Email is an inexpensive yet highly effective channel of communication. It’s been here for a while now – it’s turning 50 in October 2021 – and its popularity doesn’t seem to be waning. Some statistics project the number of emails sent out per day in 2021 will near 320 billion. That’s over forty emails per every person alive today – a staggering number.

What’s even more mind-boggling is that a large chunk of those emails never reach the people they were aimed at. For good reason, too – there are plenty of emails that are unsolicited, harmful, or deceitful, and the place they often end up in the spam folder.

The problem with the spam folder is that the emails you send as part of your email marketing campaign can easily end up in it. This is why it’s important to understand not only how to prevent emails from going to spam, but also how it can get there in the first place.

It seems we have our work cut out for us! We’ll cover:

Why Do Emails End Up in the Spam Folder?

The most obvious answer to this question is because a spam filter caught the emails and placed them into the spam folder. Often enough, it will do it because the emails are indeed spam – they are unwanted junk emails sent out in email blasts to whoever might get them.

But what if your emails don’t fit that bill? What if they’re sent with all the intention and purpose of a highly-targeted email campaign, and they end up flagged as spam anyway? Some of the things that might have gone wrong include:

The good news is that you’ll be able to address most of the issues, if you want, either on your own or through cooperation with the email recipient. There are plenty of things you could be doing, so let’s start tackling them one by one.

Pick Your Email Service Provider Wisely

It’s common knowledge that WordPress’ email sending capabilities aren’t always up to the assignment you give them. And while you are more than welcome to dive into the reasons behind WordPress’ bad track record of mail deliverability, you would do much better to try and fix it.

Among the methods you have at your disposal is configuring SMTP for your WordPress website, which means updating it to use the latest protocol. One way to do it is by using SMTP service providers, some of which can also serve as email service providers.

Choosing a good email service provider is important because the reputable ones will do their share to help your emails reach the recipients and not the spam folders. So besides working hard to keep their record squeaky clean, they should also be able to help you set up email authentication – a very important step for helping your emails appear less spammy to spam filters. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are authentication methods your email service provider should help you use.

Get the Names Right

Two names appear in your email address – the domain name and the sender’s name. There’s no reason to try and change the domain name or otherwise mask it – you want the recipient to recognize that they’re getting the email from your website, after all.

As for the sender’s name, WordPress’ default is set to “wordpress,” which isn’t that impressive and might turn off some of the recipients. It doesn’t just look generic, it is generic. Luckily, there are more than a couple of ways to change the sender name in WordPress, and any one you use could work wonders.

Just keep in mind that, even if it doesn’t say “wordpress,” the sender name can still make your emails look spammy. Avoid names that include lots of words, gibberish, or long sequences of numbers.

Using Double Opt-In

Using double opt-in verification significantly reduces the likelihood of emails being flagged as spam for several reasons. First of all, a double opt-in confirms the validity of the subscriber’s email address, ensuring that messages are sent to active and engaged users. This practice also minimizes the chance of fake or mistyped email addresses entering the mailing list, which can trigger spam filters. Finally, double opt-in demonstrates a clear consent from the recipient, enhancing sender credibility and trustworthiness in the eyes of email service providers.

The second step of the opt-in can be a welcome or confirmation email, with a link that the users need to click on to complete the subscription, or a checkbox. If you’re using one of the emailing and newsletter services like Mailchimp or Constant Contant, you will find double opt-in among the features.

Build Your List

If you’re working with WordPress, you’ll have plenty of awesome contact form plugins to help you build your mailing list. Sure, just putting a contact form on your website might not build you a mailing list overnight, but it’s a start. You’ll still need a way to get people to the page that has the form, and you’ll still need to give them an offer that will make them give you their emails.

Still, it’s worth the effort because doing it any other way just means trouble. You should never try to buy email lists and expect to see delivery and open rates as you would with organically grown mailing lists. You shouldn’t even expect to avoid being blacklisted for long if you go down the path of buying email lists. Just don’t do it.

Respect Your Subscribers and Handle Them with Care

When you’re collecting people’s email addresses, you should notify them that they will receive emails from you in the future. It might seem like it’s common sense that you’ll take an email address so that you can send emails to it, but you should do your best to let the people know what they’re signing up for.

When you send them the first email, it’s always a good idea to ask the recipient to whitelist your email address. They can do so by adding your address to their contacts list. It only takes a second to do it, and it can save you a world of trouble later on.

Finally, you should give your email recipients a way out – the unsubscribe link or button. You want it to be visible and marked, as it’s not something that should stay hidden. If you’re choosing between having your emails marked as spam and losing a subscriber, it’s always better to lose a subscriber. When enough people mark your emails as spam, you’ll have a much harder time getting through the spam filter.

Be Mindful of the Contents

The contents of the email matter, but so does the subject line. It shouldn’t look spammy. Exclamation points, dollar signs, offers that are just so obvious and aggressive might be something to avoid. Keep it real, informative, and don’t waste people’s time.

As for the contents of the email, you should be mindful that images tend to get blocked when emails are loaded by the recipient, so try not to use too many of them. Make sure that the subject and the contents match. The contents should be written plainly, using proper grammar, and with no spelling errors.

Dynamic scripts, images that are too big, adding too many links, and a bunch of attachments won’t have the desired effects on the spam filters. On the other hand, adding your physical address – if your business has it – to the email might make you appear more trustworthy.

Keep Good Hygiene with Regular Checkups

Every single component of an email marketing campaign can and should be subject to regular checkups. Everything from your IP to the email addresses on your list and the copy you use should be reviewed and tested regularly to ensure a timely reaction in case something is wrong.

Some of the things you should be checking include:

Of course, keeping an eye on the KPIs such as open and bounce rate is equally important for gauging the success of your campaign. Remember that, if something goes wrong, you want to know about it sooner than later and address the issue promptly.

Complying with Relevant Internet Privacy Regulations

This one is not something that necessarily guarantees the delivery of the emails in the right inbox, but it can significantly affect it, as it helps bypass some IPS blocks. In the past few decades, a whole array of internet privacy laws and regulations has emerged to protect internet users and their sensitive data. One of the most important such regulations is GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) which covers the European Union and all businesses and entities having customers or visitors in the EU. Make sure to check out our guide on GDPR for WordPress, as well as the list of the best GDPR plugins.

Also important is the CCPA, which we covered in our piece on CCPA and WordPress compliance, as well as the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), and CAN-SPAM Act.

Bear in mind that compliance to these an similar regulations relative to your operations is mandatory even outside the concerns for emails ending up in spam. It’s always easier to simply adhere to them than to face legal repercussions of ignoring them.

Let’s Wrap It Up!

It’s really hard to imagine the internet without email. The technology’s older than most internet users, and it managed not to lose a smidgen of its usefulness or allure over time.

However, it’s also hard to imagine email without imagining spam emails. It’s unavoidable, but you should still do your best to prevent adding to the problem. Go through all the steps of making your emails less likely to end up in spam folders, and you’ll be doing yourself, the recipient, and the internet as a whole a huge favor.

Downtime is an integral part of having a website. Your business website, online store, or even a WordPress blog, will not be up and running one hundred percent of the time – periods of downtime are bound to happen for one reason or another.

Still, you shouldn’t let that dissuade you from doing whatever you can to prevent your WordPress website downtime. There’s a difference between a website that’s down a couple of hours a year and one that’s only up a couple of hours a year.

Before we share our tips, let’s go through some common causes of website downtime and explain why downtime matters.

What Causes Website Downtime?

The fact that your website is down doesn’t necessarily mean there’s something wrong with it. Server maintenance is a perfectly normal occurrence that can cause website downtime. Website maintenance is another cause of website downtime, and you can perform it even when nothing is wrong with the website.

Still, even these benign reasons for downtime can become an issue if they happen too often. A server that goes down for maintenance for more than a couple of hours a year isn’t good. A website that requires lots of maintenance might benefit from a serious looking into and troubleshooting.

Then, there are bad things that can happen to your website and cause it to be unreachable. It can undergo a DDoS attack. It can experience a crippling plugin incompatibility issue. You can put a piece of code on your website that just – breaks it.

Sometimes, the things you do to prevent some causes of website downtime might become causes of downtime, too. You can use a CDN to prevent DDoS attacks or lighten the server load. Then again, using a CDN can sometimes lead to a 504 gateway timeout error. Plugins are incredibly useful for optimizing your website, but they’re among the more common causes of the 503 service temporarily unavailable error. It takes skill, patience, and sometimes trial-and-error to run a website well. Downtimes can happen, and you can cause them.

Why Does Website Downtime Matter?

The simple and most obvious reason why website downtime matters is because a website that’s down can’t perform the function you gave it when you built it. A business website that’s down does nothing for your business. An online store can’t sell when it’s not online. People can’t read your blog if they can’t reach it.

But even if you’re confident that your website visitors will come back later after they found that your website is down – which you most likely shouldn’t be – you still want your website to be up and running as much as possible.

A website that doesn’t work well also doesn’t speak well of the person or entity that’s running it. If you can’t be bothered to ensure the proper running of your website, you will look unprofessional, uncommitted, and you’ll start losing your visitors’ goodwill to stick with you through any issues your website might be experiencing.

Now that you know that some website downtime is fine, but lots of website downtime is awfully bad, let’s see what you can do to minimize it. Some of the steps might be obvious but even they bear repeating because there’s nothing as easy – or as embarrassing – as overlooking something very obvious. Here’s what to do:

Use a Good Hosting Provider and an Appropriate Service Packagee

Every hosting provider worth their salt will offer some kind of a server uptime guarantee. Usually, it’s 99.9% – the golden standard which means that, in a year, they guarantee the downtime won’t surpass the eight-and-a-half-hours threshold.

One of the ways to spot a sketchy hosting provider is by looking at what they promise – if they don’t offer any guarantees, or if they guarantee absolutes. The chances of not having a single minute of downtime during a year are slim, so no provider should be able to offer a 100% server uptime guarantee.

A hosting provider shouldn’t be able to offer incredibly good packages at ridiculously low prices. That’s another red flag and one that you should take very seriously because your service package can affect downtime.

If your website doesn’t have the resources it needs to run properly with the load it usually operates under, it will go down. You should pick a hosting provider that will let you switch to better, more expensive packages as easily as possible. When more visitors start coming in, it would be best to have the option to upgrade – the alternative is migrating to another hosting provider, and that can be a hassle.

Monitor Your Website’s Uptime

Here’s one of those obvious pieces of advice we mentioned before: you need to know that your website is down to stop it from going down in the future. You have to know the problem exists to try and solve it, right? With a website, this means monitoring its uptime.

There are several monitoring options you can choose from. Some options, such as the popular UptimeRobot, are freemium. Other options, such as Pingdom, are fee-only. While pricing is an important thing to consider, as these services with small fees tend to pile up after a time and present a sizeable expense, it’s much more important that you get the type of service you need.

For example, a free service might check your website a couple of times a day and send you an email if something is wrong, or a report stating your website’s status for the day. If that’s fine with you, great. But if that doesn’t suffice, and you need things like push notifications or SMS alerts and a more frequent check, then you should make sure you get those services even if it means spending a couple of bucks more on your website every month.

Be Careful with Plugins and Themes

Plugins and themes are a huge part of what makes using WordPress great. They can transform your website from a bland, featureless collection of pages on the web to a powerful tool for growing a business, making money, or finding new ways of self-expression.

That being said, plugins and themes are a common culprit for website downtime. Why? Because they have code, and some code doesn’t play well with other code. Incompatibility issues happen all the time. You should catch them before they do some real damage.

There are a couple of things you can do to avoid issues with plugins and themes. The easiest one would be to go through the plugin’s or theme’s documentation, reviews, or support tickets – if you can access them – and see if there are known issues.

You can also create a staging site – a copy of your website that’s not available to the public – and test any plugin or theme or even a setting before you implement it on your live website. Finally, choosing premium plugins and themes will sometimes give you access to support personnel, so you can have help when troubleshooting issues.

Keep Your Website Fully Optimized…

Your website might be up and running, but people still might have trouble accessing it. Slow loading times can cause people to think the website isn’t up. Bad internal links might cause some people to think that parts of the website don’t work. Badly optimized websites might contribute to some client-side errors that can cause people to not be able to access the website.

In general, if you’re running a WordPress website or any other kind of website, speed should be a major concern. You want your website to load as quickly and easily as possible because visitors might not be too keen on waiting for a slow website to load.

There are other reasons to optimize the website, too. But the bottom line is that this part of the work contributes to your website’s proper functioning and it will, either directly or indirectly, contribute to reducing downtime – actual as well as perceived.

…And Safe

Finally, you should do your best to keep your website safe, not only for your benefit but also for the benefit of all the people who use it. If you store sensitive data or process payments on your website, any neglect in the safety department might lead to real, palpable, damage to the people who’ve put their trust in you to keep their information safe.

It shouldn’t be pointed out that having a malware-free website is a good thing, and that using security plugins is a very good allocation of your resources. If you find your website is often under DDoS attacks, using services that offer DDoS protection – as some CDNs do – can help your website stay online despite the attacks.

You should also follow some safety and security best practices. You can, for example, limit login attempts as a measure against brute force attacks. You can also backup your website regularly – if something does happen, you’ll have a much easier time restoring your website to normal if there’s a backup you can use. Putting up a firewall can prevent suspicious traffic. There’s plenty you could do, and you should do whatever you can to keep your website safe.

Perform Regular Maintenance

Regular monitoring is a must, but these things can easily slip through the cracks especially in peak times when there’s a lot of other work to be done. That’s why it’s handy to come up with some sort of maintenance routine to be performed regularly, perhaps with a calendar alert to remind you. A lot of tasks can be scheduled and even automated, but you definitely want to be on top of things and creating a maintenance routine schedule can be very helpful.

The schedule can be weekly, monthly, or even daily. That’s really up to you and your website’s needs. Complex websites that get a lot of traffic and are prone to sudden spikes, such as eCommerce websites, probably need to perform maintenance checks more frequently. Smaller websites, like personal blogs, as well as portfolios, can even do it quarterly.

The maintenance routine should contain the following steps:

Distribute the Traffic Load

One of the most common reasons for website downtime is traffic overload. Traffic spikes are common for all sorts of websites, perhaps most notably for news and eCommerce ones, as they are prone to seasonal or circumstantial spikes when the traffic becomes much heavier than usual.

When this happens, the server can’t handle all the requests coming in at the same time, which may result in your website going temporarily down.

The fix for this problem is not something you can do with your website as such, and actually depends on your hosting plan. If you want to make sure your website can handle increased traffic load and to successfully scale up and down as needed, you need a hosting provider that has a global network of servers. With servers located strategically all across the globe, the content of the website is distributed to the users from the server that is nearest to them. Plus, if one data center experiences an issue or becomes overloaded, the content can still be served from another location. Combined with CDN, this guarantees excellent uptime and ensures your website can be accessed at all times, despite the traffic and server circumstances.

Let’s Wrap It Up!

While WordPress website downtime is something you can count on, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do everything you can to ensure your website is online as much as it can be. People usually create websites to put them online, and if yours isn’t an exception to the rule – you’ll have to take steps to prevent and reduce downtime.

Keep in mind, however, that running a website well is a balancing act, and there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Going overboard with safety plugins – installing too many of them – might become a cause of downtime in its own right. So, make sure that you’ve covered all the corners and spread around the downtime-combating measures evenly.

There are billions upon billions of possible domain names. The number of existing domain names is in the hundreds of millions. What are the chances to have your preferred domain name taken when you go to the registrar? Math would say slim.

Experience, however, proves otherwise. Coming up with a combination of letters and numbers is one thing. Making sure the combination produces a good domain name is a completely different process. There are simply not that many good ones to choose from.

This is exactly why it’s possible that, when checking domain names, you’ll find that someone has already registered your top picks. These things happen. We’ll show you, however, what your options are if it happens to you.

You’ll read about:

How to Check If a Domain Name Is Available

When you want to create a website and you’re trying to figure out that perfect name for it, you’d be smart to come up with a couple of ideas in case one of them is already taken. You can figure out the name is taken during the brainstorming or research process if you simply type the domain name into your browser’s address bar and press enter.

Three things can happen. You can visit a website, which means that your domain name is taken. You can be directed to an error page, which likely means your domain name is free for you to grab. Finally, you can be served a sales page asking you to contact whoever owns the domain name and has put it up for sale.

If you worry that visiting an unknown website poses a security risk, you can check website availability at websites such as Whois.com, a tool you might want to remember because we’ll come back to it in a moment or two. Also, some hosting providers that work as registrars might offer you to look up the domain name of your choosing online without going to the website.

In the case of bad news, which can be any news except that your preferred domain name is free to use, you can continue further in two ways. You can either do whatever you can to keep the name, or you can find hacks or alternatives that might work. Let’s explore both options a little bit.

What to Do If You Want to Keep the Name?

When you want to use a domain name that is already taken, your first course of action would be to figure out who owns it. Head back over to Whois.com and type in the address. If the contact information of the owner is available – if it’s not made private – you’ll be able to see it and contact the owner directly. If not, maybe the website itself will have some contact information about the seller.

How to Handle the Purchase of a Second-Hand Domain Name

If they’re willing to sell – great, you only have to navigate buying a domain name from a person or company you’ve only ever met online. Usually, this means using services that will help you make the exchange.

A service like Escrow can help. You and the seller agree on the terms and then you put your money in escrow at Escrow. The seller then transfers the domain name to you – something every registrar has a procedure for, you check and approve the domain name, and they get the money.

What to Do if You Can’t Purchase the Website?

Things get more complicated if they’re not willing to sell. In that case, you might try to get your lawyers involved and sue the owner for cybersquatting. Depending on how it’s handled legally in your country, you might be able to win the suit, but only if you prove that they’ve infringed on your trademark, or are generally sitting on the domain name with bad intent.

If you don’t want to get your lawyers involved, or if you simply can’t find out who the owner is, you can try purchasing the domain name with an alternative TLD. So instead of .com – we’ll suppose you went straight for it, as you always should – you can try buying the .org or .net version of the website. Keep in mind, however, that this can lead to some confusion and maybe even brand dilution.

Also keep in mind that people trust .com domains more than any other. A lot of country code TLDs are perceived as spammy (this is particularly the case with .cn and .ru). But then, there are country codes like .me that can be perfect for certain brands. TLDs like .tv are great for businesses from the entertainment, video or gaming industry. Extensions like .net, .tech and .store are also popular, trusted and can make a great fit for a variety of businesses.

In some cases, you might even manage to split your domain name into two and use the second half as the top-level domain. So, for example, you can get examp.le instead of example.com. Again, this might cause some confusion and it might work better if the domain name is made up of two words.

No Luck? Pick an Alternative

For one reason or another, you can also decide to avoid the hustle of figuring out how to get the perfect name and choose an alternative. This can be an exceedingly difficult decision if the domain name you wanted is your brand name, too, but these things happen often, and brands find ways to work around them.

You don’t want to use a name that has absolutely nothing to do with your business, blog, or whatever you tried to register. There still has to be some kind of connection to the original idea.

Expand the Original Domain Name

There are certain words you can add to the original domain name that wouldn’t distract from its meaning – they might even serve to amplify it. The exact thing you can add will vary based on the domain name, the type of business, the industry, and a whole lot of other factors.

But let’s say your domain name of choice was “something.” You can expand the domain name by adding an appropriate verb, such as “dosomething” or “buysomething” or “readsomething” and “makesomething.”

Use Related Words

There are also several kinds of related words that might work as a domain name instead of your brand or business name. Again, these will work better for some brands and businesses than others, but they still might be worth a shot.

You can, for example, use a keyword instead of the brand name. So instead of “something” you can use “beststoreinlondon,” for example, or “orlandoplumber.” In this case, the name of your business doesn’t have to match the name of the domain.

If there’s a way to make a word out of the original domain name that’s similar and brandable, you might also try to do that. So, for a magazine that’s called “something,” the website can have the domain name “somethingians.” You can let your imagination run wild, but you should always make sure that it ties somehow to the brand, business, product, or industry.

Add Location to Name

This is not a solution that can fit all brands or businesses, but it can work great for many. If you’re looking for a domain name to start a website related to a business with physical locations, like a shop, a bar, a restaurant or a cafe, a local output of a big company or franchise, you can only benefit from adding the name of the city, country or neighborhood to the name. It is good for SEO and it is good for user experience since it provides more complete information than just the name.

For instance, if you have a pet store named Paws, and it’s located in Prague, and paws dot com is, as expected, taken, you can go for pawsprague dot com, or even pawsinprague.

It’s even easier if you’re operating in an entire country or region – pawseurope or pawsgreece dot com are quite solid domain names.

Look Into Domain Hacking Options

Although it sounds like something not quite lawful or right (and it shouldn’t be confused with domain hijacking), domain hacking is actually a legitimate practice. It consists of creating a domain name that’s a combination of a word, phrase or name, and the extension, ie. of the adjacent levels of the domain name, to create a name that suggests a word. An example will explain it better – for instance, the WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has a blog with the domain name www.ma.tt. The .tt extension is the official ccTLD of Trinidad and Tobago. Clever, right?

The Montenegro ccTLD .me is a particularly productive one, and a lot of brands already use it: even Facebook has an URL version fb.me, then there’s WordPress with wp.me that redirects to wordpress.com, and a particularly smart one is ti.me, used by the famous news magazine.

Another good one is the top level country code TLD for Lybia: .ly. It’s particularly popular with lifestyle, fashion and cosmetics brands, but in a lot of other industries, too – just think of bit.ly. If you’re based in the US, but even if you’re not, you could also look into .us, to create a domain nam consisting of an adjective ending in -ous, like delicious, righteous, gorgeous, etc.

Let’s Wrap It Up!

Domain names are important, and you needn’t look further than the reseller industry for proof. When you’re choosing yours, make sure you have a couple of alternatives. If you go to the registrar determined to get one name and it turns out to be taken, you can end up signing yourself up for an unpleasant and maybe even expensive ride. It might be much better to show some flexibility – something that even big brands had to do when faced with a domain sitter who wouldn’t budge.

Landing pages are powerful tools usually made with one goal in mind – to make a conversion. These types of pages have the purpose of getting the viewers to focus on one specific objective and encourage them to take action by offering them a concrete solution – before they have a chance to click away. The final goal is usually to make a profit by turning casual visitors into actual, paying customers or clients, or reach whatever other business bottom line. So, no matter if you offer a digital or physical product, a webinar, a free demo of any sort, or something else entirely, you should consider using a landing page to achieve your marketing-oriented goals.

Now, as in many other cases of content marketing, the basis of every converting landing page is a persuasive and well-written copy. Namely, if the copy you produce doesn’t manage to incite users to take the desired action, this can be detrimental to your conversion rate.

Of course, the design of your landing page matters a great deal, too. Using appropriate images and colors, adding your logo, emphasizing your headline and CTA – all this serves to enhance the visual identity of your brand and highlight the copy itself. The design and the page copy are inherently connected, so making sure that they work well together is vital for the success of your conversions.

This time around, however, we’ve decided to focus on the ways in which you can take care of the landing page copy in particular. So without further ado, here are some useful writing tips that will help you generate a compelling and actionable copy for your landing page and skyrocket your conversions:

Do Not Use AI

It’s a bit awkward having to stress this, but a surprising amount of copywriters and content editors rely a bit too much on AI chatbots and other tools for writing website copy. Ever since the big breakthrough of ChatGPT in 2022, starting the so-called “AI boom” we’ve been witnessing a surge in writing assistants like Jasper, Gemini, Copy.ai, Writesonic and others, most of which appear or promise to be useful in writing landing page and other web copy.

AI tools can be good for some purposes: for instance, there are several ways in which bloggers can use and benefit from AI, from research to proofreading and beyond. AI can be used for generating text to video, and they can make solid chatbot plugins for WordPress. There’s a lot you can do with AI tools but writing landing page copy is not one of them. Or, at least, it really shouldn’t be.

The landing page is an extremely important asset for conversion, brand identity, SEO and UX. It’s your crucial piece of material for reaching your target audiences and getting them to perform the desired action. It’s also vital for expanding the reach, for establishing trust and sending a clear and unique message. You definitely don’t want to entrust this sensitive and important task to a tool that starts every piece with “In today’s digital landscape…”

The main thing about using AI tools like ChatGPT successfully is to feed them the right prompts. However, even with the right prompts, they are highly likely to output extremely generic content, phrases that have been repeated so many times they are no longer perceived as messages, and unbacked claims. Since they’re pretty widely used, people are already getting a hang of what their copy sounds like, so it’s fairly easy to recognize that something has been written by AI. And if your landing page sounds and looks like it’s been AI-generated, what sort of impression is that supposed to make on the visitors? Not a very good one, for sure.

So, however tempted you get, do not use AI for your landing page copy. Just put in some effort and write your own and we promise it will be a thousand times better than anything a run-of-the-mill piece of AI could ever write.

Create an Attention-Grabbing Headline

As in many other types of online copy, headline is the key element of your landing page that can make or break your conversions. Since your headline is often the only thing the visitors will truly focus on when viewing a landing page, it can also be your only selling point. After all, the headline should represent your main message, in a way, which is all the more reason to take extra care when creating it.

While there are numerous ways in which you can generate a captivating headline (as well as many headline analyzer tools that can help you out), there are some general rules you should stick to for the best possible results. These include:

Of course, you can (and should, for that matter) also add a subheadline right underneath that will further support your headline’s main message. Here you can offer any additional info related to your offer. You can explain in more detail what the service or product does, as well list any other reason (or reasons) why they should use it in the first place.

Emphasize the Benefits in Your Copy

While it’s totally okay to mention the final “solution” your products or services may bring to users, we advise you to put extra focus on the actual benefits instead. What we mean by this is that people usually know what “solution” is. Therefore, if you ask us, you should focus on creating a landing page copy that is all about offering a strong value proposition to potential customers.

The best way to do this is to list and describe the benefits of your product or service clearly and explain exactly how they are valuable to your customers. Say that you’re offering food products meant to help people lose weight in a healthy way. The “solution” in this case would be “food products that help people lose weight”, but you can also emphasize all (or most) of the benefits of using your product. For example, you can mention that it will reduce the risk of getting certain diseases, help them get better sleep, get more energy, boost their immune system, and so on.

There are also multiple ways in which you can list the benefits of your offer. For example, you can include them by using quotes from your satisfied customers (more on that later), insert one of the most important benefits into your headline (like we mentioned in the beginning), and so on. You can even use a bulleted list if you want to be as concise as possible while providing all the important info at the same time – which brings us to our next point.

Be Concise

The truth is, people have no time to read every piece of content they find on the web in full detail – and the same applies to your landing pages. Most people want to get to the information fast, which is why many of them engage in so-called speed reading, or even scanning of the text to find its most important bits. For this reason, it’s always important to create scannable content, no matter if you’re writing for a blog post or a landing page copy.

The general rule of thumb would be to use clear, concise sentences when crafting the copy of your landing page. Try describing your product or service, as well as its benefits using fewer words that are easy to understand in general. If you want, you can also achieve this using the above-mentioned bulleted lists, for example.

Alternatively, you can mention only the most essential features of your product or service and then mention them more than once throughout your landing page (in your headline, in the CTA, etc.). By doing this, you ensure that the “scanners” don’t miss out on the important bits of your offer without throwing them off with too much info either.

Include Testimonials

When it comes to converting landing page copy, sometimes there’s no better way to present your offer than to let the customers do the talking. We suggest using customer testimonials in your landing page copy as they can help contribute to the credibility and value of your offer. This way, you have a chance to mention the most important aspects of your products and services while being genuine at the same time.

Testimonials, which are rather easy to add, especially if you use a testimonials plugin, can be presented in a form of a video or textual quote. They can come from your social media networks (like Twitter or Instagram), comments on your blog posts, and any other online interactions. You can place them as the centerpiece of your landing page (they can even be a part of your headline), below your headline and subheadline, or even at the bottom – your choices are practically limitless.

Add a Clear Call-to-Action (CTA)

A Call to Action (or CTA) is a key element of every copy that has a goal to convert. A solid CTA helps ease the customer journey and contains a clear message that indicates what step you want them to take next. In fact, we’d go as far as to say that all your copy should be made with this message in mind, as making conversions is the main reason why you created a landing page in the first place. Do you want your visitors to buy a product from you, download an e-book, use your service, or simply want them to learn more about what you have to offer? Take your ultimate goal into consideration, and then create an actionable CTA in accordance with that.

Speaking of a converting call to action, you mustn’t forget to focus on the copy of the CTA button itself either. Namely, CTA buttons are among the first things that visitors notice when glancing upon a page, so make sure they contain a verb that suggests immediate action and clearly lets visitors know what you want them to do (like buy, download, etc.). You should also try creating a sense of urgency and encourage users to really click on that button by adding a word like “now” next to your action verb. Finally, don’t forget to design your CTA button in a way that will make it instantly visible on your page, as this can largely contribute to your conversions as well.

Use the Power of Statistics to Your Advantage

When it comes to creating a convincing landing page, numbers can make all the difference. We suggest that you provide statistics related to your offer, but do so in a way that will best resonate with your audience. Say that you have an environmentally-friendly product or service, for example. Instead of offering a percentage of reduced carbon emissions that can be achieved by using it, you can be even more specific by displaying the number of trees people can save if they use your products instead. By giving a more vivid mental description and combining it with a clear number, you can make your offer more relatable and can really inspire them to make a purchase.

Write for Humans

Maybe you’d think that this goes without saying, but some marketers actually forget this simple rule – write your landing page copy for humans, and not for machines. What we mean by that is that you should try and keep the tone in your copy as natural-sounding as possible. You can achieve this by avoiding any overly complicated language and aiming to write as you speak in your everyday life. Also, try using shorter sentences and don’t hesitate to throw in casual phrasing here and there. Using a conversational tone rather than a robotic one will definitely resonate better with your visitors and thus has the real potential to raise your conversions.

Conclusion

The goal behind every successful landing page is to lead the visitors and encourage them to take action in order to boost conversions and increase sales. And to do all that, producing a captivating landing page copy is crucial. So, go ahead – make sure to generate some killer headlines, properly emphasize the benefits of your offer, be as concise as possible, and don’t forget to include a clearly noticeable and actionable CTA. If you follow these principles, you will have much greater chances of turning those visitors into customers and making profit.

Feeling the pulse of your audience and paying attention to what they have to say about your products and services are major prerequisites for business success. By asking for your clients’ feedback, listening to it, and then acting on it, you will establish and maintain a strong relationship with your customers. They will keep coming back to you and trusting you more than competitors as long as you are attentive to their needs, providing them with a superior customer experience. At the same time, their loyalty to your brand will grow, allowing you to stay in the business for a long time. In this article, we’re explaining the importance of feedback and showing you how to add a client feedback form in WordPress.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

Types and Forms of Customer Feedback

Customer feedback refers to the opinions, comments, and suggestions provided by customers regarding their experiences with a product, service, or brand. This feedback provides valuable insights for businesses to understand customer satisfaction levels, identify areas for improvement, and enhance their offerings.

There are several types of feedback. Constructive feedback provides useful and/or actionable suggestions for improvement. Positive feedback highlights what customers appreciate about the product or service, while negative feedback points out areas of dissatisfaction or disappointment. By actively soliciting and attentively analyzing customer feedback, businesses can foster stronger relationships with their customers and continually refine their offerings to better meet customer needs and expectations.

Some of the most popular and most efficient ways to gather feedback include surveys, customer interviews, customer ratings and reviews, user testing, Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys, focus groups, social media listening and more. But for businesses with websites, the absolutely easiest, most common and convenient way to hear what your clients have to say are feedback forms. And that’s precisely what we’re going to focus on in this article. Before we show you how to do about it the easy way (which in WordPress usually means – with a plugin) using two user-friendly solutions – WPForms and Contact Form 7.

Why Should You Add a Client Feedback Form to Your Site

When you encourage customers to share their thoughts, likes, dislikes, wants, and expectations with you, you’re sending them a message that their voice matters. They feel important because you value their opinion. By addressing their feedback and showing them you are committed to improving your business, you gain their trust. They will keep coming back to you because you make them feel heard and you genuinely care about customer satisfaction.

On the other hand, client feedback helps you understand how others perceive your brand. You discover what your strengths are and whether you can somehow further augment their power. At the same time, you also learn what the pain points of your business are. That gives you an opportunity to take action, strategize, become better at what you do, as well as meet or even exceed customers’ expectations.

Now, let’s see how you can add a client feedback form to your site using plugins.

How to Display a Client Feedback Form Using WPForms Lite

WPForms is one of the most popular contact form plugins. It includes a myriad of features and a practical drag & drop form builder that facilitates the process of form creation.

To add a client feedback form to your site, you don’t have to purchase a premium plan. Instead, you can use WPForms lite i.e. the free version of the plugin.

Creating the Feedback Form With the WPForms Lite Plugin

After installing and activating the plugin, you will find a new item in your dashboard menu, called WPForms. Navigate to that item and select Add New. This will open a screen where you can name your form and select a template. You will note that the plugin offers two sets of feedback form templates – Customer Feedback and HR Feedback. However, most of them (except for the Feature Request template) are pro templates, so we’re going to head back to the initial panel and select the Simple Contact Form.

Clicking on the template will open the template editing screen. Here you’ll find some fields already inserted, and in the left-hand side menu you can pick among the standard fields to add. For instance, you can add checkboxes or multiple-choice fields, as well as CAPTCHA. The “Fancy Fields” are, obviously, available on the pro plans only. There’s also a selection of payment option fields.

We’re going to add a Multiple Choice field to our form. If you want one too, simply drag and drop the field where you wish.

Click on the field in the right-side panel. This will open a set of options.

Enter the text (the “title” for your options) and name the options. You can add and remove options by clicking on the plus or minus signs next to each field. Click on Save to apply your changes but don’t click on Submit just yet.

We’re going to add a little thank-you message below the comment field. Click on the Comment or Message field and, in the options, write your note in the Description field. It will appear underneat the message box.

When you’re done, click on Save and then on Embed button at the top of the screen.n But before we show you how to display your form, we’re going to show you how you can customize it using Qi Addons for Elementor.

Customizing the Feedback Form With Qi Addons for Elementor

If Elementor is your preferred page builder and you would like to tweak the feedback form some more, we’d suggest you install Qi Addons for Elementor on your site. It’s free and it packs a collection of 60 free widgets that enable you to enhance the power of your website, including the WPForms custom widget that allows for further form customization.

Once you save the feedback form you’ve previously made with WPForms lite, you can install the Qi Addon for Elementor widget pack. Then, open the page where you would like to display the form and add the WPForms widget to it.

The widget will automatically display the feedback form on the page. Currently, our form looks like this:

When you click on your form, the WPForms’ customization options will appear on the left-hand side of the screen. You can modify the content and the style of the form to further improve its appearance.

The Content section allows you to enter a custom class as well as to choose the feedback form you wish to edit (in case you’ve made several of them).

The Style tab lets you make changes to the label text and color, choose a style of the input text, add background colors to all fields, set spacing and padding values, alter the appearance of the form button, play with numerous typography settings, and much more.

Simply click on any of these tabs and you will see the list of all available options. For example, this is what Input Style settings include:

Additionally, some of these options allow for even more customization. When you click on the pencil next to Input Typography, a dropdown menu will appear with a plethora of font styling settings.

You can choose a font, set letter size, weight, and style, add an underline and overline to your text, and much more.

Customization options are tremendous, allowing you to style your feedback form exactly the way you want. And best of all, you can get all of this for free.

Once we applied the WPForm widget’s styling options to our form (along with some default Elementor’s customization settings), this is how it ended up looking:

And while this is far from being the world’s prettiest client feedback form, we simply wanted to show you just a small part of what you can achieve with the WPForms widget and Elementor. Adjust the settings to your liking and go for a style that best matches the aesthetic of your site.

Setting Up Notifications and Confirmations for Your WPForms Feedback Form

When you’re happy with the way your feedback form looks, it’s time to set up notifications and confirmations. Notifications are for you, alerting you when someone submits a form. On the other hand, your clients will receive confirmations upon successfully sending feedback.

To manage both notifications and confirmations, select Settings from the WPForms panel.

Notification and confirmation settings are placed one below the other.

As for notifications, the platform will send them to the admin email address by default. But you can change that and even enter several email addresses, in which case you should separate them with a comma.

Regarding confirmations, you should first choose what kind of confirmation you wish to send to your clients.

If you decide to send them a message, you have the option to customize the confirmation text.

The Show Page setting lets you redirect users to a specific page on your site.

Alternatively, you can also redirect them to some other website.

Displaying a Client Feedback Form on Your Site Using the WPForms Plugin

When you’re done making changes to the form and you’ve set up confirmations and notifications, it’s time to add the client feedback form to your website.

For starters, go to the page or post where you would like to display the form.

In Elementor, you can do it simply by using the WPForms widget, as we showed you earlier in the article.

If you decide to forego the Qi Addons for Elementor pack, the Elementor page builder has its own WPForms widget.

In case you created several forms, you can select which one you wish to display on the preferred page.

Click on the desired form and you’ll see it appear on the page.

If you’re using Gutenberg, you have to add the WPForms block to the chosen page or post (the block will automatically appear in the block panel once you install the WPForms plugin).

On the right-hand side of the screen, you can see some options regarding the WPForms block. There you can choose the form you wish to add to a page and decide if you wish to display its title and form description.

In the Classic Editor, you will notice the Add Form button just above the text editor (the button becomes visible upon activating the plugin).

Click on that button, select a client feedback form from the list, and check the boxes if you want to display the form’s name and description. And lastly, press the Add Form button.

How to Display a Client Feedback Form Using Contact Form 7

Another widely popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7. It is very simple to use and completely free, so it’s no surprise that it currently counts over 5 million active installations.

Once you install it on your site, go to Contact > Add New to start creating a client feedback form. By default, each form is asking clients for their name and email address as well as to enter the subject of their message and some text:

The list of additional fields you could add to the form is available in the Form tab. You can insert fields for the customers’ phone number, date, checkboxes, a dropdown menu, and a few others.

Say you wish to add checkboxes to the form. In that case, you should click on that tab in the panel. Once you do that, the following window will appear on the screen:

You can specify if you want the field to be required or not, change its name, insert some options, and more. Each field comes with its own array of settings you can customize to make the field suit your needs.

If some of the default fields don’t serve you, feel free to remove them from the form.

When it comes to styling the form, the best way to customize its appearance is to use the Contact Form 7 widget that comes packed with Qi Addons for Elementor.

This is what the default form looks like:

To begin altering its design, click on the form and look at the menu on the left side of the screen.

The Content tab lets you enter a custom class and select a specific form you want to insert to a page.

The Style section includes a mélange of settings that enable you to change every single detail about your form, just like you could do with the WPForms widget.

From adding borders to the button and changing the color of the labels to specifying the input background color, the alignment of the form, and heaps more, the Contact Form 7 widget has all you need to style the form the way that works best for you. Check out just how many options this widget has regarding the button alone:

The Advanced tab contains options included with Elementor by default. You can use them to change the background color of the form, select entrance animation type, customize responsiveness, and more.

We tweaked the appearance of our form a bit and this is what it looks like now:

Again, you can try out all of the options and combine different styles until you are satisfied with how your form looks. The combination of the Contact Form 7 widget and Elementor is guaranteed to give you a lot of room for experimentation.

Setting Up Notifications and Confirmations for Your Contact Form 7 Feedback Form

In the Mail tab of the Contact Form 7 plugin, you can make adjustments to the mail template that you will receive when someone submits a contact form.

The most important thing to do here is to check the To field. That is where you need to enter the email address where you wish to receive email notifications. You can make some more changes to the email template, add or delete form-tags in the message body, etc.

Confirmation and other kinds of messages the customers might receive from your end can be set up within the Messages tab.

This is where you can specify the text your clients will receive when they submit feedback or when they fail to do so, as well as when their response is regarded as spam, and loads more.

Displaying a Client Feedback Form on Your Site Using the Contact Form 7 Plugin

If Elementor is the page builder of your choice, at the moment, the only way of adding a Contact Form 7 feedback form to it is by using a third-party widget, like the above mentioned Qi Addons widget. It’s free yet bustling with customization possibilities and it will allow you not just to add a form using Elementor, but to style it to perfection. And as we’ve mentioned earlier, you just need to drag the widget to the page or post where you want to add the form, and you’re done.

In Gutenberg, you have to add the Contact Form 7 block to your page.

This block does not offer any extra options but it does do the job of displaying the Contact Form 7 feedback form on your site.

And lastly, in the Classic Editor, look for the form shortcode displayed above the form editor and copy it. It should look like this:

Next up, you need to open the page or post where you want to add the form. Paste the shortcode in the text editor field and save the changes.

Closing Words

Prioritizing customer experience is indispensable for making it in any business. By asking your clients’ for their opinion and making a conscious effort to improve your service upon receiving feedback, you will build a loyal customer base. Users will be glad to collaborate with you because you care about delivering products that make them happy.

Whether you choose to create a client feedback form by using the WPForms Lite or the Contact Form 7 plugin doesn’t matter that much. It all comes down to your personal preferences. Both plugins are free and easy to use, allowing you to make forms in no time. Best of all, the Qi Addons for Elementor collection includes widgets for both of these plugins, giving you the power to customize and improve the appearance of your forms to your liking.

In a digital world where good search engine optimization plays a crucial role in your website’s visibility, setting up a solid permalink structure is essential. And when we say permalink structure, we mean all the permalinks that can be found on your website, such as pages, posts, and even categories and tags.

Luckily, if you’re a WordPress user, this popular CMS platform comes with different solutions right out the box that allow you to make a permalink structure that is search engine and user-friendly. And in case you want more detailed customization, there are different plugins at your disposal capable of elevating your permalink strategy to a whole new level.

Before we begin sharing our tips and exploring different ways in which you can create and set up WordPress custom permalinks, let’s take a brief look at what a permalink is and why it’s so important for your website in the first place.

What is a Permalink and Why It Is Important

Derived from the words “permanent” and “link”, permalinks represent the URLs of the content on your WordPress site, including your pages, posts, categories, tags, and so on. People copy and paste these permalinks in order to access a certain page or post on your site, while search engines use them to link to your website. As for the custom permalink, it is a URL structure used for a particular WordPress page set in a way that doesn’t affect the settings of other permalinks or your WordPress URL structure as a whole.

Permalinks are important because, in a way, they represent your content and can let people know what they can expect if they click on a certain page or post, which can encourage more people to check them out. Likewise, permalinks indicate to search engines what the page or post is going to be about, which can have a positive impact on your page ranks and, by extension, the visibility of your content. That’s why it’s highly recommended that you assign appropriate permalink names to different types of content on your WordPress website.

Additionally, setting up a solid permalink structure can also help you prevent having any duplicate permalinks on your website. For example, if you have two posts with the same title, you can easily differentiate them by adding different date and time stamps to each permalink.

Now that you have a general idea of why taking care of your permalinks is important, let’s see what WordPress has in store when it comes to customizing permalinks in a way that will be most beneficial to your website.

Apart from allowing you to set the main permalink structure, WordPress also lets you customize URLs of your individual posts, pages, categories, tags, and other types of content. There are even different plugins you can use for creating completely custom permalinks when it comes to specific website areas.

Without further ado, here’s a detailed guide on how to create custom permalinks in WordPress:

Best Practices for WordPress Permalinks

Before we dive into the practicalities of changing the permalinks and creating custom ones, let’s quickly go through some of the best practices for your permalink structure. The general advice is basically the same as for URLs in general. When it comes to SEO, which is among the most pressing concerns, there are certain rules for creating an SEO-friendly URL structure, so make sure to check them out.

Your permalinks should be:

In some cases, you will want to use URL shorteners. These have nothing to do with how you structure your permalinks since they are going to be cloaked and displayed differently. URL shorteners are ideal for affiliate links and for linking on social media. However, don’t rely on them too much for shortening your permalinks. They should be short and descriptive from the start.

Finally – and we can’t stress this strongly enough – make sure your permalinks are indeed permanent. They should be created in a way that’s sustainable in the long run. If, however, you do have to change the permalink for your page or post, do not forget to set up 301 redirects. Otherwise, you will have broken links.

How to Change the Structure of Your Permalinks

By default, WordPress uses the plain format to display your permalinks. This means that if you don’t take care of the permalink structure of your WordPress site right away, your permalinks will look something like this:

https://example.com/?p=123

That doesn’t look really informative or search-engine friendly, does it?

Fortunately, as we already mentioned, WordPress lets you set the permalink structure in a way that is more readable and SEO-friendly in general.

All you have to do is go to Settings >> Permalinks in your admin dashboard.

Once there, among the Common Settings, you can change the way your permalinks will look. As you can see, we chose the option that allows your posts to be displayed by a post name, which allows for a more detailed and descriptive structure in general:

Don’t forget to save your settings when you’re done for the changes to take effect.

If you have a new website or blog, we advise you to apply the permalink structure that includes a post name in the URL. Also, it’s best to do this sooner than later, as changing permalinks can and does affect your SEO rankings.

How to Change the Default Category and Tag URL Prefix in WordPress

The default setting used in WordPress for categories is /category/, while /tag/ is used for all the tag pages. An example would look something like this:

https://example.com/category/business
https://example.com/tag/startup

If you want, you can easily change this default setting by heading to Settings >> Permalinks. In the Optional section, you have the option to insert custom names that will override the default WordPress settings. You can use any name that you see fit. For example, you can name your category base as “topics”, or your tag base as “hashtags”:

If you choose these names, your category and tag URLs will look something like this:

https://example.com/topics/business
https://example.com/hashtags/startup

How to Change the URLs of Individual WordPress Posts or Pages

As soon as you set the general permalink structure, WordPress will use it for all the links on your website. However, you can easily override these settings on individual pages or posts, if you want. This can be done by changing the URL slug inside the URL of a page, post, or custom post type (like WooCommerce products, for example). The slug is generated automatically, according to the page or post name itself.

To do this, simply head to the page/post you wish to change and customize your URL slug within the page/post editor itself. You will find the option to change it on the right side of your editor screen, in the Permalink dropdown.

Note that this applies to editing your permalink before publishing the article. The procedure is the same for changing the URL of your already published posts and pages, but with one major caveat: if you change the URL in any way, it will result in broken links. To fix this, you will need to set up redirects for the posts and pages you changed the URL for. We’ll explain how to do this at the end of this article. The same goes for changing the permalinks for your products, categories and tags.

How to Change Individual WordPress Category or Tag URLs

Aside from customizing your default category and tag prefixes (which we showed you in one of the steps above), you can change the slug of individual categories and tags as well.

Go to Posts >> Categories, find the category you wish to change the URL name of, and hit the Edit button.

An editing screen will appear, showing you some additional category settings. You will be able to change the slug of your category here.

Similarly, you can also edit the slug of a tag. You can do this by accessing Posts >> Tags and then clicking the Edit button of the tag whose URL you wish to change.

How to Change a WordPress Author Page URL

When it comes to WordPress author pages, there’s the /author/ base prefix that is automatically added to them. Like this:

https://example.com/author/maryanne

If you want to change this base prefix or the author slug itself, you’ll need the help of a plugin called Edit Author Slug.

After you install the plugin and activate it, access the Users >> All Users page and click the Edit button located under the username whose permalink structure you wish to change.

Once the Edit User admin screen opens, scroll down until you find the Edit Author Slug section. Here, you will be able to choose from different slug combinations, or you can simply add a custom one. Just make sure to hit the Update User button for the changes to take effect.

For changing the default author permalink prefix, go to Settings >> Edit Author Slug. Once there, you will be able to see the option to change the author base at the very top. Also, you will be able to set the author base according to the author’s role.

How to Create Custom Permalinks in WordPress

If you want to override the default settings of your permalink structure and change custom permalinks for only specific areas of your site, there is a plugin that can help you out with this.

First things first, you should install and activate the plugin called Custom Permalinks. This plugin gives you complete control over your website’s permalink structure and lets you assign custom permalinks for individual posts, pages, tags, and categories.

First, you need to access the editing screen of your page or post. You will be able to see the option to create your custom permalink right below the editor.

If you want, you can create custom permalinks for your tags and categories as well.

For categories, head to the Posts >> Categories page and click the Edit button under the category whose permalink structure you wish to change. The same rules apply for setting up the permalink structure for your tags – you just need to head to Posts >> Tags instead.

Scroll down a bit once you’re in the Edit Category page, and you will notice the option called Custom Permalink. Aside from letting you change the slug, this option also allows you to leave out the category base prefix entirely when creating the URL.

Moreover, by clicking on Custom Permalinks in your admin dashboard, you get to disable all custom permalinks using bulk actions. Just hit the Apply button once you select all the custom permalinks you wish to delete, and your default permalink structure will be activated instead.

How to Set Up Permalink Redirects

Taking care of your redirects is important because it will prevent your users from running into 404 errors. When it comes to post and page URLs, WordPress applies changes and sets up your redirects automatically. But, if you want to set the redirects of your fully customized or author permalinks, you need to use the help of a plugin.

We recommend using the Redirection plugin for this task.

After you’re done with installing and activating the Redirection plugin, go to Tools >> Redirection in your WordPress dashboard.

Setting up your redirects is quite easy. All you have to do is insert the old URL in the “Source URL” box, and add the new one in the box called “Target URL”.

Finally, hit the Add redirect button to store your changes and you’re all set.

Conclusion

An easily readable permalink structure can be a great boost for your website’s SEO since it can help define the way users and search engines see the URLs of your content. As you can see from all the instructions we presented above, setting up a solid permalink structure in WordPress is quite easy. Aside from the standard permalink system that comes with WordPress by default, there are also different types of plugins you can install and use for more in-depth customization of all your permalinks. This includes permalinks for your posts, pages, categories, tags, and even user roles.

And just a final note before we go – the sooner you take care of your website’s permalink structure, the better. After all, changing your permalinks when you already have tons of posts and pages can be a bit challenging. That’s why we advise you to use one permalink structure from the very beginning and stick to it. But, in case you still end up changing your mind at some point, you have the option to set up 301 redirects in WordPress to prevent your website from losing traffic.

With a steady increase in online shopping over the past years, the competition in e-commerce has become fiercer than ever. And while every online store has a goal to outrace its competitors, it’s needless to say that this is easier said than done. Even if you do manage to drive traffic towards your e-commerce site, it still doesn’t mean your visitors will become actual buyers.

In this article, we will help you learn how to optimize your WooCommerce conversion rate and boost your sales. But first, let’s see what a conversion rate actually is and what is considered a good one when it comes to your WooCommerce site.

What Is a Conversion Rate

In e-commerce, a conversion typically occurs when a website visitor adds a product to the cart or completes a purchase. As for the conversion rate itself, it represents a percentage of the number of people who take the desired action (i.e. people who convert), divided by the total number of unique site visits. This metric helps you learn how many of your visitors ended up becoming actual customers.

What Counts as a Good Conversion Rate and How to Find Out Your Own

Now, the average e-commerce site conversion rate for 2020 was 2.63% in the US alone, while the global one stands at 4.31%. That being said, this conversion rate can differ slightly depending on the location, the device it was measured on (desktop, mobile, etc.), and even conversion type (product conversion, add to cart, etc.). Also, your conversion rate will depend on your specific industry and the niche you are selling products in.

For a complete picture, we also suggest looking into things such as cart abandonment rate, checkout abandonment rate (when a customer leaves the site at checkout, without completing the purchase), as well as bounce and exit rates (the former is when a visitor leaves after checking out just one page, while the latter is when they leave after viewing more pages on your site). All these categories can affect your overall conversion rate, and you should inspect them all to find if any one of these areas is causing trouble (is more problematic than others).

In order to check out the conversion rate of your own store and compare it to the global conversion rate, you can always use the help of Google Analytics. And, in case you’re using WooCommerce to power your online store, there’s even a WooCommerce integration called WooCommerce Google Analytics. By combining this extension with Google Analytics, you will be able to analyze your data in detail to find what sections of your store you should improve for the best possible results.

As for some of the e-commerce-related conversion metrics you should check out when using Google Analytics, we suggest that you look into Shopping Behavior Analysis (to analyze the number of sessions that were either continued and abandoned in detail), Checkout Behavior Analysis (to analyze the number of users who have completed the checkout process), and Product Performance.

Just make sure to turn on Enhanced Ecommerce to be able to view the above-mentioned reports.

How to Boost Your WooCommerce Rate – Best Tips

Aside from using Google Analytics to see what areas you can improve on, there are many different things you can do to maximize your conversion rate. Here are some of the strategies you should use to increase your WooCommerce conversions:

Take Care of Your Product Pages

Product pages are practically the most important part of your online store. After all, they serve as a sort of informational hub related to your products, and as such, they have the power to directly influence visitors to buy your products, which is why you should take extra care when optimizing them. Plus, they can significantly increase your rankings on Google, and by boosting your overall position in SERPs, you are that much closer to boosting your sales as well.

There are a few things you can do to create a well-optimized product page. One of them is writing a unique, concise, and keyword-rich product description that is also consistent with your brand and relates to your target audience.

The same rules apply when generating meta descriptions of your products as well. Meta description basically represents a brief summary of your product and is also the first thing both people and search engines will see related to your product page. Therefore, you should create a product meta description that is as concise, relevant, and informative as possible while also making sure that it contains your keyword as well.

Adding a captivating and SEO-friendly title can make your sales go a long way, too. The more precise your product titles are, the more chances you have of driving organic traffic your way. So, keep this in mind when giving a title to your product pages.

Of course, don’t forget to include other strategies that will help improve your Woocommerce SEO in general, such as adding breadcrumbs, adding product categories and tags, creating an SEO-friendly URL structure, and so on. By optimizing your product pages in this way, you simultaneously make them more user-friendly for your visitors as well, which can only improve your rankings and enhance your conversions as a whole.

Make Sure That the Quality of Your Product Images Is Top-Notch

It is no secret that people rely on visuals when deciding whether to purchase a product online. Your potential online buyers often have no other way of knowing whether the product has the quality they seek than to look at its pictures. Therefore, you should do your absolute best to ensure that the pictures of your products are nothing short of impeccable in terms of quality. So, on top of creating high-quality pictures of your products (from multiple angles, if possible), make sure to also add an image zoom-in effect to give visitors the possibility of inspecting your products in full detail. If possible, you can also try adding 360-degree images using one of the available plugins (such as SR Product 360° View, for example) as it will let you showcase your product from multiple perspectives by rotating it or changing its angle. All these can only bring you closer to improving your overall conversion rate as they can help you give off the impression of professionalism and reliability when showcasing your products.

Finally, while having high-quality images is practically a must, we suggest that you optimize your images in a way that preserves their quality while reducing their size. By doing so, you prevent your product images from impacting your page loading speed – and having a site that loads fast is always a plus for the overall customer experience.

Offer Multiple Payment Options

These days there’s an abundance of payment methods and new ones are emerging each year. Credit and debit cards remain the most popular methods, PayPal and Stripe are up there too, and there are various digital wallets, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and many more.

The logic is clear: the more payment methods you accept, the more paying customers you’ll have. Fortunately, setting up various payment methods for your WooCommerce shop is quite easy and usually done with the help of dedicated plugins. There are tons of excellent PayPal plugins, for Stripe users you can choose among several easy-to-use Stripe plugins for WooCommerce, etc. Note that payment methods are not the same as payment gateways – the latter usually include support for multiple methods. Explore various payment gateway options for WooCommerce, set up as many as you can for your shop, and watch your conversion rate grow.

Streamline the Checkout Process

Poorly designed, overly complicated checkout process is one of the major reasons for cart abandonment. Obviously, your conversion rate is going to stay low as long as you have a high cart abandonment rate, so you need to take steps to reduce it.

A lot of WooCommerce shop admins find that streamlining the checkout process significantly heps their conversions, as people move through the process faster and encounter less obstacles that make them want to quit.

One-page checkout is one of the best things you can do in this area. It means a checkout process that doesn’t require the user to navigate from one page to another and then another when completing a purchase. Instead, everything from registration, billing and shipping info, payment and purchase confirmation takes place on one dynamic page. Higher conversion rates are among the top benefits of one-page checkout, and there are one-page checkout plugins that can help you set one up easily.

You can also minimize the number of required fields, use autocomplete, allow users to complete a purchase as guests (without registering), while the registered users can have their information saved for future visits, etc.

Make Sure Your Products Are Easy to Find

Oftentimes, one of the determining factors for a successful conversion is having products that are easy to find. What we mean by that is that you should ensure that a visitor spends as little time as possible when finding a product they like. When you think about it, this is quite logical – if too much time passes between a potential customer accessing your online store and finding a product of interest, they are more likely to give up and search for a similar product elsewhere instead. On the other hand, you will only increase your chances of getting much-desired conversions if you ensure that their path to the actual product purchase is as short and smooth as possible.

One of the things you can do to make this possible is to simplify your website navigation so that all your products and product categories are never more than two clicks away. Creating a wide menu with multiple product categories is fine too, as long as it contains your most important categories and products.

And if you want to simplify the product search process even further, you can always implement a layered type of navigation using the Ajax Layered Navigation extension for WooCommerce. This extension will not only offer a better user experience to your customers but will also give them a chance of having a more interactive experience while searching for products. Namely, this type of navigation will allow them to use color swatches, size selectors, and more – which makes this extension great for stores with plenty of product variables and other attributes.

We also recommend adding a search bar to your menu or anywhere else you find to be suitable as this can only ease the process of searching for products on your e-commerce site. Finally, consider adding a filtering system that will allow users to filter your pages so they can easily find the products they are interested in based on specific product categories and tags.

Create a Sense of Urgency

It may seem like a cliché at first, but creating a sense of urgency by adding some limited-time offers can do wonders for your conversion rate. People are known to act fast when faced with demanding circumstances, so if they were struggling to decide whether to buy a product or not, creating an “urgent” type of offer can actually drive them to go for that purchase they may otherwise end up missing. You can easily create this sense of urgency by adding a limited-time offer to your site. You can even build a sense of excitement and get your customers to act fast by adding a countdown timer. Countdown timers create hype around your products, so you should definitely consider using them when presenting some of your one-time offers. You can also add limited-time free gifts, offer various discounts to a specific number of buyers that are able to make their purchase until a specified time, add time-sensitive and other types of coupons (using one of the many available coupon code plugins), and so on. Last but not least, in case your products are limited in terms of supplies, you can always let your customers know how many items are left in stock, or make a certain number of items available at a specific price.

No matter what type of urgency-based strategy you plan to make, just make sure to never deceive your customer. Building trust is of essential importance if you want to make long-lasting results, so try to be as genuine as possible. Your customers will be able to tell if you’re faking it, so keep that in mind when creating your special offers.

Leverage Social Proof

By including social proof in your website content, you’re increasing the chances of turning leads into paying customers. How? By showing them how much their peers love your products. And what does social proof mean exactly? It’s a phenomenon in which people copy the actions of others, basically. In eCommerce, it means buying from businesses that obviously have a lot of customers, a lot of reviews, good rating, and generally a lot of buzz around it.

There are several ways you can incorporate this into your WooCommerce website. The most obvious method are customer reviews. You can include fields for leaving reviews and comments, or you can incorporate Google reviews, as well as Yelp reviews, right there on your pages. You can also consider adding testimonials, as these are usually positive and can be very beneficial for your reputation.

Don’t forget social media. A lot of social proof comes from your audiences and fans on social media. If a person sees 20 of their friends and acquaintances liking your Facebook page or following your Instagram or TikTok account, their trust in your business is likely to grow, and so will your conversion rate.

Optimize for Mobile

At this point, it should go without saying, but the importance of proper mobile optimization of your WooCommerce store cannot be emphasized enough. The number of mobile e-commerce sales keeps increasing each year (in fact, there has been a whopping 39.1 percent increase from 2016 to 2021), which is all the more reason why you should ensure that your WooCommerce store is mobile-ready as well.

Some of the ways in which you can optimize your store for mobile include adding a lazy loading feature to your site (you can use a plugin such as a3 Lazy Load for this task), creating a mobile-friendly navigation (such as adding a so-called hamburger menu icon), and using accelerated mobile pages (AMP) as well. The latter represent sort of lite versions of your pages, which means they will help provide a fast browsing experience to mobile visitors.

Final Words

The goal of every store owner is to make a profit and turn as many visitors into converting customers as possible. By actively trying to improve the conversion rate of your WooCommerce store, you will be that much closer to achieving that goal. Just make sure to optimize your product pages properly, maintain the quality of your images, add some limited-time offers (but remember to be genuine and keep things realistic), and don’t forget to optimize your WooCommerce site for mobile. By applying these tactics, you will improve the overall user experience of your visitors, and eventually, you will be able to see a boost in your conversions. Finally, monitor your metrics continuously, as it’s the only way to know whether you’re on the right track.

There is no overestimating the importance of a search function for your website. Even if your website is remarkably easy to navigate, your visitors might still have a little trouble finding what they want. It’s up to you to give them a hand. And you can do it if you add a search bar to your WordPress menu.

WordPress itself has a default search functionality. However, you may be dissatisfied with it, or you might want to include functionalities it doesn’t come with.

A functional search bar is a feature that’s often integrated in themes. This includes our own premium WordPress themes. For the purposes of this article, we’ll be using the Bridge theme to demonstrate how to add a search bar to your site. However, please note that the options for adding a search bar may vary, depending on the theme you’re using. And in case you’re not using one of our themes at all, we’ll also cover how to add a search bar to your site using a plugin. Here’s what we’ll cover:

Why Add a Search Bar to the Menu?

Good search functionality is one of the pillars of good user experience. Only a few things are more annoying for visitors than failing to find what they’re looking for, quickly and easily.

There’s a lot that can be done to improve the search. For instance, you can add live Ajax search for a faster, interactive search experience. You should certainly consider adding the autocomplete search feature, too. If you’re running an eCommerce website, you can set up the search filters for your products. Finally, you can even completely remove the search feature from your WordPress website.

But in terms of improving the usability and navigational experience of your website, you can also consider the best locations for placing your search bar.

By default, since the search bar is a widget, WordPress only allows you to add it to your widget-ready areas. These are dependent on the theme you’re using and you’re limited by those options, unless you know how to make custom widget areas.

An excellent location for the search bar is the navigation menu. Search is, after all, an important part of the website navigation, and placing it in the menu is a natural choice and a logical place where your visitors will look. The navigation menu is located at the top of the page, and the users will be able to find the search easily and instantly, which will, in turn, increase engagement and reduce the bounce rate.

If you feel like your website can benefit from placing the search bar to your WordPress menu, read along to discover two ways to do it.

How to Add a Search Bar in the Bridge WordPress Theme

Adding a search bar to your website using Bridge is very easy.

First navigate to Qode Options > Header.

Once you have found the Header screen, click the Qode Search button in the bottom bar, and you will be taken to the search switch. You will need to enable it.

Having enabled the search bar, all you need to do is Save your changes. Now, when you visit your site from the frontend, you will see the search icon in the header. Clicking on it will open the search bar at the top.

We also have a video tutorial with detailed instructions on how to easily add a search bar to the menu of our Bridge theme, as well as how to configure it to match your website design and functionality preferences. Check it out below.

As you can see, in just a few short steps, you will have helped your visitors sort through your content and find what they were looking for.

How to Add a Search Bar to WordPress Using a Plugin

In case your theme doesn’t come with an inbuilt search functionality, adding a search bar to your WordPress menu works a little differently. For this demonstration, we will use the Better Search plugin – a free and simple solution which greatly improves upon WordPress‘s default search functionality.

First, you need to install and activate the plugin. If you are not sure how to do this, you can check out our article on installing WordPress plugins. Once you have Better Search installed and activated, you will need to configure it. This plugin is well-annotated, with explanations in italics, and you will never be in doubt as to which command does what.

For this demonstration, we won’t touch anything with regards to the General settings. We just need to make sure that the Enable seamless integration checkbox is checked. This means that the plugin will use your theme’s settings and style in order to blend in.

In the Search tab, we will take a look at three functionalities. The Number of Search Results should be set to how many results you want to appear per page, and the Post types checkboxes should be checked for each post type you want to appear in the searches.

Next, if you scroll all the way down, you will find the Filter these words field. There are some words which are not included in the searches by default. These are profanities in English, and you may want to review this list, depending on your content. Note that this field may be used for all terms, not simply profanities, making this field an important tool in refining your search.

We won’t be changing anything in the Heatmap tab for our demonstration, since we are using the plugin in seamless integration mode. If you wish to use it, however, check Include heatmap on the search results. The options in this tab will help you customize the appearance of the “heat map” of popular searches, to further help your visitors find what they want. The Styles tab is there for custom CSS you might want to use.

Once you have your plugin configured and all settings saved, you need to find a place to add the search bar. This is done using a widget included with the plugin. Use your right-hand side menu to reach the Appearance/Widgets screen. We are using the Bridge theme, so the name for the widget area we’re adding our search to is Header Bottom Right. Note that themes may have different names for different widget areas.

In your list of available widgets on the left-hand side, find the Search Form [Better Search]. In its drop-down menu, find and select Header Bottom Right, then click the Add Widget button.

Your search form widget will now appear in the Header Bottom Right area on the right-hand side. You may choose to change the title of the field. We have gone with “Looking for something special?“. Once you Save your title, your search field should appear in your menu.

When you visit the frontend of your site, you will see what your search plugin looks like.

And that’s all there is to adding a search bar via a plugin in WordPress.

In Conclusion

While WordPress offers its own search functionality, it has been described by various users as rudimentary. We recommend you either use your theme’s in-built capacities, or a search plugin which best suits your website. Either way, adding a search bar to your WordPress menu is really simple, as we have shown. With a functional search bar, you’ll be a step closer to fulfilling your visitors‘ content needs – and you can be certain they will appreciate that.

So you are a blogger and you have been at it for some time. You have spent precious time and effort thinking your content through. You have been publishing high-quality, polished content consistently, and visitors have started to flock to your website. What’s next? Well, you may be wondering if there is a way to make money blogging. And if you are, you’ve come to the right place.

The first thing you need to remember is this: there are no hard and fast rules. If there were, everybody would be making a living blogging, and we know from experience that it doesn’t happen. So we are not going to give you an ironclad checklist. Think of this list more as a toolbox, and use whichever tools seem the most appropriate to you. After all, food blogs and review blogs (to name but two) are not going to benefit from the same monetization strategy equally.

Here’s what we’ll be talking about:

The Direct Route: Paywalls and Donations

It is often said that the direct route is the best: if you want money from your blogging, you should ask for it. This section discusses the more straightforward ways of getting paid for your hard work.

Paywalls

The obvious way to monetize quality content is to sell it. The way to do it is to set up a paywall for your WordPress content. Paywalls are pretty straightforward: you pay or you don’t get to access the content.

The thing about them, though, is that visitors expect value for money: a lot of great online content is free, so asking for money will build up expectations. If people are paying for your content, they expect you to deliver, and to deliver exclusive, original, quality content.

Another downside of a paywall is that it will likely slow your website’s growth. A lot of your readers might get frustrated with a paywall, however little you charge, and just leave.

Bear this in mind though: keeping at least some of your new content free will keep your visitors coming. You don’t need to hide the entirety of your content behind a paywall – use the free stuff to hook them.

Donations and Tip Jars

If a paywall is not right for your website, though, perhaps you could solicit voluntary donations from your visitors. Appeal to their better nature in a way that is consistent with your brand, install a donations plugin or a tip jar plugin, and let your visitors show their appreciation of your fine work.

Advertising: How to Get Ahead

Advertising is a more circuitous approach to earning money from blogging. Here we will discuss some of the methods and best practices for online advertising.

Sponsored Posts and Reviews

The most direct way of earning money through advertising on your blog is probably to sell your blogging space. There may be a seller of service or product which might appeal to your visitors. If you are an authority in a certain niche, you may reach out to them, or they might reach out to you with an offer.

This goes double if you are running a review blog: a book review blogger might get free copies of books, a film review blogger might get invited to press screenings, while a cosmetics blogger might be sent samples, but that‘s more about saving money at best. If your blog has any clout, though, your unbiased opinion might be valued on its own, and you may get paid for an honest review.

You might also be offered money to write a positive or even negative review, but you should be very careful about that: your visitors might see through a disingenuous review and just stop coming. You might end up damaging your reputation and, ultimately, your bottom line.

You may also be wondering what to do if they don‘t reach out. The answer is simple: you may reach out to them. A simple, politely-worded email supplied with relevant statistics (visitor data, social media following, and the like) might get your foot in the door.

Be mindful of any advertising law which may apply: depending on your jurisdiction, this form of sponsorship might be forbidden or restricted, liable to compulsory disclaimers or similar limitations.

Ad Space

Another way you could earn money through advertising is very directly placing your ads on your website. There are several services which facilitate this, the most popular of which is Google Adsense. The advantage of using Google Adsense or a similar intermediary is that you don‘t have to do a great deal at all: simply designate some space on your website for ads and let others do all the work.

There are two distinct disadvantages to this: you get very little control over the kind of ads which appear on your website, for one, and the amount of money you earn is limited.

There is, however, another route to earning money through ads: sell ads directly. You could do it the hard way, setting up the banners and links yourself, or you could install an ad management plugin and make your life a whole lot easier.

You can choose between several payment models: a simple flat rate for hosting an ad on your website, a CPC (cost-per-click) model, where you earn money for each click, or a CPM (cost per thousand impressions), where you earn money per thousand of views for each ad. If you are going the direct route, you have the most options, but you have to do your own price negotiation, invoicing, and control, while if you are using a plugin, you will be limited by the plugin‘s capabilities.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the practice of recommending a product or service to your visitors and linking to it using tracking links, which let the seller know where their shoppers come from. By referring your visitors to sellers, you can earn a commission. There is a lot to learn about even the very basics of affiliate marketing before you start: the concept itself is simple, but the practice is, as usual, more complicated.

However, if you are new to this practice, you may be tempted to overdo it. If the product or service you are recommending is not consistent with your website style, you may appear like a shill rather than a blogger making a recommendation. Make sure your visitors know you are an affiliate, and concentrate on the products or services you use or would generally have no problem recommending.

Selling Goods: Books and Merch

Once you have made a name for yourself, your visitors might want to own a piece of you. In this section, we will walk you through some of the ways you might indulge them.

Setting Up Shop

You could earn money selling both physical and digital goods, but in each case you will need to set up an online store. The software we heartily endorse is WooCommerce: a comprehensive webstore solution with a fully functional free version. If that‘s the route you want to take, bear in mind that setting up WooCommerce will take some time and effort.

And then you need to think about possible tweaks which your store might need, such as getting your WooCommerce SEO right, creating enticing product images, integration with Facebook or Instagram shopping, to make the best possible use of your social following… The list goes on. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to make your WooCommerce store suit your brand and style.

Merch

Merch is not only a way for you to earn money, it is also a way for your visitors to show appreciation for your work, it is also a way for them to publicize being your fan, and potentially driving more of their friends and acquaintances your way.

You could go the easy way, and just slap your logo on some generic, no-name products: t-shirts, mugs, key chains, or you could invest some time and/or money in design and come up with cool branded products people would gladly use anyway – take it from this proud wearer of a Welcome to Night Vale necktie.

Either way, design is hard and prototyping may be expensive. You could try knocking out mockups and putting the issue to a vote by your visitors. That way, they get the merch they want, and you get more visitor engagement.

eBooks and Books

If you have created a lot of content which can be organized into a book, perhaps you can sell publishing rights for it. After all, this is how Allie Brosh (Hyperbole and a Half) and David Wong (Pointless Waste of Time, Cracked) got on people‘s bookshelves with Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened and John Dies at the End and This Book is Full of Spiders, respectively.

Book publishing is a whole different kettle of fish when compared to blogging, though, and the exact circumstances vary wildly from country to country, so we can‘t go into specifics here. If you are willing to sell an ebook of your blog posts yourself, though, there is an easy way to convert a blog into an ebook.

Selling Services: You Are Your Flagship Product

Your skills and knowledge may be of use to others, and they may be willing to pay for them. This section discusses some of the ways in which that can happen.

Guest Blogging

If you have succeeded in establishing yourself as an authority on a certain topic or a certain niche, you may be paid by other blogs and even mainstream media to produce guest posts for them. This goes double if you have a distinct style and may also have ancillary effects: other blogs‘ readers will learn about you and your blog, and you will have earned yourself some new visitors.

Freelance Services

An ancillary way to earn money is to sell your knowledge, expertise, and know-how in your field. Even if it‘s an informal field, some corporations and even individuals may be interested in your input as a proofreader or a fact-checker, or possibly long-term, as a coach or a consultant on a regular basis.

The best thing about this is that it requires very little investment, if any: simply set up a contact page (whether using the in-built solution your theme might have or by installing a contact form plugin), outline the kind of services you offer, and keep working on your public profile as a knowledgeable person.

Online Courses

There‘s a good chance some people will want to learn how to be successful bloggers themselves, and this is where you can go a little meta: you could set up an online course on blogging in general, or blogging in your particular area of interest.

There’s a lot to be said about creating an online course, and this is not the place to go into specifics. We will say that in order to make a convincing online course or workshop, you need to come up with a professional-looking lesson plan and a way to organize it: a learning management system, or LMS. Make sure your courses are informative, well organized, and professionally produced.

Webinars

While similar to an online course, a webinar is a live online event. Your visitors might want access to a lecture by you, or a panel of all the contributors to your blog and you can set up a payment avenue to it. Those visitors who appreciate direct contact might be willing to pay for it, but a webinar audience typically expects some level of interaction.

There are plenty of webinar tools for you to choose from, but if you are not prepared to at least field some questions from your audience, maybe they are not a good fit for you.

Being a Pundit

Similarly, if you are viewed as an expert, even unofficially, by the online community at large, you may be approached to appear in other media: on radio, television, and podcasts, or invited to contribute an article to a newspaper.

You could also leverage your online following to get public speaking jobs: conferences, especially conferences which specialize in your areas of interest, may need speakers and lecturers.

Bear one thing in mind, though: about everybody thinks that, if they can talk, they can also speak, and about everybody is wrong about that. Speaking in public, be it for the media or at conferences, is much harder.

In order to even get these gigs, not only do you need to be knowledgeable and available, you also need to be personable, good at networking, and at least a decent speaker.

How Long Does It Take to Make Money Blogging?

A common mistake that a lot of people make is thinking blogging can immediately substitute a “real” job. Sure, blogging can be a real job, a full-time one, but that’s not something you can expect to happen overnight. So, if you’re thinking of starting blogging for a living, make sure to keep your day job, too, at least in the beginning.

A common mistake that a lot of people make is thinking blogging can immediately substitute a “real” job. Sure, blogging can be a real job, a full-time one, but that’s not something you can expect to happen overnight. So, if you’re thinking of starting blogging for a living, make sure to keep your day job, too, at least in the beginning.

Some bloggers prefer to wait until they have a considerable audience to start selling products or services. This is logical thinking, but you may also want to consider selling something small and relatively cheap to the audience you already have. Experiment with that a bit and, if nothing, you’ll at least save yourself from the pressure of having to reach a certain target number before you start selling. Plus, it will be a good way to test not just your product but your website, too, and to tweak it as needed.

How to Create a Blog That Earns Money?

The quality of your writing, your services and whatever you’re selling is important. It’s also important to develop a good and strong ad strategy or find the right affiliate partners. But don’t think for a second that the way your blog is structured, laid out, organized and designed doesn’t matter.

If you’re using WordPress to power your blog, your best bet is probably to get one of the specialized premium blogging themes. Why is this important? Well, you want your blog to work well and to look appealing to your visitors, don’t you? You want your pages to be readable, user-friendly, and uncluttered, with cleverly displayed taxonomies (categories and tags), related posts, social media links, and everything else. You may also want to have an elegant way to display author info, add contact forms, terms and conditions, and everything else. Well, all the best WordPress themes come equipped with all these functionalities, and, ideally, are designed in a way that supports your blogging style.

Now, if you’re only just starting and working on a budget, there are some excellent free themes you can use that can fare just fine against the premium ones. The Qi Theme, for instance, is a wonderfully designed and feature-rich theme with plenty of free demos designed specifically for blogging. With a well-designed, lightweight and practical theme (and a couple of plugins for extra functionality), you can easily set up a blog that your visitors will enjoy returning to, and spending a dollar or two while they’re there.

In Conclusion

As you can see, there is no shortage of paths money can take to find its way to a consistent, popular blogger. Some of these methods, such as ads and tip jars, can be used by anyone, while others, such as webinars and other paid gigs, depend on your blogging clout: your blog needs to be popular and influential for you to make them work. It‘s the getting there that‘s the hardest bit, though, with staying there probably being the second hardest. Still, we feel we have provided you with a substantial toolkit which will help you make money blogging no matter the size of your operation and your following.

When you work in WordPress on a regular basis, it’s always good to use different tools and shortcuts that will save you much valuable time and organize your workflow in a more efficient manner. And doing this can be useful no matter if you’re building WordPress websites from scratch or just creating and editing content. Namely, this is exactly why things like browser extensions have been invented in the first place. These types of tools are meant to provide the means to users to organize their work in a way that is more effective and productive in general while offering a whole new set of options and functionalities at once.

Thus, we will share a list of some of the best Firefox extensions you can use to improve the performance of your WordPress site and help you streamline your working process. Some of the extensions on our list will include those that will allow you to improve in multiple areas, such as website development, design, content creation, and the overall website performance, so make sure to stick around:

Web Developer

Web Developer is a great Firefox extension that adds a few useful functions to your browser. Some of them include the ability to clear session cookies, edit CSS, show element details (such as picture data dimensions), and so on. As such, it’s quite useful for developers who want to have a more advanced ability that they will be able to use in their browsers.

User-Agent Switcher and Manager

Another great extension for developers, User-Agent Switcher and Manager will allow you to switch your user-agent so that you can easily test and debug your WordPress site. This will make it appear as if you’re visiting a site from another browser or device, which is useful for seeing any website changes from multiple environments. You will be able to set different user-agent rules in advance or choose a user-agent at random.

Clear Cache

The name of this extension is pretty self-explanatory – if you use Clear Cache, you will be able to clear your WordPress cache using your browser with a single click of a button (or by pressing F9). This is quite useful for developers who need to remove cache regularly to see (and view) any website changes they’re making.

ColorZilla

ColorZilla is a great extension that comes with a color picker that you can use to identify any color and hue you find on the web and view (and copy) its Hex code. Thanks to ColorZilla, you will also be able to save the shade that you like for later use. The extension features an eyedropper tool, a color picker, a gradient generator, and others.

WordPress Theme Detection

This is a rather handy extension that will allow you to find out what theme a site you’re currently on is using. The WordPress Theme Detection extension works by connecting to the ThemeDetect.com website, letting you learn more about the site’s theme itself. This can be quite useful if you’re seeking some inspiration for building your own website and like the look a certain site has, but don’t know where to start.

Wappalyzer

To discover more about a website you’re visiting, for instance a competitor website, there’s a handy extension you can use. Wappalyzer not only lets you know what CMS the site is using (e.g. WordPress) or an eCommerce platform, but also detects web servers, JS frameworks, analytics tools, operating system and more.

Ahrefs SEO Toolbar

For those regularly using SEO tools to improve search engine optimization of a WordPress site, the Ahrefs SEO Toolbar is a must-have extension. It will generate an on-page SEO report, and it comes with a broken link checker, redirect tracer, and more. Plus, if you have access to an active Ahrefs account, you will also get to use Page, Domain, and keyword metrics.

Font Finder

Font Finder is a great extension for any designer or developer to identify a font on any particular page. It will allow you to completely analyze the info related to any font on a page (including the CSS design) and also let you copy that information. This extension is great if you stumble into a font you really like and wish to try it on your own WordPress site.

Measure-it

When designing a page or a section for your website, you need to be careful about dimensions. Just like we use a ruler when we draw a physical blueprint, we need to use measures – and very precise ones – when we design our pages. In addition, when we look for inspiration on other websites, we may want to examine details like the height and width of various parts of the page. Measure-it is a super-useful ruler extension for Firefox that lets you easily take measures of anything you want on your screen. In addition to height and width, you can also examine the alignment of elements in pixels. It’s fast and extremely simple to use, and comes with the option of adding custom shortcuts to make it even more convenient.

Html Validator

Html Validator is an extension that lets you see the HTML validation within your browser. You will get to view all the errors on your HTML page in the form of an icon (when looking at the HTML page source). This is a great extension to have when you’re need a quick glimpse into any potential errors so you can then fix them accordingly.

Grammarly for Firefox

Grammarly is one of the best tools that can help you write more quality content on your WordPress site in general. The app works by notifying you about any accidental spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors within your text along with some explanation as to why a particular word, phrase, or entire sentence may be incorrect. By adding a Grammarly for Firefox extension, you will be able to use it within any text editor in your browser, and that includes the WordPress editor as well.

Find and Replace for Text Editing

Last but not least, Find and Replace for Text Editing is an extension that adds a search & replace tool to your input fields and any text editors in your browser (including WordPress, of course). The tool will automatically highlight all found occurrences after you enter your search term. This is particularly useful for quickly finding and replacing any word, phrase, or section within your text without having to waste too much time by analyzing the entirety of your content.

Distraction Free Mode for Google Docs

Although WordPress today represents more than just a blogging platform and powers virtually all sorts of websites and businesses, blogs still make up a huge portion of all WordPress-run websites. If you’re a WordPress blogger and you’re creating your content in Google Docs, you may want to consider adding Distraction Free Mode for Google Docs. This useful little extension hides all commands, buttons and other distractions from your screen, allowing you to focus solely on your writing. It works best for those familiar with Google Docs shortcuts, since that means you basically never have to deal with the Google Docs interface, menus and buttons. Plus, the extension gives you a choice of several visual themes to pick from and enhance the mood for creating content.

Conclusion

And there you have it – a list of some of the best Firefox extensions that you can use while working in WordPress. No matter if they will help you while creating content or if they will enhance your development or web design process, all the tools on this list will be a great time-saver and improve your workflow to a great extent. Therefore, you should definitely use them if you’re regularly working in WordPress. Finally, many of these tools are available for other popular browsers as well, so you should consider checking them out even if you’re not using Firefox.