, newspaper, TV, and radio adverts are often seen as more trustworthy.

It Is Regarded As Face To Face: Traditional marketing is regarded by anyone who consumes the adverts as taking them closer to the business which is advertising. That might be due to mediums such as leaflets or brochures where they have something physical in their hand as opposed to seeing an online ad, where you can click away instantly.

Read More »

7 Ways To Improve Your Wills Lawyer Website’s Conversion Rate

Have you ever thought about why you actually have a website for your wills lawyers business? Remarkably, many business owners have not, and thus their website is simply ‘there’ without any purpose or objective. For most local businesses, including wills lawyers, a website should be a means of attracting new clients. It does have other functions, but that should be the main one.

Often we hear local business owners say that their website is there to help them brand themselves. That may well be one of a website’s objectives, but it should not be the only one. Branding is important, especially for larger corporations. At the local level, you have competition, and one of the ways to stay ahead of your competition, is not necessarily your branding, but to have a website that converts visitors to prospects, and helps convert those prospects to paying clients.

If you agree, but feel that your website is not converting as well as it should, then we can help you change that. If you read on, we have outlined 7 very achievable objectives which may require some actions, but if implemented, can enhance your website, and improve its conversion rate.

Create A Great First Impression: You only have one chance at this so you must get it spot on. Ensure your website presents the image of you business you want the second someone lands on it. Also make sure that everything on your site works properly and most importantly, that each page opens quickly.

Make Navigating Your Website Easy: The second a visitor to your website becomes confused, not only are they not going to proceed, most likely they will exit and try elsewhere. You must have a menu which can be seen clearly, is easy to use, and helps make each person’s visit to your website an enjoyable one.

Read More »

WordPress Theme For Lawyers

lawyer wordpress theme

A modern and elegant WordPress theme for lawyers, consulting businesses, justice, attorney offices, and more. Visually, it is very beautiful to watch, as it comes with large, creatively-designed sections and elements.

Features:

  • Fully Responsive Layout
  • Retina Ready
  • Compatible with Visual Composer
  • Custom Unique elements for Visual Composer
  • Multiple pre-built pages
  • Modern blog layout

Compatible Browsers:
IE10, IE11, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome, Edge

Software Version:
WordPress 5.1.x, WordPress 5.0.x, WordPress 4.9.x, WordPress 4.8.x, WordPress 4.7.x, WordPress 4.6.1, WordPress 4.6, WordPress 4.5.x, WordPress 4.5.2, WordPress 4.5.1, WordPress 4.5

The theme has great content blocks on every page, each offering a different look/layout, which grabs your attention quickly, as shown on Legal Advice blog, Law and Stuff.

What are the benefits of creating a WordPress website for my business?

The modern world is rapidly changing. Having some sort of digital presence is becoming more and more important for small business owners and managers. Although it’s still possible to run a purely ‘offline’ business, it’s getting harder. Even the simplest of businesses usually have a social media presence, and many have taken the next step and created a website.

If your business doesn’t have a website, it’s time for you to think about making one for it. A simple WordPress website is very easy to make, and it could boost your business’s productivity many times over. A few of the main benefits of creating a basic WordPress website for your small business include:

Read More »

Simple Steps to Ensure the Videos on Your Website Are Helping Your SEO Efforts

Videos on Your Website

The rise in popularity of video websites like YouTube, Metacafe, and Vimeo has meant the importance of video content to improve a website’s SEO, has been increasing rapidly. The fact that Google owns YouTube plays a large role in that, as do the ability for mobile devices to capture high-quality video images and the desire of those online to watch videos of all types.

It needs pointing out that whilst making videos and posting them on your website and other sites can help your SEO efforts, there are also additional steps you can take to maximise their impact. Some relate to the creation of the video and its content, whilst others involve how it is posted, which includes SEO elements on the page. We’ll start with those factors which can be undertaken as part of the video content creation:

Video Length – Long videos can be extremely informative, but the concern with longer videos is being able to keep the viewer’s attention. If someone lands on the page and then quickly moves on as they don’t have the time to watch it, then this can damage rather than help with SEO.

Transcripts – There are several benefits that can be derived from providing a transcript to your videos, apart from the customer-friendly aspect of making them accessible for those who have hearing difficulties. Transcripts allow for keywords to be used throughout if they are used in a natural way and give additional search terms by which the video may found on search engines.

Closed Captions – Many people watch videos in situations where it is not possible nor appropriate for them to do so with the audio turned on. Adding closed captions will allow them to follow the video without sound, and in Google’s view, this adds to the user’s experience.

Read More »

How A Blog Can Benefit Your Family Lawyers Business

How A Blog Can Benefit Your Family Lawyers Business

There are many business owners, including those who own a family lawyers business,  who are under the false impression that all online marketing is way more complicated an activity than they would ever be happy getting involved with.  The fact is that whilst there are certainly some online marketing channels that might fit that description, not all online marketing does.

There are a number of online marketing channels and activities that are extremely simple but nonetheless highly effective. One of these is having high-quality content on your website, and the primary way that can be facilitated is to create a blog. A blog is the usual name for what was once called a ‘Web Log’ , and it is simply a series of pages and posts on your website where you publish content.

That content is often a blog post which is simply an article, although there are many other types of content you can publish on your blog. You can use graphics such as photos and infographics, embed videos, or simply post a link to a video, and as for the text posts you write, that can be a multitude of different items.

Read More »

Alissa WordPress Theme

Helen's Spa - Beauty Spa, Health Spa & Wellness Theme

Helen’s Spa – Beauty Spa, Health Spa & Wellness is a WordPress theme that could suit both a skin care online retailer or medical related clinics such as cosmetic surgeons, yoga studios or dentists.

Spa or clinic
The theme has a good Call To Action button ‘Book Now’ would entail a quick decision from your visitors.

Online Retailer
The theme is compatible with BuddyPress, Events Calendar and WooCommerce which would make it perfect for your online shop. With endless flexibility and access to extensions, WooCommerce now powers 30% of all online stores

Visual Composer is also included in this theme. Create pages quickly with few clicks in few minutes with the help of Visual Composer.

Backing Up and Restoring Your WordPress Website

Backing Up and Restoring

Creating your first WordPress website can be both fun and exciting. However, it is also a lot of work, especially if you are building a site which is based on content. If your website is content-based, you will find that you are constantly adding new material, which is stored on the servers of your website host.

Unfortunately, not all hosting providers are reliable, particularly if they are cheap or have a poor reputation. This means that there is a chance that your website – and the entirety of its content – could be lost if your hosts servers crash or if your database is corrupted for some reason.

For this single reason, backing up your WordPress website – usually using a third party plugin – is an extremely important part of your overall WordPress maintenance program. Although it can seem difficult at first, this walk through should help you learn how to backup and restore your WordPress site in case something goes wrong.

What Does It Mean To Backup A Website?

A website backup is basically a copy of your website (known as your files) which is stored in a different place to the rest of your website (usually in some sort of database). This means that if your normal servers go down for some reason, you will still have a copy of your content to fall back on.

A decent backup includes everything on your website, including things like your themes, plugins, any images or videos, and any written content that you have. When you are using a backup, you will never have to worry about losing anything from your website.

Read More »

How Do I Reduce My Visitor Bounce Rate?

Bounce Rate

So, you have started your own WordPress website or blog, and you have finally started to get a few people to your site. However, there is one thing which worries you more than anything – your visitor bounce rate is huge!

Does this sound familiar? If so, then you need to take steps to lower it. Every single person who ‘bounces’ from your website or landing page is a potential customer, client, or reader lost. This means loss in revenue, less people reading or watching your content, and basically, a less successful website.

Luckily for you, there are a lot of things that you can do to improve your bounce rate – to lower it – and most of these are simple and free. Some of the best places to start include:

Improving your content:

If a visitor arrives at your website and sees a whole chunk of boring, poorly written text without visual content, then they are going to leave – it’s as simple as that! If you really want to reduce your bounce rate, you need to improve your content.

  • Use big, bold headlines to draw people in. Use catchy words, and don’t be afraid to put big headers throughout your content.
  • Use visuals! People don’t have the time to sit down and read long, wordy articles any more. If you want to increase visitor engagement, use pictures, videos, and infographics as much as you can.
  • Only use a couple of sentences per paragraph. Any more, and people will find it hard to concentrate, and will probably leave your site to find something more friendly.

Read More »

Olsen Light

Olsen WordPress Theme

Olsen Light is a simple, clean and very stylish WordPress theme professionally designed that is also available in a ‘Pro’ version. The Pro version comes with extra options such as Multiple Layouts, Frontpage Carousel and different Typography Options to name but a few. For a lifetime licence it costs $199.

We like the ‘Light’ version very much, and it really suites lifestyle blogs, but if you are after the extra options, then the Pro version could be worth getting. If you are ready to take your WordPress website to a new level of chic, then the Olsen is for you. It’s time to get away from the cheap web design look with those tired themes and upgrade to the Olsen.

5 Quick Fixes To Speed Up Your WordPress Website

Website Speed

Website speed is a major ranking factor when it comes to search engine rankings. Slow website which take a long time to load will have a much lower chance of reaching the first page of Google, no matter how good their content is. WordPress websites created by amateur web designers are often very slow, which means that they simply don’t get the visitor numbers they deserve. Fortunately, there are a whole lot of things that you, the website owner, can do to speed up your site and improve your search engine rankings. These include:

  1. Measure Your Website’s Speed

Measuring your site’s speed is an absolute must before you do any of the following things. There are a whole lot of free tools out there to use, many of which will tell you what to improve to make your site faster. Use these suggestions as a starting point for decreasing your page load time.

  1. Use A Caching Plugin

Although WordPress is a pretty decent platform to build your website on, it does have it’s issues when it comes to page load speeds. Basically, every time someone loads a page on your site, the WordPress platform has to find the required info, put it together into a cohesive page, and transmit it to your viewer. This can cause problems when you have a lot of people visiting your page.

A caching plugin reduces these problems by storing a copy of the page after the first time it is loaded. This means that it is instantly available to every subsequent user, dramatically reducing page load times.

Read More »

Our Top 10 WordPress Tips For Beginners

WordPress Tips For Beginners

WordPress is a great platform that allows you to start your own website or blog quickly and easily, even if you don’t have a lot of website developer experience. Unfortunately, a lot of beginners get bogged down due to the sheer amount of information out there, and they have trouble focusing their WordPress learning on things which will actually help them.

With this in mind, we have compiled a list of our top ten WordPress tips for beginners, including:

  1. Keep it simple:

If you aren’t an experienced web developer, don’t jump straight in the deep end and try to create the next eBay or Amazon. Keep it simple, and start small. Choose a subject which interests you, which you know a lot about, and which you feel there is a need for on the internet. Base your first website around this.

  1. Start slowly:

Although a lot of people just want to get their website up and running, it simply isn’t something which happens overnight if you aren’t an experienced developer. Start out slowly, take your time, and let your website come together over the course of a few weeks.

  1. Learn what you can:

There is a huge amount of information about WordPress out there. Before you start building your website make sure that you do some research. Read articles, learn how to upload images, watch videos, and learn from people who have already built successful sites.

Read More »

The Good And The Bad Of Free WordPress Themes

WordPress Themes

If you are building your first WordPress website, or if you are working on a very limited budget the option of using one of the thousands of free WordPress themes that are available can make a lot of sense. However, like anything which is free, there are going to be some positives and some negatives which you need to weigh up before proceeding. To help you, we have highlighted some of the pros and some of the cons of free WordPress themes.

To break with the norm, let’s start with the negatives first:

#1 No warranties: Because they are given away for nothing, free WordPress themes will not carry any warranties. This means that once you have built your website, if something goes wrong you have no comeback on the developer.

Read More »

5 Things To Think About When Choosing WordPress Plugins

Choosing WordPress Plugins

New WordPress users often underestimate the importance of WordPress plugins and add-ons for their website. Plugins are extremely useful, and can take your website from mediocre and not really successful to widely successful and very engaging.

However, you need to choose the right WordPress plugins if you want to do this. Some plugins are great, others aren’t so good. Some plugins will work with your website, others probably won’t. Below are our top five tips for choosing WordPress plugins for your website:

  1. Pay attention to user reviews:

Although this is probably pretty self-explanatory, it is one of the most important things when it comes to choosing a plugin. If you are tossing up between two or three different ones which do similar things, it is usually a good idea to choose the highest rated one.

However, make sure that you read the written reviews as well, as you can’t always get enough information from just looking at the number of stars a plugin has. Some people might give a poor review for strange reasons. This can cause a low number of stars, even if the plugin doesn’t deserve it – especially if there aren’t a whole lot of reviews.

Read More »

Agile

Agile is one of the most versatile, responsive, app showcase WordPress themes that is designed to serve multiple purposes. You can use it for a product or app launch, showcase a portfolio, or even use it for a web design business or a corporate website. You can either design the website as a single page or a traditional multiple pages depending on the need, and user configuration. Some of the Agile unique features include wide backgrounds, parallax scrolling, revolution slider, unlimited page and post headers, unlimited colours, bold typography among others that make is an outstanding theme in its category.

What Sort Of WordPress Theme Is Right For You?

Perfect-WP-Theme

If you are looking to build a new website using the WordPress platform you will be aware that you can use a WordPress theme to give your website the right look and feel for your target audience. Many people think it is a case of simply choosing the one that looks the best but the problem with this notion is that the theme you choose might not lend itself to the sorts of visual concepts and functions that your site needs to have.

As more and more themes have become available they have been categorised so that it is now easier to choose a theme within the correct sub-niche that your site is in, rather than ploughing through thousands of random themes, hoping to spot one that is suitable. Below we have outlined some of the most popular categories and what the themes within those categories should offer you in terms of your website.

Blogging: Given that WordPress was originally set up as a blogging platform, and today is still the most popular one, it shouldn’t surprise you that there are hundreds of themes designed for someone who wants to set up a blog. They are ideal for blog posting and encouraging readers to leave comments. Posts can be categorised within the blog, and there should be the ability to collect email addresses from visitors to your blog, in order to build a subscriber list.

ECommerce: The popularity of eCommerce as an online business model has rocketed in recent years, and therefore so has the number of themes designed for it. As the name suggests eCommerce web design themes allow for the sale of goods and services from your website so there will be a fair degree of setup and customisation required. Functions will include integration with payment processors, the ability to add products for sale and allow for the addition of plugins which help to promote sales such as automating email follow-ups for those customers who abandon their shopping cart without buying. Read More »