What’s in and what’s out for websites in 2019? Kori Ashton shares 12 new trends for your WordPress website. By improving your website with these techniques your user can have a better experience and they can help with your ranking.
Full Transcript
2019 Trends:
- Video As Hero Scene
- Edge-To-Edge Designs
- Social Media Feeds
- Schema
- Accessibility Compliant
- SSL
- Scroll Transitions
- Phone Numbers Clickable
- Conversion Tracking
- Automation
- Google Optimizer
- Vlog
Hey y’all, welcome to another WordPress Wednesday, my name is Kori Ashton. Today I’m gonna show you 12 different concepts that we’re seeing trending for 2019. Ways to improve your WordPress website, today, that can really have a high impact on great user experience, improving your security overall, and hopefully even conversion. Let’s take a look at all 12 different concepts.
Hey, remember if you like content like this, I’m creating videos like this every single Wednesday, so be sure to subscribe and check out my channel. I have over 300 videos living here now for you to see, all free for you to view and find really great tips on how to improve your WordPress website.
Video As Hero Scene
All right, so let’s get to number one. And that’s gonna be adding a new wow factor on your website because what you don’t wanna do is have an old, boring carousel, those are completely out.
These slideshows that you see happening in the homepage, hero scene here, are completely out, everybody’s moving toward video, and it doesn’t take much to create a really small, eight second, 10 seconds, B-roll clip, with no audio to sit in this hero scene section of your website, and really begin to have that wow factor as your customers or your clients log in your website, and check out a little bit of an experience brought to life of who your company is and what you’re capable of doing.
Edge-To-Edge Designs
Number two is going to be edge-to-edge design. No more are you seeing this boxed in design, this very quickly tells somebody that your website is out of date. What you wanna be showing now is this edge-to-edge, full-screen, beautiful view as folks are scrolling down.
No matter what size screen they’re on, right, we’re taking up all the beautiful space and really giving them an overwhelming and beautiful experience, down the page, as they’re scrolling, everything looks filled in. Now, you’re not, I mean you do have some white space, right, so you’re not afraid of white space, but what you wanna do is really embrace the full palette, the full screen, and let people see all of your beautiful content.
Social Media Feeds
Number three is gonna be let’s get social. I want you to start bringing over social media feeds. Instead of just having the icons on your website that then distracts people and have them click on that link and leave your website, I want them to be engaged here, on your website.
So you can easily and dynamically display your Instagram feed on your website. So the moment you upload something from your phone to your Instagram account, all of a sudden, it’s living here on your homepage, or in your gallery page, or wherever you like that gallery to be on your website.
Super important that you do something really cool like this, get creative. It could be a behind the scenes, it could be your latest cupcakes that you’ve done, the latest product that you’ve sold, the latest testimonial you received, whatever that looks like. I highly suggest that you do something like this, and then ask them to follow you on Instagram.
You can, of course, always have your social media links elsewhere, maybe down in your footer or up in your header, wherever you’d like to have them, but you definitely need to have your feed. I’m gonna challenge you to go figure out how to get your feed over here.
If you’re looking to do your Instagram feed, I have a video for how you do that in WordPress, I’ll put that in the link below.
Schema
All right, number four is gonna get us a little bit more technical, well, we’re going more advanced for search engine optimization. You have probably already done all of the basics, you’re using Yoast on your WordPress website and you have all those green lights, and you’re thinking to yourself, I have done a lot of work to get those green lights.
Now, what can I be doing next level for advanced SEO, to really help my website shine? And that, in 2019, is gonna be schema. This isn’t really a new concept but more and more folks are embracing it, and we’re starting to see Google give us extra credit, basically, and rank us higher when we are using something like this.
So, do a little bit of advanced search on Google Schema, or markup schema, I’ll give you a couple more links in the description box below if you wanna go and investigate this.
What you wanna be looking for is to use this if you’re running any type of events, any type of recipes, if you’re selling products on your website. There are all sorts of reasons, really, to be using this on images, anything like that that you’ve got going on on your website that you wanna have rank higher on search results, look at schema.
Accessibility Compliant
Number five, we’re, again, getting a little bit more technical. This is accessibility, this is a buzz word that’s happening in our industry right now as we’re realizing that more and more users who are engaging on our website might not be fully, physically capable, maybe visually capable, of seeing how we’ve coded a website.
So what we wanna do is be accessible for all. And be certain that everybody who wants to visit your website, who wants to engage on a form on your website, a fill-out, content, purchase a product, engage with you, that they’re able to do that. And it really does take a little bit of extra care to your code, and to the detail of how your website was coded, to accomplish that.
So be sure to check out WCAG guidelines and see if your website is compliant, there’s all sorts of checkers. Again, I’ll put more in the description box below so you can check these things out.
SSL
Now we’ve gotta get secure, you guys. The SSL that changed your website, if you see this up here in the top corner, it changes it from a HTTP to a HTTPS, adding an extra layer of security. Google has been looking for that for us for a few years now, they’re wondering why we haven’t already moved to that.
It doesn’t matter if you’re selling products or not anymore, they want you to be secure. So be sure to do that and, of course, if you watch my channel you know that free is always in the budget, unless encript.org allows you to have a free SSL.
So be sure to look at that, you’re hosting provider could also provide a free SSL for you.
Scroll Transitions
Number seven is going to be a really cool experience, where you can give your customers, or your visitors on your website, a little bit of a wow factor as they begin to engage and scroll down your website. So I want you to see this as we’re scrolling. See that the pieces kind of slide in, glide in, from the left and from the right? And this is what we call a lazy load, and it’s a little bit of animation, it’s not really extra hard scripting to do, and a lot of themes these days, inside of WordPress allow you to do a really cool transition as you scroll. So be sure to look for that, and that adds that, just that little extra wow factor, and keeps them scrolling down your page.
Phone Numbers Clickable
Number eight is gonna make absolutely certain that all of your call-to-action phone numbers are fully clickable. I have preached and preached and preached on this. You guys, if your mobile traffic is through the roof and you’ve got a lot of people coming on your website through their cell phones, they are probably trying to click to call you and if there’s not code sitting behind your phone numbers, or if your phone number is displayed in an image, that the smartphone cannot read that, and it won’t necessarily pick up that that’s a phone number, allowing the individual to just, simply, click and call you.
So you wanna be able to let that person, let that visitor quickly engage with you and not have to memorize or write down your phone number. So be certain to put in that extra little bit of code in there, behind those phone numbers, to allow people to click to call.
You wanna absolutely be certain that this is in place in your header or your footer, your contact page, wherever you have your phone number displayed. I’ve got another video on exactly what code you’re gonna need to implement in the description below.
Conversion Tracking
Now, number nine gets me so super excited because this is so creepy, Big Brother, cool as you are able to watch people experience your website. I wanna challenge you to add in some sort of conversion tracking, monitoring, video recording capability in your website.
You want to be able to see, right away, what users are struggling with on your website. Where are they clicking, where are they getting lost?
Google Analytics can tell you a lot, a heat map can tell you a lot, but there’s nothing like watching somebody come on your website, scroll through, try to click around, and struggle through your website. Or succeed through your website, right.
You wanna be able to be certain that all of your hard work in designing those landing pages, designing that homepage, the re-design of your website, all of these things are actually being effective, and you’re seeing the conversion happen.
You especially wanna do this if you’re not seeing a conversion on your website because this will very quickly highlight where the struggle is, where the customers are falling off.
Automation
Number 10 gets me very excited too because this one is all about working smarter, not harder. This is about automation. How can you improve your website’s actual dynamic capabilities? So, I’m gonna recommend Zapier, that’s this website that we’re viewing right now. They have a lot of integrations, specifically for WordPress, and you can just come up here at the top, search WordPress, and you’re gonna find this landing page.
It says that we have over 100 different integrations here as you scroll through. Very cool for you to think about, how can your website better automate? So maybe you want it to dynamically, as soon as you publish a post, that it displays on your Facebook page. With Zapier you can do that. You want it to Tweet for you, you can do that.
You want it, maybe if someone comes into your website and they submit a ticket or fill out a form, you want it to automatically appear in your Slack channel, you guys, the possibilities are endless. Zapier is an if this, then do that type of relationship builder, if this happens, then do that.
So check that out, look at that resource, and you can thank me later because it’s pretty amazing.
Google Optimizer
We are gaining momentum here as we’re hitting number 11. And this is gonna be really cool to implement more of dynamic content, like geo-targeting content. You can also very specifically, dynamically change content using Google Optimizer to allow you to change content as users are coming in, right.
So, notice that this would be considered, maybe a pop-up that’s happening on the website. Depending upon my IP address, it could say Texas and show me a different picture that relates specifically to my winter Texas gear, which would be hiking. Or if my IP address coming into your website was from Colorado, it can show skiers and talking about ski equipment being 15% of ski suits.
So, depending upon that, we could actually dynamically, instantly, change content to resonate more directly with that consumer coming in your website. This is really advanced and a lot of fun to do, and we can certainly help you here at WebTegrity if you’re struggling with it.
But I’m gonna challenge you to figure that out because this is next level stuff that’s really gonna improve, overall, that quick conversion, that quick sale, happening on your website.
Vlog
And number 12 is gonna be the start of vlog. So many of you have been doing blogs for quite a while, and you might be struggling with even thinking of what content to do for the New Year. Gosh, you’ve been doing a blog for year after year, after year. Well, let’s go next level, mix it up.
Maybe once a month you’re gonna do a vlog, a video blog like I do here. It doesn’t take expensive equipment, you can actually do it from your phone. Record yourself, get a little lapel mic that plugs in immediately to the audio. You can get a selfie stick, walk around, it doesn’t take that much of an investment to make a really quick video. You can do things like recording your customers in-house, in your brick and mortar, as they’re excited and buying your product, or as they leave your veterinarian hospital and they’re excited that their dog feels better.
Take a quick video, let them brag on you. Put that on your website, either in your testimonial section or create a whole vlog about it. It’s a really cool opportunity to bring some cool life into your website and, hopefully, get a video that goes viral.
Conclusion
So, in conclusion, I really hope that this helps y’all. These are 12 different things that you could be doing today, researching today, to improve your overall website, and improve that user experience, and hopefully, at the end of the day, improve your conversion.
So, here’s the thing, I want to challenge you to come be a part of my monthly community here. If you like this type of content, if you’re a freelancer, if you’re trying to move to that agency level, if you’re a small agency trying to move to that mid-level agency size, I have some resources here for you and I’m gonna be doing this every single month, adding more and more, longer webinar type interviews from amazing people in our community.
As well as just moments where I have an epiphany and I wanna share something a little bit more advanced with you, I’m gonna be adding that content here, to this section. I’ll put a link to this in the description box below. It’s $7.99 a month, come be a part of this community, and I’ll be loading content in there every single month. I hope you’re having a great WordPress Wednesday. Subscribe because I’m doing free stuff too, every single week, see you next time, bye y’all.
Links:
- Wow Factor – example
- Full-Width Design – example
- Get Social
- Advanced SEO – Schema
- Accessibility
- Keep it Secure
- Enjoy the Scroll – example
- Click CTA – Code Video
- Conversion Tracking – Check out Crazy Egg
- Automation – work smarter not harder – Zappier
- Geo-Targeting Content
- Vlog it Up!
