If you’re a WordPress blogger who is needing some new inspiration on different types of content to offer your readers and visitors – check out this list of 7 Different Types of Content for Your Blog from Kori Ashton. You’ll hear some older ideas with a new spin and some brand new concepts to keep your readers engaged and coming back for more each week.
Hey, you guys, welcome to another WordPress Wednesday. My name is Kori Ashton, and today I’m gonna walk you through a listicle. A list of seven different kinds of content you could be doing inside of your blog on your website today. I’m gonna show you all seven right now.
So, seven different types of content for your blog. Now, we all have been doing press releases for awhile. We’ve all been doing the look at our Google Analytics and seeing kind of what our best blog articles are, and we’ve been doing kind of a follow-up article on that, right? If you haven’t, there’s another idea for you ’cause you always want to be thinking, gosh, if that article did well, maybe I should do an updated article or a V2 or a phase two of whatever that article was.
And, of course, you’ve all been told to do education pieces. But what are some other ways that you can spice up your blog and have some great content?
1. Add a VLog
The first one is easily just add a vlog. Do a simple video just like I’m doing here. Whether you’re using Zoom.us as your capture software, right, to capture your screen you can use that, I’ll put the link to that in the description below, or whether you’re using a simple webcam or even your cell phone, right? Doesn’t matter. Using something like this has great quality, and you can create a video, put it inside your blog, and people are going to press play a lot more often than they will read a long 2,000-word blog.
2. Interview a Client or Customer
Second thing you can do is interview a client or a customer, or if you’re just a blogger, like if that’s your focus, blogging, and you don’t have clients or customers, you have people who comment or people who are active in your community. Interview them. Let them be a part of what you’re talking about. Interview them whether it’s over the phone or in the email. Give ’em a couple of questions, let them respond. Take that and create a great piece that you can add to your blog.
Then they get to announce it to their friends, family, their social networks, and talk about the fact that they were just featured on your blog. It’s a really cool way to kinda get some grassroots content.
3. Interview a Team Member
Another thing you can do in an interview style is interview a team member. If you are a part of a larger group, plan out, maybe you have one team member that you interview each month and write up a blog article about, you know, how they got to your company, what they were doing before they were in your industry, what they’re doing now for your team, what kinda cool dynamic they add to your team. And maybe you can add your own perspective to why you know they’re a great part of your team and what they bring to the table.
This, again, is another really cool piece to kinda lift the veil and show people what you do inside of your company, show people and brag on your team members, and then, again, that person feels really special that they’ve been highlighted in your website.
4. Best of All Time
Number four is gonna be the best of all time, or maybe the best of the year, or best of a category. If you have products that you sell, you can come to the table and kind of grab those, kinda collect those together, and make a blog article about the best of the best. You can do that in your industry across the board. You can do that with really any type of different types of content.
You can gather the best of the best, whether you’re looking at Google trends to find that, you’re looking at social media to find that, you’re doing a Google search, and you’re finding what Google is saying the best of the best is, and you kind of create your own list like that. Those top lists get a lot of attention, and you can probably find that to be true if you’re looking back in your Google Analytics checking to see what other blog articles have done well for you. A lot of times the best of seems to rank really high.
5. Infographics
Number five is just a lot of fun because you can build out infographics. I know that that’s an old concept, but a lot of people haven’t really ever tried it because it seems really cumbersome to try to get creative, maybe you’re not a graphic designer or you don’t have the tools, you’re not confident in Photoshop skills, and you think to yourself, gosh, I have no idea how to craft this longer image that kinda tells a story or gives graphics or details or statistics. I don’t have the capability of doing that.
Well, now you do, and there’s no excuse because I’m giving you a resource called Snappa. Get over here, try this out. They have free templates inside of here, and this is one, actually, that I’m showing you. Literally, you just go in here and change the text. Everything already lives here. All the images live here, the colors live here. You can easily change things. Add your own images. And they’ve got so many different templates with statistics and graphs and charts. Just really cool resources. So, be sure to check out Snappa.com. I’ll put the link to that also in the description box below.
6. Find an Influencer in Your Industry
Number six brings a really cool opportunity to the table because in this one, you can go find an influencer in your industry and use your blog as kind of a calling card to engage with them. Tweet to that person. Send them an email if you have an email. Get on LinkedIn and see if you have the ability to network. Maybe somebody you know knows that person. Connect with them and see if you can interview them, whether it’s in a video style, again, using Zoom, or whether you’re using Google Hangout, or whatever tool you have to kinda do a video call with somebody. You can record that. Interview them. Put that inside of your blog.
One of the things that that’s gonna get you is, again, you’re gonna be able to ride their wave because they’re an influencer that already has an audience in your industry. They’ll mention to their audience that they were featured on your blog, and that gets brand new eyes and ears listening to you, aware of you, and traffic coming to your website.
So, this is a really great tool, and I’m gonna challenge you to step outta your comfort zone and try to find that influencer, whether they’re a blogger or a vlogger or they’re a YouTube influencer. Maybe they’re on Instagram. Maybe they’re in Pinterest and they have an amazing following there. Don’t ever feel like they’re too far of a reach for you because you just have a small blog. It doesn’t matter.
People are always looking for opportunities to gain more exposure and to, basically, help and just get some more recognition. So, I’m gonna challenge you to reach out and try to find an influencer.
7. Create a Listicle – Best of
And number seven is to do exactly what I’ve done here inside of this vlog is to create a listicle, or a list article. Something that gives a kinda collect, a best of, again. Maybe your top seven. Just some ideas. Get numbers together, and typically, they say that odd numbers work better, get more attention.
So, five best pizza joints in the area. Seven denim trends, fashion craze and ideas. Just get some ideas together like this, put them in a list, prioritize them. And again, what you’re doing here is you’re going out and you’re collecting other ideas in the industry, bringing ’em to one spot, and Google just loves that kind of list type of content. And so do your viewers. I guarantee you, they’re gonna share more stuff like that. That’s why they’re so popular. That’s why we see them out there. But how do you do it? Just simply by Googling around finding different ideas, putting them together. I’ll show you a couple examples of my top or my listicles. I’ll put those in the description box below, as well.
Conclusion
So, do you have ideas about how you’re engaging your blog viewers and your readers? Do you have other ideas of types of content that you’ve seen successful on your own blog? Would you consider commenting those in the thread below? I would love for our viewers to be able to see those ideas and get some inspiration.
If you’d like to add your link to show us exactly what that type of article looked like, I would love to see it, as well. I hope you’re having a great WordPress Wednesday.
Be sure to subscribe because every week I’m creating content just like this to help you improve your online marketing inside of the world of WordPress, and check out all my other videos because I have almost 400 videos now living here on my YouTube channel all for free for you to find really cool resources for online marketing when it comes to search engine optimization, all things WordPress, and even some social media marketing ideas. I hope you’re havin’ a great one. I will see y’all next WordPress Wednesday. Bye, everyone.
Resources
If you’d like more resources for blogging – see this playlist from Kori.
If you’ve ever had to rebuild a WordPress website then you know that you can easily lose SEO rank. Here are four must-do steps when wanting to avoid an SEO disaster during a website rebuild. Kori Ashton shares tips like content audit, 301 redirects and permalink structure.
Full Transcript
Hey y’all, I’m Kori Ashton, and you have found a video on a YouTube channel dedicated to all things WordPress. Today, I want to specifically look at avoiding SEO disaster when you’re getting ready to rebuild your WordPress website.
What are the absolute best steps to take to prepare your website, your content, your strategy so that you lose no rank whatsoever with the new website? I’m gonna show you the steps right now.
Domain Name
So the absolute first thing I want you to do whenever you’re hoping to avoid that SEO disaster in that rebuild is think about, are we using the same domain name? So is it www.askkori.com? Or are you having to change that? That’s a big question mark, and it really, really has to be asked right up front. If you are able, and best practices would be, you are able to keep that same domain name. Are you then able to keep the same structure of URL path, or what WordPress calls the permalinks, right? You want to be certain that if your old website had maybe the category name in that path, you’re able to do that as well over here in the new site.
The more you’re able to align what each and every page was named, and what their links were, if you can mirror that over here on the new site, then you won’t have to mess with 301 redirects. If you’re not able to do that though, you need to have a strategy in place, because we need to start keeping track of which pages used to live here, but now they live on this link.
Google Analytics
So the second step is gonna be to check your analytics. This is where hopefully you’ve been monitoring Google Analytics. You’ve allowed Google to track your traffic on your website so that you have some data to reference. These are very important stats that you need to know so that you can basically say hey, our new website is doing even better.
So I want you to take note of your top landing pages, your top exit pages, what keywords are helping your website currently rank, and maybe now is the time to think about, gosh, there’s a bunch of keywords that are missing that I’d like to be ranking for. How do we adjust for that? Think about your top traffic sources. Are they coming from Facebook, are they coming from Pinterest, are they coming from Instagram, are they coming from somebody else’s blog or from my podcast links? Where are they coming from to our website, right? Average visitor time, average page visits, unique overall visits.
How many brand new people are coming every 30 days to your website? And basically the overall views. These are the top things I just want you to write down somewhere, take note of, ’cause this is basically our starting point to measure the success of our new site.
Content Audit
Hopefully, as well, some of the data that you can pull out of Google Analytics is to help you with the third step, which is a content audit. I really need you to look through your sitemap or, if you’re running Yoast, Yoast the plugin allows you to have an XML sitemap.
Go review every single one of your pages, every single one of your posts, and kind of measure them up to your Google Analytics. See what those top landing pages are. This is where you can see okay, I absolutely need to keep this content, it’s ranking really well. Oh gosh, this content needs to rank well, but it’s actually one of my high exit pages, so maybe you can start to consolidate or improve those pages, and then you’ll also start to see those pages that nobody ever visits.
It’s old content, it’s not relevant anymore in your industry or for your services, and you just don’t need it anymore, so perhaps now’s the time to eliminate that content. This is where you do it. Keep in mind though, that if you had pages that were ranking on any search engine for that matter, that link needs to be accounted for in this rebuild, and you do that by using 301 redirects.
I have other videos that explain that, I’ll put the links below for you to reference those videos.
Post Launch
Alright, and the fourth and final step is gonna be post-launch. So this is now, we’ve done of our due diligence, we’ve rebuilt the website. The client has approved, we’re excited, we’ve launched the new website, and now you need to go submit the sitemap to search engines through your webmaster tools. Go in there and be absolutely certain that it’s able to be crawled.
I want you to test the responsive design, actually pick up a cellphone and test it on those devices. Pick up an iPad, test it on those devices.
You also need to go do a speed test and be absolutely certain that this website is loading in fewer than three seconds, because you’re gonna frustrate your users if it’s not. There’s free resources online to do that, I’ll put the link below as well so you can go and use those resources to test your site.
You also want to go in and test all of your contact forms. Try to click on the phone numbers, be certain that everything’s clickable. Be certain that you’re getting the contact form submission. Anything that’s a call to action or your CTAs on your website. Be absolute certain that you can click by now and put in your credit card information and actually check out. So once it’s launched, walk through that process.
You also want to be sure that you connect all tracking codes. So be certain that your Google Analytics code is back in there. If you’re running a Facebook pixel, put that in there. If you’re running anything like a video monitoring service, like Hotjar, put that in there. Be absolutely certain that you’re able to track now the progression and the improvements on this brand new website.
Hey y’all, I know that was a lot to take in, but I’m gonna give you that infographic link below in the description box, so you can kind of use it as your checklist every time you launch a new WordPress website.
Infographic
Conclusion
I hope this helps you, and if you like content like this, be absolutely certain to click Subscribe, click the bell so that you can get notifications, because every week, I’m creating content just like this to help you improve your online marketing inside the world of WordPress. I have nearly 400 videos that live in this channel all for free for you to reference. Hey, and if you are a freelancer or an entrepreneur inside the world of WordPress.
PressTribe
If you are an agency owner, small agency, large agency, doesn’t matter, we have a great conversation happening right now inside an online slack channel called PressTribe. Come be a part of that conversation completely for free, I’ll put the link below. You’re gonna have an opportunity to engage with a network talking about business strategies, contracts, best practices when communicating with clients. There’s so much great resources, great conversation taking place. Come be a part of it,
I’ll see y’all next WordPress Wednesday. Bye everyone.
While WordPress itself is quite secure, collecting user information can cause concern. Is your WordPress website HIPAA Compliant? Should you be collecting sensitive data with Gravity Forms? What’s best practice? Kori Ashton shares her opinion and answers a question from a subscriber. Thanks for the question, Paul!
Full Transcript
Hey ya’ll, welcome to another WordPress Wednesday. My name is Kori Ashton from AskKori.com. Be sure to check out over 300 videos that I have here on my YouTube channel, and subscribe, because every Wednesday, I’m creating videos just like this to help you improve your online marketing inside the world of WordPress.
Today we have a question from British Columbia, which I’m super excited about. It’s all about security for WordPress, specifically speaking about like form fill-outs and information gathered on your website through Gravity forms. Let’s go take a look. So Paul writes in and says,
“I would like to use Gravity forms in the subscriber part of my website. I would like to create forms for my clients whereby they can download or print the pdf. The forms will be pre-built, waiting for the client to fill in the blanks. However, some of the blanks are private, and I’m concerned about security. Can Gravity, meaning Gravity forms, and WordPress, handle this without being a genius security person? Question mark.
So I absolutely love this, Paul, because so many of us are not security experts, right? But here’s what I will tell you. While WordPress itself, the core of WordPress, is extremely secure as long as we’re keeping everything up to date. I do get concerned about us collecting information and having it live in my sequel database, which is what WordPress actually houses and stores all of its content in, right?
So this is where you have to start thinking about HIPAA compliance and all sorts of legal issues, and even for your own company, if you’re a freelancer, if you’re an agency and you’re developing these websites for clients, you should become at least knowledgeable, maybe not a total expert when it comes to IT and security and firewalls and all that jazz, but you need to be educated, right? So thank you for asking this question.
I think a lot of my viewers out here are going to be interested in knowing the answer to this. So while you can be running something like Sucurri, which is an extra add-on or an extra security plugin on your website. This really is more for people trying to hack into your site, people trying to get that information. This is also for any type of issues with plugins that can create holes, if you will, and access points into your database. So it’s important that you do add extra security, even if you’re adding in an SSL to the site, right. With Let’s Encrypt for free, you can add an SSL to your site. All of these things are important extra steps to do. This gets you that lock up here, which turns to https. That’s great to have.
But ultimately are these things enough to deal with what Paul’s issue is here whenever we’re talking about actually gathering information and having it live somewhere that could be private. Maybe we’re talking social security number. Maybe we’re talking address even, my personal address to my home. Children’s names, children’s ages, our birth dates, all that type of information really could be used against us and we don’t wanna just have that out there.
So here’s what I suggest. Absolutely check with your hosting company, ’cause a lot of this can be handled server side. Ask them if they actually do have HIPAA compliant data centers, so Liquid Web is one of the ones in the industry of WordPress that I know for absolutely certain that they have HIPAA compliant data centers.
Super important that you step up your level of security if you’re going to be helping folks in the medical industry, legal industry, insurance, whatever industry might be collecting that information, right. Here’s what I like to suggest, so overall best practices. This is what we’ve done here at WebTegrity all through the years, is if I’m dealing with a client who needs to collect data like that, I really try to push back and say to them, is there something in your industry that already has a portal-like environment that allows us to gather that information completely HIPAA compliant securely, in a lock-down mode, where we can pass off the liability onto them, right?
So look at those things, especially in the medical industry, the insurance industry, and the legal industry. There’re already solutions out there that create those portals that allow people to fill out information, whether they’re applying for a loan, or they’re trying to sign up and talk to their doctor about their medical issues. All of these things can live inside of that environment. And what you can do on the WordPress side of things, is maybe just have a simple form fill where we’re gathering the most minimum amount of information for the lead, right. That’s all we really need.
And then, as we gather that lead, the next step would be to automatically send them over to that portal area, and allow them to fill out that kind of more concerning information or more private information in that environment.
While that might not be the absolute fix-it you were hoping for, Paul, I think that that’s best practices, unless you can absolutely talk again with your hosting company. Be certain that maybe they carry some sort of insurance, or they have this HIPAA compliance in place, and that becomes your safety net when it comes to anything for liability issues, right?
So I hope this helps you. I know there’s a lot to it when we’re thinking about being actually sure that we’re providing the right solution for our clients.
But every single week, I’m trying to help you improve and do that here on YouTube, and if you’re interested in growing more with your freelance business, as well as your small agency business, be sure to check out a link I’ll put in the description box below to join my Vimeo community where we are talking about this type of stuff consistently every month. Come be a part of that conversation. I’d love to see you over there in our live webinars. Have a great one. I’ll see ya’ll on the next WordPress Wednesday. And, Paul, thanks so much for the question. You’re amazing, bye ya’ll.
Are WordPress Auto updates safe? All WordPress websites require updates – plugin updates, theme updates, and core WordPress file updates. Knowing that for security purposes we want to keep things up to date, sometimes it’s easier to just allow your Hosting company to auto-update, or set up a plugin to do it. What’s the best practice when it comes to handling this required task each month?
Full Transcript
Hey, y’all. Welcome to another WordPress Wednesday. My name is Kori Ashton, and every Wednesday I am hanging out right here on YouTube to help you improve your online marketing, specifically inside the world of WordPress.
And today I’ve got a question from one of my awesome subscribers, and I’m gonna share that with you right now. It’s all about automatic updates. Anna writes in,
“Hey Kori, Love your videos etc- “you make it all sound so simple. “I build websites and I often refer to your information- “so thank you! “I have tried to find it on your site, but do you have a blog or video about the pro’s and con’s of having ‘automatic updates’? Thanks, Anna”
No, thank you, Anna. I appreciate having ideas for content, and your questions, anybody sending in questions, for that matter, really helps me get an idea and a pulse on what your needs are, and kinda what level of my audience is paying attention and asking me for help. So, thank you so much for sending those in, and if you have questions, be sure to come over to askkori.com, submit those, or Tweet to me. Alright.
So, automatic updates. What are best practices? We all know that whenever we’re dealing with WordPress, we login our dashboards and we get updates like this: Notifications that your core is needing updates, your theme is needing updates, all your plugins need updating. And I don’t know about you, but sometimes my stomach starts to turn a little bit in fear of breaking something. So this is why, in the past, I have always said, you need to manually handle all of your updates, especially if you have 12 or more plugins running on your website.
You need to absolutely be methodical on how you go in here and do it. You need to be certain that there’s a backup in place. Of course, I preach that! Be certain you have a backup in place. Be sure you also know how to click and roll back the site if something does break. Better yet, test all this in the staging environment, right? Be certain it all works there, and then come over and do it in the live environment.
So, there’s definitely best practices when it comes to how to actually execute these things. But when you’re talking about setting and forgetting, kind of implementing some sort of an automatic update process, What are best practices? Should you be using something like that? Again, I would say that this really depends on the plugin that you’re using, or the service that you’re using to accomplish this.
If you’re using something like iThemes Sync, I’m kinda blown away with the safety net that they have to provide this type of service for WordPress websites.
iThemes Sync Features
So, a lot of cool features here. I’m just gonna punch through them, as a solution for handling your automatic updates inside of WordPress.
All-in-one Dashboard
They have an all-in-one dashboard where you can see all of your websites that you’re managing at one time. Which is a super-cool feature. It gives you one dashboard to log into, looks something like this, allows you to see all the different installs. You get to see very quickly what plugins are needing updating, what themes need updating, what core. And, here’s the thing, you can go into each and every one of these individually, and set it to automatically update, or set it to be locked down and do a manual update.
So that’s set individually. You can also come in here and then see those that are running the automatic updates. We’ll have alerts if there’s anything that’s concerning about the site. So, here’s what happens very quickly, kinda behind the scenes. When it knows that there’s an update that needs to run, it will go over very quickly and test it first in a staging environment of its own.
If any error messages kick out, it will pause the update from happening automatically and send you a notification asking you to check it out and be certain you want to go ahead and push that update through. But it’s gonna tell you what that error message is. This ensures that nothing goes live on your site for an update that might break. Mind blown, phenomenal safety net for you.
So, if you are using a solution like this, I’m all for it. Go for it, Anna. Click update. Click automatic update and set it and forget it type of scenario, right? But what I don’t want you to do, is run a plugin or tell your hosting service, please go ahead and update everything, and then you’re not knowing when that’s being pushed through, whether that’s on Tuesday at two o’clock, or whatever that looks like.
Monitor Uptime of Website
Some of the other features, really quickly here, with iTheme Sync, because I’m just so blown away by it. It will also monitor the uptime of the website, each individual install.
Reports
You can also send out, you can have a custom dashboard and send out reports. This one got me excited because a lot of clients wonder, well, what are you doing for me, every month? This particular system will allow you to put in their email address and set it to automatically send out at the end of every day, every week, every month, every year, whatever you set it to.
Send out a report and let them know, this is all the work that’s been accomplished for your website this month. And, the exciting thing is, some of those things will be automatic, and it’ll look like you are just grindin’ for that client, which is really exciting to see. You know that there’s this safety net here, though, to ensure that their website is running perfectly.
So, your hosting company might provide something like this for you, especially if you are running on Liquid Web. Because they own iThemes, right? So, whenever you’re at hosting with these guys, you actually get this included in any of your packages. iTheme Sync is included. So, if you’re looking for another hosting solution, check out Liquid Web, look at their managed WordPress pricing, get in here and see if you can partner with them to get that great service, or you can get it kinda a la carte over here. I’ll put the links to both these in the description below.
Realize, as well, that both, as of today, are running specials, discounts goin’ on. This one up here, Liquid Web, is running 33% off for the first three months, and iThemes is running 35% off site-wide. So, very exciting.
Oh! In the budget, there is a free version of iTheme Sync, so check that out. You do get free, and free is always in the budget. And then, for a little bit more, you get a whole lot more, if you’re able to jump to a premium and have a little bit in your budget to spend.
Hey, I hope this helps you guys. Every Wednesday, I’m here on YouTube, helping you improve your online marketing. And I have over 300 videos in my library to go check out here for free.
If you’re interested in joining the community that we’re talking about, improving your freelance business, improving your small agency and how to grow it, I have an entire community over on Vimeo, where you can come join me every month as we’re doing webinars, and we’re kinda working through a little bit more advanced conversation about growing your revenue, improving your process, how to find clients, all sorts of great conversation happening over there. I hope to see you next WordPress Wednesday. Bye, y’all.
How to remove the new blocks in WordPress 5.0 and revert back to the classic editor. Simple / Free Fix – Kori Ashton helps you understand why things look different in WordPress 5.0+ and how to get back to the standard look you’re used to inside of the WordPress editor.
Full Transcript
Hey, y’all, welcome to another WordPress Wednesday. My name is Kori Ashton and this is Ask Kori. Every single Wednesday, I’m creating a video just like this to help you improve your online marketing, specifically inside the world of WordPress.
So if you like content like this, be sure to subscribe, and be absolutely certain to go take a look at my entire library here on my YouTube channel. Over 300 videos to help you.
Alright, let’s get to it today. If you are struggling because you’ve logged in to your WordPress website now and you are finding all of these blocks, and you’re wondering, what the heck? I just wanna change existing content. How do I make these changes? How do I make these blocks go away? What just happened to WordPress?
Slow down for a minute. That is an update for Gutenberg, the new type of drag-and-drop editor, which is super cool and exciting. But if you’re trying to just make a simple quick fix, and you don’t really wanna go learn all that right now, there is a workaround and it’s a simple plugin. I’m gonna show you what to do right now.
So you’ll be logging in to your WordPress dashboard. And you’ll see if you’re struggling and you see things like this, this is what’s going on here. Go into Edit. I’m gonna show you the view that I’m seeing. And really, I’ve never created a page that looked like this. I don’t know why this page looks like this, right? What happened is that 5.0 update, if you’ve already updated beyond that, you are running something called Gutenberg. And again there’s a simple quick fix.
You’re gonna go to your plugins and click Add New. And we want to go look for Classic Editor. It should actually be on this screen right now. If not, do a quick search up here for Classic Editor. And you’ll have it pull up. This is the one you’re looking for. Go ahead and click Install Now. And, of course, you wanna activate it. As soon as you do that, it will in a sense, overwrite Gutenberg, and allow you to move back to the classic screen that you’re very, very familiar with, and you won’t have any more type of, oh, my gosh, what just happened?
But to give you an idea for those of you who are interested in Gutenberg, and getting to know a little bit more about the editor, there are some really cool tutorials for you to learn all about blocks, learn how simple it is to drag and drop, and add more function and really cool layouts to your pages.
But again, if you’re just trying to get in there make a quick simple fix, go install Classic Editor and the world will be all back to normal again.
I hope you’re having a great one. Be sure to check out my library of videos and subscribe, because every Wednesday, I’ll meet you right here at WordPress Wednesday. Bye bye, y’all.
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.
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.
Kori Ashton helps you save time when sending proposals. Try sending out a pre-proposal email to see where the client is comfortable in their budget and time range.
Full Transcript
Hey y’all, my name is Kori Ashton, and welcome to another WordPress Wednesday. I don’t know about you, but I cannot stand putting together proposals, and truthfully, RFP is a four-letter word to me. So I’ve kind of crafted a better process when it comes to reaching out to clients, and kind of moving the deal along, and solidifying and onboarding new clients. I wanna share that process today with you.
Let’s look at a pre-proposal example. Early on in my company, I was spending so much time, two to three hours, even with a template, really tryin’ to craft a conversation around a potential client, and what I believed their needs were. Even after having an initial phone call with them, I would take extensive notes, and think to myself, okay, I think I know exactly what they need and I spend a lot of time really putting together this large proposal, only to submit it to them, and them go, gwah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, those prices are completely out of my range, I can’t go anywhere near that budget.
So what I’ve started to do now is get on the phone with them, drop a few comments of budget ranges, give them some examples of previous sites I’ve done, let them know kind of what that range was, so saying this example was $2,500, this example was $8,500, you know, I just see, kinda measure their response, right? But what you might also wanna do is put that in writing to them, and let them kinda see that range, and digest that range in black and white, in writing.
So this is the example I wanna show you. This is where you’ll be able to see kind of an initial email that I put out to them, and what it sounds like. So,
Hello Jake, thanks for taking time with me on the phone today, I can certainly see why you’re reaching out for a new rebuild. Your current website loads very slowly, and seems quite dated. The good news is, we can fix that right up.
So this very first bit of sentence is to again say thank you for engaging with me, but also to reiterate their points of pain. Remind him why he’s looking for a new solution. And, in doing that, that kind of reestablishes his hurt, and then you’ll show him the price tag it’s gonna take to fix it, a little bit of psychology there.
Your insights were very helpful. After reviewing the example websites you’ve given, and learning more about your direction, I’d like to suggest the following marketing strategy.
Now, I want you to notice my language here. I’m saying marketing strategy, I’m no longer just talking about just a website solution, because I don’t want a one night stand with this customer. I really, truly want to have a long-term engagement, because everybody knows in this industry, you have to have re-occurring revenue in order to keep your lights on, in order to be scalable, in order to grow, right?
So you wanna be talking to them about a holistic strategy, not just a website build, and I’m giving it in phases, so I’m giving it in phase one, market and keyword research, $400 to $600, build a new website, $6,500 to $10,000. Phase two is gonna be ongoing support, that $99 a month, this is where you get into the monthly re-occurring revenue, or MRR, monthly digital marketing inside of Facebook for $300, not including your ad spend, so whatever it costs to boost posts, whatever it costs to run campaigns would be above and beyond that. This $300 is just for you to create the ads and manage the ads, kinda cool, huh?
What you’re doing though is you’re kind of establishing the opportunity for this client to opt out, and say to you, oh, no, no, no, I don’t wanna spend that money, or you’re giving them an opportunity to see an upsell moment of them going oh gosh, I didn’t realize you could do that for that inexpensive, I’m on board. And then we remind him just a little bit of why we’re phasing this out, and why we’re suggesting digital marketing.
Remember that your website is really just the foundation. You’ll wanna push the site to rank high on Google. You’ll also wanna be actively pursuing customers in social networks. This would be an entry-level budget. We can always look to increase our scope as we see the growing results.
So here’s what I want you to do here in this language, you’re suggesting to him that there’s going to be a successful push after the fact.
Once the website is launched, you’re gonna see these great results, you’ll probably wanna increase the budget, and our relationship will only get better. You are starting to build that conversation of trust, and then we say this.
If this is within your budget needs, please reply back and I’ll work up an official proposal for you to share with your full team. I’ll be able to break down the cost even more for a detailed view of tasks and timeline.
Notice that I did not say, but if this isn’t in your budget we can always lower the cost, right? We’re not gonna give him that mindset. We’re not gonna even put that thought out there. We just want him to reply back and let us know where he’s landing. And then we say, I look forward to improving your online marketing, so we’re coming back to the fact that he needs some improvement.
We’re reiterating this first point of pain up here that it needs to have improvement, we wanna be that solution, and then what you’re also saying to him is, I can give you something more official looking, but basically, I don’t wanna spend my time if this is nowhere in your budget, make sense?
I guarantee you, the frustration that you’ve had in putting together these RFPs and trying to reach out to people and engage with people certainly just is a total waste of time. Doing little steps like this, little touchpoints allows you to do two things. One, not waste your time, but two respond back a lot more quickly than your competitors will to that potential customer because you can type up a quick email example like this in just a matter of minutes. You can even have this kind of sitting somewhere where you copy and paste it out to the customer, be certain that it’s specific to their needs, but then send that out with just a matter of minutes of being on a phone call with them and it makes it look like you’re extremely, extremely responsive.
Hopefully, Jake would’ve replied back with, gosh, Kori, I think this would work. I’d love to see these in further detail. Then I would go take my time, work into my proposal, get it all out with letterhead and everything really written out with some of the legal conversation, and get that sent to him.
I hope this helps y’all, if you have further advice, feedback into your process and how you’re improving things, please put them in the comments below and share with the community. I’ll see you next WordPress Wednesday, be sure to subscribe. ‘Bye, y’all.
Are you looking for website customers as a freelancer or small agency? Kori Ashton is the CEO of WebTegrity and has grown her team from her living room couch to over a million dollar revenue a year in just 5 short years. She’s able to help you better understand how to find customers so you can do the same.
Full Transcript
Hey, y’all, my name is Kori Ashton, and welcome to another WordPress Wednesday. Today we’re gonna be looking at how to find your customers. So a lot of you watching my channel are freelancers, or maybe you’re small agencies, and you’re looking to advance and grow your WordPress agency. Well, I’m here to help you better understand how I’ve done that here with WebTegrity using these avenues to find customers.
And of course, this is gonna be brought to you by pressable.com. If y’all are, in fact, freelancers and agencies, you have another opportunity to increase your monthly revenue with your ongoing customers, with your clients by giving them premium hosting. You should be looking at pressable.com as that hosting solution. They’re incredible and they have amazing support.
Networking – Meetups
All right, so what are some areas that you might be able to go to this coming year, this coming month, this coming week, even, and find some new customers? Well, I’m gonna show you the very first thing is to network inside of Meetups. Did you know that WordPress themselves offers Meetups all around the world in your local area? Go to meetup.com. I’ll put the link below.
You can check out where they’re running Meetup groups, and there might be other things inside of your area. There might be small business groups. There might be marketing groups. There might be all sorts of different resources that you can find inside of Meetup, and attend these networking sessions totally for free to go be a part and pass out your business cards, helping people understand who you are and what you can provide.
Join Associations
The next thing is I’m gonna challenge you to join associations. Now these might actually require a little bit of money, a little bit of an investment on your part to go join, but I’m telling you right now that we did that very early on, and it paid off big time.
Some of these associations, like a small business citywide association puts on these ribbon cutting ceremonies for local businesses when they open their doors. You, as a member of these associations, are invited to those opportunities, to go network with that brand new business in your area.
It’s a phenomenal opportunity to not only show support for that business in their grand opening moment, but also, for you to engage with them, tell them hey, if you need any help with your current website, I’d like to be your solution to that, or if you’re looking to do ongoing social media marketing or search engine optimization, I’d love to help you get found and engage your customers. Maybe we can set up a time after it kinda dies down with all this great excitement of your grand opening. Makes sense, huh? You’re not only there to celebrate, but you’re also there to sell.
Vertical Opportunities
Another thing is to find a vertical. So this is something we did early on, as well, that made a difference. We very quickly found that realtors needed a lot of help, so we figured out how to speak their language, understand what their points of pain were, and how to integrate with IDX, right? How to find MLS listings. So we went and did all of that, and we started being consistently able to land more and more realtors.
Then we went and looked at churches. Now, they don’t always have the largest budgets, but they’re very consistent with paying you, and they’re usually great with responding back to you in time, so you’re able to turn a project very quickly. So any sort of small nonprofits, or faith-based organizations in your area, I would look at finding those verticals.
Another vertical we went after were anything to do with animal-related things, like veterinarian hospitals, or local shelters or anything like that. We were able to go in, help them build out a few websites, and then all of a sudden, after you have one or two, you’re able to communicate with a few others in town and say, hey, we’ve already built for these folks, we’ve already built for these folks. We would like to come show you what we think we can do for you.
So super cool to have verticals, and show that you’re an expert in an industry.
Giving Back To The Community
Another opportunity is to give back. You guys, I cannot stress enough how important it is to give back to your local community. Whether you can find a young Codeup group that’s trying to learn code, and you go and you speak at these events, or you go teach at these events, you go find a high school, and you start teaching there on the side, in a summer program.
Give back your time. I guarantee you, the karma will come full circle. There will be a moment that somebody’s parent is watching you teach a class, and they go, gosh, this gal knows a lot about her stuff. I’m gonna hire her for my company to do my website. Of course, that’s not why we’re doing it, but I’m telling you, those opportunities just kind of spring up really cool in those moments, so be certain to give back.
Another thing we did was while we were finding those nonprofit niches, we were speaking to those communities, we started to dedicate our time and donate our time, so we would give back a website build a month. Now that might be too much for you. You might say, well, I wanna do one a quarter. That’s fine. Give an opportunity back to your community, and I promise you, it’ll come full circle. And then, again, we want to just educate, educate, educate.
So I’m challenging you to set up, maybe go back to those associations, those local associations, and set up an opportunity to go in and speak to small businesses on how to improve their online marketing strategy, right? You become the expert in that moment. You’re giving away education, you’re showing them your expertise, and I promise you, they’re gonna look at you as the expert in that field, they’re gonna wanna hire you in some capacity, even if it’s just consulting. There’s opportunity there if you’re offering that education.
Referrals With Incentives
And, of course, there’s always referrals. Now y’all might be saying, gosh, I’ve already, you know, fully extended the capabilities of my current customers, but maybe you can incentivize them. Maybe there’s an opportunity for you to say to them, hey, I’ll give you a free month hosting if you bring me a new client this month. Right? So work with them on how to give back to them, if they’re paying it forward to you. I’m sure that a lot of you have ideas, as well.
As you are freelancers, and you are small agencies, if you do, would you add to the thread below in the comments, and just say maybe where you’ve engaged or been able to find customers in your networking opportunities? Of course, there’s always paid marketing. You can go inside of Facebook and run ads, you can go inside of Google, and run ads, LinkedIn and run ads. There’s opportunities like that, but I think there’s nothing better than boots on the ground, face to face, a good old-fashioned handshake and networking with people to really start to grow that trust, and grow your brand name inside your local community.
I hope you’re having a great WordPress Wednesday. Be sure to subscribe and if you like stuff like this, conversation about agencies, conversation about growing your freelancer strategy, and how to improve your pricing, how to improve your cashflow, how to grow your team, I’ve got all sorts of resources. Again, I’ll put those in the links below. Hope you’re having a great one. See y’all next WordPress Wednesday. Bye, y’all.
If you’re looking for a live chat option on your WordPress website, Kori Ashton shows you three different plugins. Some of these have totally free options – which is always in the budget. Remember that using a live chat feature on your website could increase sales and engagement. It’s a simple plugin to add a powerful feature. Each of these live chat plugins offer support and resources to learn how to customize and use their platforms.
Full Transcript
Hey, y’all, my name’s Kori Ashton. Happy WordPress Wednesday, I hope you’re having a great one. Today I wanna walk you through three different options to include a live chat feature inside of your WordPress website. It’s gonna be easy, let’s go take a look.
The question actually came in on my YouTube channel, on a video from Pradeesh Ravi. Sorry if I’m not pronouncing your name incorrectly, but I so appreciate you just taking a minute to give kind feedback or a question, it’s really cool. And he’s asking me here,
“Your videos have been very useful in maintaining my website. Do you have any suggestion as to which plugin to use in order to enable live chat on my website? This way I could reach out to the customer the moment they visit them.”
So I love this question. I know a lot of you probably want to engage your customers as they’re visiting your website, in real-time conversation.
How do you do that efficiently?
How do you do that budget-consciously?
What do you use?
What tools do you use?
I’m happy to report that there are three that I have vetted, I know the reviews on, and I can tell you right now, we’ve got some options in the budget of free.
Live Chat Plugin – Zendesk Chat
The first one I am most familiar with is Zendesk Chat. It used to be called Zopim. That’s when I was using it for most of my clients. This is a really great, great resource for you, especially if you only need one operator communicating with your customers.
It has really good analytics, super ridiculously easy to install, you can customize it to match the colors on your website, really really easy, and again, it’s in that budget of free option.
So what you would do is come over here to the actual plugin, or you’d go to your dashboard and go to plugins and click add new. And you’re able to just come install the plugin that they created that Zendesk has, for WordPress. And it plugs right into your website.
Again, there’s a free option, so we love that, that’s always in the budget. And it’s free for the life of the use of the tool, as long as you meet the requirements of, I think it’s one user, so you wanna have just one operator speaking back and forth. And then you only get to keep a 14-day chat history. So you have to just kind of be aware of how you’re using this tool.
Of course, they have upgrade options. If you have a budget in the range of 20 dollars, you’re really gonna be able to have a lot more options open up for you.
Live Chat Plugin – Live Chat
The second one we can look at has great reviews as well. It’s called LiveChat, and they also have a plugin that you can use, and just drop right into your WordPress website. So you see here that it has 20 plus active installs, it’s been updated recently, and you wanna just be sure that it’s been tested with your most recent version of WordPress. So currently it’s been tested up with the famous 5.0.
They do have an option for you to do a free trial, but it is a fully paid system moving forward. Here’s what I want you to do, though. Look at the different features and try to understand what it is that you might be needing. And if you say, “Well I’ve never had a live chat feature before, I don’t know what I need,” then start with a budget of free, and see if that meets your needs. I would suggest again, trying out Zendesk Chat, just to see if that meets your needs.
If you want more robust data, if you want the ability to have more operators on your team, if you wanna be able to keep the chat history longer, whatever that looks like. You’ll start to know that over time. And what you won’t do is waste your budget.
Live Chat Plugin – WP Live Chat Support
So be sure to look at both of these, LiveChat and Zendesk Chat, and the third one that I’ve looked at is WP Live Chat Support. Now this one has over 60,000 installs, has great reviews, and it has been tested again with Gutenberg 5.0, so that’s exciting to see that they’re already that up to date and current with their code. Very exciting stuff, and really, really good for you to use.
Also, it has unlimited live chat agents. So very, very cool options here. These are the three I’ll suggest to you, and of course, I will always put all the links in the description box below, so that you can easily access these three. You just go into your WordPress dashboard, go to plugins, and click add new. That’s where you’re gonna find all of these living, because they already have plugins specifically for WordPress.
Remember you need to be on the self-hosted version of WordPress in order to do this. Something you absolutely wanna keep in mind is that you can improve your sales, you can increase your sales, they say up to about 30 percent more, if you’re able to watch when a visitor lands on your website, and engage with them as soon as possible, answering their questions quickly, confirming that you are the professional service or product that they’re looking for.
It’s very exciting to see how you can utilize live chat. The other great thing about it is, a lot of times if you’re away from your desk, and you need to access that conversation, you can just get a notification on your phone, and you’ll be able to sit right there and chat with the customer while you’re out and about.
This is a great, great resource for small to medium-sized businesses that don’t have a large team to monitor this, and just to sit at your computer all day long. Hope this helps, y’all, and thanks again for sending in the question. It’s very kind of you to give great feedback, it’s very much an encouragement to me. I will see y’all next WordPress Wednesday. Bye everyone.
Have you ever thought about displaying the content that the user enters on a form out onto the website page or inside of their email for their own records to print? Kori Ashton shows you two ways to display form content, that a user submits, using Gravity Forms on your WordPress website.
Full Transcript
Hey y’all. Welcome to another WordPress Wednesday. My name is Kori Ashton and I had another really great question come in asking me how do you display the fields that have been submitted on Gravity Forms for your end user to review? Or to see, to print?
There are a couple options already available for moving your content into a PDF for them and I’ll put the link to that in the description box below. I’ve already done a tutorial on that, but if you would like to show your end user, the person, the customer that submitted the content to you, exactly what they’ve done you’ve got two different ways of giving that, them that information. I’ll show this to you right now.
And of course, I’m talking about Gravity Forms, which is my favorite form builder. I have an entire playlist dedicated to this form builder, which is a premium solution. Which means you have to pay for this plugin to be used on your WordPress website, but it is worth every single penny. If you haven’t purchased it yet would you please consider using my affiliate link? I would appreciate that. I’ll put that in the description box below as well.
So let me show you two different ways that you can display the content that your user enters on Gravity Forms.
Gravity Form – Notifications By Default
First of all, you’re gonna jump into the form that you want to display. For now, I just have this one here and I’ve already got it living on a page here as well. So, I’ll show you the front side of this so that you can see the form. It has some conditional logic. This works, by the way, on any type of form inside of Gravity Forms. So survey, conditional logic, a simple form doesn’t matter. This type of feature you can apply anywhere. So, the form is already filled out for me here. Excellent. I’m gonna go ahead and click Submit Information. So by default, it can just have a confirmation message live there, right? It can say, “Thank you so much.” It can redirect to a different page. It can redirect outside your website.
Displaying Content – Print On Screen Way
However, you want that user experience to happen. What I’d like to do is show you right here on this page that we can actually have all of their fields that they just submitted print, in a sense, print out on the screen. So how do you do that?
Going into your form itself, you’re gonna go to the Confirmations area and the default confirmation typically is set to text and you normally have something like “Thank you so much.” “We’ll get back to you within a couple of days.” Right? “Here’s the information you submitted,” is what we’ll have now.
Enter down and coming over here on the right side of your screen you see this little arrow down option. Click on that little guy and you have something that says All Fields. So when you click Save Confirmation now we go back to the front side of our website. Go back to the form itself. Click Submit. And now, “Thank you so much.” “Here’s the information you submitted.” And it has every single field with all their details living right here.
So if they wanted to, you could give them instructions to just Print Screen or download and save as PDF. However, they would want to do that for this information. Super super cool.
Displaying Content – Send to Inbox Way
If you’d like to as well, you can come into Notifications and send them all this information in their inbox. So you would say, Add New. And you would say “To the user”, right? And you would select a field, their email address that they entered. And you put in all your information here and say, “Your,” oh! “Your submitted.” If I learn how to type. “Your submitted details.” There you go. And then again, that same little drop down kinda hidden over here on the side. Hidden out in the open. All Submitted Fields and of course that would be sent to them. Same notification. So super cool options here for you. To be using really everyday inside of Gravity Forms so that you have a great user experience. This is something though that I know a lot of people wanna be able to show their consumers, their customers how do you actually get in here and display this content.
So I hope this helps. If you have questions further on this please reach out to me, but also remember since you’ve purchased a license with Gravity Forms you get free support from them. So reach out to them if they have, if you have specific questions. I’m sure they’d be excited to help you. They also have an online support community that you can get into a forum, do some hunting and searching around.
Alright y’all. Stick around with me, ’cause I have two videos coming out every single week on Mondays for Marketing Monday Minute and we also have WordPress Wednesday, every Wednesday. Be sure to subscribe. I hope you’re having a great one. Bye y’all.
If you’re looking to go even more advanced you can use Gravity Form Views. Here’s the tutorial on Gravity Forms to PDF .
