One of the most common and important issues for sites is WordPress not sending emails. This is due to a number of reasons – usually, the issue is server-side or your email settings are incorrect. If you don’t pay attention to these issues, you could lose your customer’s trust. For example, if you run an online store, such as a WooCommerce website, this issue could prevent your customers from getting a receipt. If you don’t fix the issue, many customers may leave your site.
In this article, we’ll discuss how to identify the reasons for WordPress not sending emails to you or your clients, and how to fix it.
What Kind of Emails Does WordPress Send?
Before investigating this issue, you need to know what kinds of emails WordPress sends from your site. This could depend on the plugins you use. For example, WooCommerce creates its own transactional emails for orders, new accounts, refunds, and more.
Here are the main emails that your WordPress site may send:
Password reset emails – a user receives this email upon requesting a new password.
New user email – when a new user is registered, a notification email will be sent to the site admin.
Activate account – this is a verification email sent to a user who has signed up for an account.
WooCommerce emails – these include a number of different emails: new order notifications, order update emails (order received, shipped, etc) and others.
Newsletter emails – if you use a newsletter plugin and opt to send via your host, your email newsletters could be affected by WordPress email sending issues.
Contact form emails – this is the entire submission. An email should be delivered when information is submitted via a contact form.
Why WordPress Isn’t Sending Emails
The main reason for WordPress not sending emails is that the PHP Mail function is disabled on the hosting provider’s server. When WordPress wants to send emails, it calls on your hosting provider’s email server using the PHP Mail function, but if this function is disabled, your requests to send emails will not even get to the mail server. If this is the case, you need to contact your web host support and ask them to check if the mail function is enabled on the server.
Another reason may be bad server reputation. If your site is located on shared hosting, you use the same set of mailing IPs to send emails as every other user on the same server. All these emails may be recognized as spam emails and will end up being blacklisted, so your WordPress emails won’t be sent.
How to Test your Mail Server
To be able to fix this problem, the best way is to test your mail server. How can you do this? Here is a simple “Check Email” plugin that can help you.After downloading, installing and activating, go to the “Check & Log Email” menu and click on “Status”. Input your email address in the “send a test email” field and click the “Send test email” button.
After sending the test email you will see the following message:
Once you receive this message, check your email. Don’t forget to check the “Spam” folder as well.
Once you have checked your mail server and are sure that your WordPress can send an email, you can investigate the issue further and check your contact form settings. If you use a custom plugin for the contact form, it’s better to contact the support team for this plugin.
How to Stop WordPress Emails Going to Spam
If the emails are delivered but appear in the Spam folder instead of Inbox, this Artbees article will be helpful for you, as it provides 10 tips to avoid the spam filter.
How to Configure the Form to Correctly Send Emails
If you tested the mail server and it’s configured properly but you still are having problems with WordPress not sending emails, it could mean you need to check the settings for the form.
Let’s take a look at the most usable contact plugin – Contact Form 7.
If the emails can’t be delivered with this plugin, the best solution is to change the address that emails are being sent from.
In your WordPress admin, go to Contact > Contact Forms.
Select the form you’ve created and open the “Mail” tab.
Note that the From field should have the admin email address of your site, not the email address input in the form.
You can use it in the Reply to field but not the From field.
Make sure the From and To fields use different email addresses.
Don’t forget to save your changes. Then, test the contact form by submitting it yourself.
If you use the Jupiter X theme, you might create the form using the JX Form element in the Elementor editor. We’ve already covered how to configure it so that emails are sent successfully in this article.
How to Set Up SMTP to Send Emails
If you tested the mail server with the “Check Email” plugin and emails aren’t being sent from your site at all, then you need to use a third-party SMTP provider and link it with your site.
SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. SMTP uses proper authentication allowing for high email deliverability. If your server isn’t configured to send emails, SMTP will make it possible.
There are different SMTP providers you can choose from. Some are free, so you don’t need to spend any money; you’ll just need some time for configuration.
To set it up, take a look at our article on how to configure SMTP plugin with WordPress and check out this one on how to register for an SMTP service.
Wrapping Up
Sometimes, you may encounter the issue of WordPress not sending emails to you or your customers, and it may be tricky to find out why. But you already know that the most common reasons for this can be because emails are going to spam, because your server isn’t configured correctly to send emails, or because the settings in your contact form need modification.
Once you follow the instructions above to identify the reason, you’ll be able to get your email system working properly in no time!
Authentication has a history as long as civilization. As populations grew, people needed ways to confirm their identity, whether via the use of seals, names, signs or force! Back in the day when computers were first being made, authentication was still a big concern. As it is with so many issues in our world, multiple solutions were developed to address this concern. Identity cards (such as ATM cards) and passwords became popular, so much so that they became the quintessential form of authentication. Later, in the internet era, passwords become so essential that it’s hard to believe there are other ways to authenticate. But are passwords secure enough?
Security and usability are two big concerns when it comes to authentication. When using the internet, you can’t show your passport or identity card to enter a website, right? So far, the most usable authentication method on the internet has been using a username and a password. The username is a public form of identification, while your password is something that only you should know. It seems perfect, right? But no, it is not perfect. Perfection is an illusion in online security. There are many issues with passwords. Many users may forget theirs. Many will use weak passwords. Many may even share their passwords with the others, further endangering their security. This is why the classic method of authentication via usernames and passwords is not sufficient to ensure our safety online.
But what can we do about it? Perhaps it’s time to say goodbye to old-fashioned passwords. In this article, we are going to review the top WordPress login authentication methods available in 2021. One thing that all authentication methods have in common is they allow the owner of a site or account to authenticate their identity. So, we are actually reviewing the processes that allow you to authenticate your identity.
OAuth is an authorization method that uses APIs to authorize you to use third party services on different platforms. The benefit of this is that it can be used to authenticate you as the “owner of a verified user account on that third party platform”. For example, you have a Google account, you use it everyday and you have your own authentication methods such as device confirmation or two factor authentication to access the account. When you want to use another service using oAuth, it will redirect you to your Google login page instead of the third party login page. When you log into your Google account, oAuth will create an access token which will be sent to that third party website, and that token then confirms your identity as a verified Google user. This way, you won’t have to store any password on the third party website.
Social login represents the oAuth method on the WordPress login page
This comes in handy when you are creating a community-based website. Users often don’t like registration forms. So, this form of authentication is one of the best ways to achieve both security and usability at the same time. Nextend Social Login and Register by Nextendweb is one of the most popular and easy-to-use plugins connecting users with popular social websites. However, you may need to customize your login page and fields, and you may even want to add additional steps to the registration process. In this case, Ultimate Member and its great Social Login add-on will come handy.
Ultimate Member social login extension
Popular plugins providing this method for your website include:
Since it requires an Apple account, a large number of people automatically cannot use this method. FaceID is a technology that was introduced by Apple to provide an easy and secure way to unlock Apple devices. It uses face recognition to authenticate users. Although many were initially concerned about the security risks of people using masks and printed faces, nowadays FaceID is seen as a reliable method of authentication. In Oct 2020, the official WordPress blog announced the PasswordLess WP project that uses the Webauthn.io method to authenticate using FaceID and a few other methods. Although face recognition authentication is not limited to this plugin, it can be considered as one of the top WordPress login authentication methods of 2021. Time will tell how popular it will be and if it has a future or not.
On their official WordPress plugin page the developers wrote:
“The Web Authentication API (also known as WebAuthn) is a specification written by the W3C and FIDO, with the participation of Google, Mozilla, Microsoft, Yubico, and others. The API allows servers to register and authenticate users using public-key cryptography instead of a password.”
There are other plugins that have been introduced recently that do the same job while offering additional features. Generally, the number of active installations for such plugins are few, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a chance to grow. These methods are still new and need to be seen by the community to improve.
More and more mobile devices these days come with a fingerprint scanner. It’s actually one of the most secure ways to authenticate ever invented! However, not everyone out there has the proper device to use it. The good thing about this option is that it can use any fingerprint scanner, including external fingerprint scanners that are not attached to any mobile device.
One of the concerns of using such methods is storing biometric information in a database. Well, you shouldn’t be worried at all. No biometric information will be stored on any of your websites . The device will confirm your identity, then it will send a token to the website and grant permission to log in. So, it won’t store any biometric data, such as your fingerprint, on the website.
Login with fingerprint on a WordPress website
Like the FaceID method, it also works with the newly introduced PasswordLess WP project. However since this method is a little bit older, it requires more plugins to function. Actually, some of the plugins are outdated and are no longer maintained. But here are the newly released plugins offering this login method:
Almost everyone has a cell phone these days. Not all cell phones are smart and have enough sensors and hardware to be used to protect our online security. However, if we consider the owner of a SIM card linked to an online account as the right person to confirm user identity, we can rely on SMS authentication. The method works like this:
While attempting to login or register on a website, you can simply input your phone number. The website will send you a confirmation code via SMS and you type the confirmation code into a box and, shazam! After confirming the code, you are authenticated as that phone number owner. This is a very reliable method, and is so popular these days that it has lots of free and premium plugins. It’s not something new, yet it can be considered one of the top 5 WordPress login authentication methods available in 2021. Every day, more and more websites opt for this method. Although many websites use this as a Two Factor Authentication method and an additional way to recover passwords, it’s also a secure substitute for old-fashioned passwords.
When it comes to SMS authentication, Digits is king. Digits is a premium WordPress plugin compatible with many community plugins. It makes it possible to override the default WordPress login and registration forms. You know, a lot of WordPress plugins use emails as core information, and because of that, they require users to register using an email address. Digits can provide a way so your users can register WITH or WITHOUT an email address, and that is awesome!
Digits login modal. The Email/Password method can be completely replaced by OTP method.
Be aware that using SMS authentication requires an SMS gateway, which may involve some expenses. But most of the time, it’s worth paying to gain more users. A lot of users don’t know how to use email (it’s a fact) but they probably have a cell phone and are capable of using SMS. Replacing emails with SMS as a way to authenticate users can be considered as a good strategy to gain more users. Digit has 145 active SMS gateways supported. Here are some other SMS login plugins for WordPress. Generally, it’s the most popular alternative for the current WordPress login platform.
We are actually using the device authentication in all the previous methods explained. But mighty mobile devices have more ways to amaze you with authentication. You might be familiar with the word OTP. OTP stands for One Time Password and is mostly used as an additional login field to provide more security. But what if you could guarantee that the OTP was secure enough on its own? Would it make a good replacement for permanent passwords? The answer would differ depending on the platform you are using, but most of the time it is a YES.
Similarly, I read about an authentication method that uses cryptocurrency wallets. Imagine using the security of a blockchain system for your WordPress. Although a lot of BlockChain token generators exist to secure your login, only a few are already integrated with WordPress. We’re likely just scratching the surface of the future of blockchain authentication methods. EthPress plugin uses the WalletConnect API to login via blockchain wallets. It only uses devices where the wallet apps are installed.
WalletConnect website provides an endpoint to login using wallet apps
To login with WalletConnect API, the plugin generates a token on the website, then it allows you to scan it using your wallet app. If the wallet app confirms your identity, it will send the confirmation to your website and your authentication will be approved. This is very secure, but again, not all people have a wallet app installed on their device.
If you search for “blockchain OTP generator,” you will see that it is still in development and has a long way to go.
There are dozens of OTP generator apps available to install on your device and provide a token for your login. Not all of them can be used on your WordPress website, but it’s worth checking their availability since they offer a secure way to log in. Google the term “OTP generator app” to see how many you can find. As mentioned above, OTPs are usually used to add more security to login pages, so you may consider them as an additional two-factor authentication method to your website. More details about this can be found in this article by my colleague Mac.
Wrap up
At its core, authentication involves showing something, such as a token, to someone to prove that an account belongs to you. This process can be made more secure if you can be verified as the sole owner of that token. Registration fields are taking those “tokens” from you and login fields are there to check those “tokens” whenever you want to use a service. Based on this concept, many authentication methods are available, from the ones mentioned above and beyond. In this post, I wanted to share with you the top 5 WordPress login authentication methods available in 2021. You may also consider searching for the JWT login authentication method as well, as that is missing from our list but is worth checking out. Please share your comments and questions below in the comments.
It was around June 2020 that Jupiter X Lite, the free version of our Jupiter X theme, was finally approved and released to the WordPress repository for public use. The reason behind all the effort we put into preparing and releasing the Lite version was to let everyone enjoy a glimpse of Jupiter X experience without having to pay for it. Jupiter X Lite has all the essential features of Jupiter X, plus a good level of customizability, making it more than enough to build a professional website.
From the beginning our intention was, unlike many free WordPress themes available on the market, to make Jupiter X Lite as practical and customizable as possible so that building a decent website is not dependent on paying for the premium version at some point. One exciting feature we added to make this happen was the readymade templates. Recently we have added 5 new free Jupiter X Lite templates to our theme to make the process of building websites even easier.
Meet the newly added free templates for Jupiter X Lite
Let’s take a look at the 5 new Jupiter X Lite templates that will help Lite users get started on their dream website without wasting too much time and energy on the details.
Yoga
The one-page Yoga website template, as its name suggests, is perfect for yoga instructors, fitness coaches and personal trainers who want to create a solid web presence and promote their skills online. The combination of soft and soothing colors and the uncluttered, simple layout perfectly matches what yoga intends to teach: finding peace within and helping spread it to others!
Using elements such as image boxes, testimonials, image galleries and icon lists you can showcase your various pricing options, introduce your trainers, share relaxing images of your yoga sessions and much more.
Agency
For agency owners looking for a simple, functional and elegant website, the one-page Agency website template is the right choice. Designed with the needs of agencies in mind, this template promotes your projects and services in the most concise and professional way.
Life Coach
Here is another one-page template that will ensure that your consulting and life coaching services stand out among the crowd. The Life Coach website template, with its eye-catching hero section, tailored page elements and easy to navigate layout, makes sure you are always accessible to your clients and are ready to change their lives!
Personal Portfolio
Nowadays nobody can dispute the importance of a personal portfolio website for freelancers looking to grab business opportunities. If you want clients to find you in the vast and competitive sea of information on the internet, a simple resume won’t do the trick. You have to tell your story in the form of a modern, visually appealing and descriptive website.
The one-page Personal Portfolio website template will give you a hand with setting up your online portfolio and highlighting your skills and expertise. The dark background color, contrasting white and green color text elements and the clean customer testimonials and gallery section will have clients flocking to you in no time!
App
If you have an app or a software that you would like to showcase to the public, it’s a great idea to have a landing page that does just that. Take a simple yet powerful approach with the one-page App website template and highlight your app or any product’s features, perks and lifeline in the best possible way!
What does the future look like for Jupiter X Lite?
Surely this is just the beginning! We won’t stop with these 5 new Jupiter X Lite templates, plus the older Callisto template! More new Jupiter X Lite templates are on the way in the near future to cover more businesses and personal interests and help our free users get started on their dream website faster and easier.
Wrapping up
We just summarized our 5 new Jupiter X Lite templates. Are you a Jupiter X Lite user? Have you used any of the templates mentioned above? What did you like the most about them? Please share in the comments what other businesses we should prioritize while adding more templates to the Lite version.
It’s no secret that one of the biggest hassles for e-commerce shops and marketers is the issue of abandoned carts. In fact, nearly 70% of all shoppers online will abandon their carts without purchasing anything. This is frustrating considering that you spent resources (namely time and money) coming up with strategies and campaigns to grab onto and maintain new leads for them to abandon their carts. And what’s more is that even when they’ve been interested enough to look at your website and add your products to their cart, there’s still more to be done!
There are a couple of reasons as to why a potential customer would abandon their cart and never return. These are:
There are too many competitors. It could be the case that numerous products similar to yours can be found online. Keep in mind that once your lead Googles a product, a competitor could be tracking that lead to send them ads along their customer journey. In other words, your potential customer could easily become sidetracked with another viable option. And the crazy part is that this can happen seconds before they were about to buy something from you.
People have short attention spans. These days, it’s often quite difficult to hold people’s attention for long online. While they may need to have quite a few reasons to reach a decision, it doesn’t take much for them to change their mind. They could leave their cart abandoned with the intention of coming back later or to look into alternatives.
In this post, we’ll take a close look at why traditional ways to recover abandoned WooCommerce carts are no longer effective and how you can recapture their attention.
Reasons your follow-up attempts are ineffective
There might be several reasons as to why your campaign to follow up with cart abandoners in WooCommerce fails – however, by far, the most vital factors are reach and engagement. What does this mean? Simply that your campaign hasn’t reached your cart abandoner or it’s not engaging enough for them to return to your site to complete their purchase. Let’s look at why this might be.
Your campaign is not all-encompassing
One vital aspect missed by many campaigns to recover abandoned WooCommerce carts is the fact that online shoppers are unable to pay attention for very long. In other words, they get easily distracted. Just think about it: they are inundated with similar emails that you’re sending out and visit multiple sites and online shops on a daily basis. Simply sending one follow-up email upon exiting your store is not enough.
What we mean to say by this is: your campaign to follow-up with them should include their email as well as through main touchpoints in their customer journey, including your website, popups and social media.
Your campaign is not customized
By far, the most cost-efficient and effective way to capture someone’s attention is through personalization. When people see a personalized message conveyed to them, they feel acknowledged, which increases the chance that they’ll take action or respond.
But let’s first get one thing straight: personalization is much more than simply displaying the customer’s name in your message. It’s also about showing them offers and incentives tailored to their preferences.
What this means is that a cart abandoner is more likely to pass over a generic campaign and pay attention to personalized outreach.
Let’s take a closer look into some methods that you can use to tackle the obstacles in follow-up campaigns to recover abandoned WooCommerce carts.
1- Use a comprehensive, multi-channel approach
As mentioned earlier, your follow-up campaign should not be something you do only once but should be an ongoing effort as part of a wider multi-channel campaign. Doing so will create a seamless, tailored customer journey, which will boost your reach probability and appeal to your target audience. So what does this look like? Your cart abandoner will get both a follow-up email as well as see the items that they abandoned in their cart while on your homepage (or any other major touchpoint such as the products page).
To take it one step further, you can show them relevant pop-ups with exclusive deals as they navigate your website so that they’ll be incentivized to finalize their transaction. On top of this, you can make use of remarketing ads on Google or social media to serve as a reminder of their abandoned carts.
To go about doing this, your best bet is to find a cross-channeling marketing tool such as Growmatik. This will enable you to link all your segments from various touchpoints and provide consistent marketing messages on multiple channels, including your website and email. Let’s now go into more detail about each aspect of building up your multi-channel follow-up campaign.
Sending emails
By far, emails are the most prevalent way of reaching out to follow up with cart abandoners. It’s also a crucial part of our multi-channel campaign. In Growmatik:
Navigate to the Automation page.
If you’d like to reach new users who have not yet bought anything, then make a rule in the Leads column. If you’d like to reach out to existing customers, then make a rule in the Customers column.
Assign the condition as User Behavior > Abandoned Cart and the action as Send Email. Click on the Create Email button.
In the window that pops up, select the Abandoned Cart template. Enter a name of your choice and click on Customize.
When you get to the email builder, tailor your template to your preferences. You can make use of features such as dynamic keywords, product elements (like abandoned items) and coupons to customize your email.
Hit Save & Exit.
In the Automation page, hit the Create Rule button.
And this is the first aspect of your follow-up campaign. After doing this, every WooCommerce cart abandoner will receive this follow-up email after abandoning a cart on your site.
Customizing the homepage
As you might have guessed, the next touchpoint that should be addressed is your website. This means that we’ll need to personalize that cart abandoner’s experience on your site. To go about this in Growmatik:
Head to the Automation page and in the Leads or Customers column, make the following rule.
Assign the condition as User Behavior > Abandoned Cart and the action as Personalize Page. Choose a webpage and hit the Save button. You can then select the homepage or any other page that you think is important (such as the products page)
In the personalizer window that pops up, you can personalize the page by editing the content or creating new content by hitting the + button. After you’re finished, hit Save & Exit.
When on the Automation page, hit the Create Rule button.
And, with this, concludes the second part of our follow-up campaign. This means that every person who abandons their cart on your site will be able to see a tailor-made version of your page.
Displaying a popup
Another way to help recover abandoned WooCommerce carts is through showing popups on or throughout our website. Doing this is two-fold: to remind visitors they’ve abandoned their cart and to encourage them to complete their purchase. To get this done in Growmatik:
Navigate to the Automation page, and in the Leads or Customers column, make the following rule.
Assign the condition as User Behavior > Abandoned Cart and the action as Show Popup. Choose the amount of time that you want to have passed before showing the popup. Then hit the Create Popup button.
In the window that comes up, select the Cart Abandonment template. Enter a name of your choice and hit Customize.
When in the email builder, tailor your template to your liking. You can make use of certain features like dynamic keywords, product elements (such as abandoned items) and coupons, which will allow you to personalize your popup even more.
Hit Save & Exit.
Once on the Automation page, hit the Create Rule button.
Once you’re finished, everyone who abandons their cart on your site will be able to see a popup personalized to them.
Retargeting ads outside your site
After the follow-up email and personalizing your website, the next and third touchpoint is external websites as well as social media (such as Instagram and Facebook). This is something that’s overlooked by tons of e-commerce sites when it comes to recovering abandoned WooCommerce carts. By integrating your site with Facebook Pixel and Google ads, you’ll be able to follow your cart abandoners and target personalized ads on other websites as well as on Instagram and Facebook. The articles listed below offers some excellent tips to get this done:
(Growmatik is slated to add social media automations soon in 2021).
2- Customize your follow-up message
So far in this article we covered the technical aspects of crafting a follow-up campaign that can be sent through multiple channels to recover abandoned WooCommerce carts. However, we haven’t yet covered the personalized content of such marketing messages.
We want to go beyond the simple ‘Hey [first name] Have you forgotten something?!’ message. Adding more personalization will make the cart abandoner feel special and unique.
Keep in mind that you might be limited as to what you can personalize depending on your marketing automation tool of choice. In Growmatik, we’re going to include three items to our campaign to reach out to cart abandoners.
Add abandoned items to marketing messages
When you’re composing email templates and page content for the cart abandoner, you should include the items that the user has in their cart. While you might not think this is important, it can have quite the impact in assisting the abandoner to remember which products they left behind. This is because online shoppers are likely to have visited several sites and get similar emails all the time.
While in the Growmatik email builder and page personalizer tools, add the Product element, which you’ll see in the toolbox. Then go to the product settings panel and assign the content as Abandoned Cart Products. By doing this, Growmatik will show the abandoned items to the cart abandoner.
Use an exclusive coupon to incentive the abandoner
It’s often the case that users who abandon their carts haven’t forgotten they’ve done so – meaning that a “did you forget” message will not resonate with them. It could be that they found something better (finger’s crossed that’s not the case!) or they’re uncertain about which business to buy from. The competition between you and someone else might be quite close that you don’t need to do much to get ahead.
One great proven solution is through exclusive offers. This can be a great way to sway users to make a last-minute decision. This is because a discount coupon plays into cognitive biases like FOMO, hyperbolic discounting, loss aversion and reciprocity. All these biases could help persuade a cart abandoner to finalize their purchase.
To make sure that this is effective, it’s important to state inside your pitch that the coupon on offer is exclusive to that particular user.
Growmatik allows you to include such coupons in not only emails but also popups. To do this, all you have to do is add the Coupon element to your template and input your discount preferences like the amount of the discount. Growmatik will then do its job and automatically show the coupons to the cart abandoner.
Add social proof
An important factor that might make a user hesitant in the customer journey is when they question whether or not the product they are considering is quality. More often than not, they’ll need something more than simply a flashy presentation or slick sales pitch. Instead, they’ll need to see proof of what others have thought about after buying and using your product. We call this social proof.
Your campaign to follow up with cart abandoners will likely necessitate social proof to ease any concerns about your product. What this looks like in reality could range be a couple of excellent reviews from previous customers or testimonials from influencers. To boost the review’s authenticity, you could even include the name and picture of the reviews (with permission, of course).
You can include even more info on your website so that you can boost user confidence, such as real-time data about when exactly a product was sold, how many items are left in stock as well as how many people are looking at a particular product. You can easily do all this with plugins like WPFomify.
Wrapping up
The communication you establish with a user throughout their customer journey can either be simplistic or sophisticated. The methods mentioned in this article can go a long way in helping you recover abandoned WooCommerce carts. However, keep in mind that these techniques might vary depending on your particular business, the market as well as your target audience. We recommend that you focus on your goals and set up the type of campaigns that will have the maximum reach and engagement. And this campaign should be both cross-channel and personalized.
The dramatic rise in activity for e-commerce and online retail in 2020 has forced many retailers to shift focus to their digital stores to survive. Today’s technologies allow for nearly anyone to start an online business in just a couple of hours. However, launching an online shop is the first step, keeping it optimized for the best results is another story. In this article, we’ll discuss several ways to optimize a WooCommerce business website to boost your sales and improve your website’s user experience.
Speed
The first thing your visitor notices when entering your website is how fast it is and how it responds to user commands, website performance and speed. In today’s world, speed is critical for good user experience, so you’ll need to ensure that you’re constantly maintaining it.
Running a page speed test is a task you have to perform at least once a month, and you have to run it through not only a one-page speed test site but through at least three major speed measurement sites. Here they are:
GTmetrix
Recently, the GTmetrix speed test site got a major update. It can measure your site performance from different points of view.
Google PageSpeed Insights
Google PageSpeed Insights provides detailed information about your site page speed and compatibility to the latest standards of Google SEO. It goes a step further and shows you ways to address any problematic areas.
WebpageTest
In addition to performance measurement and overall page speed results, WebpageTest provides a site security score and ways on how to improve it.
These sites are great not only in providing results but also very detailed instructions on how to fix your website’s problems.
There are several points you have to consider during page speed optimization. The most important are the following:
Always optimize images.
Use videos from external sources.
Minify page resources: HTML, CSS, JavaScript.
Minify HTTPS requests.
Deactivate and remove extra plugins.
Enable browser caching.
Choose a better hosting and CDN service.
Optimization for mobile
If your website is not mobile-friendly and you don’t have a good user experience on small screen devices, you’re driving your customers away from your website. Today when mobile devices are the most important device for nearly everyone, it’s important to make your website mobile-friendly.
To make sure your website is fully mobile-friendly you have to check it in at least two main operating systems: Android and IOS. Make sure your website usability is not restricted, your menu is working without any problem and most importantly, you have to check every step from the product add to cart till the order submission. Don’t forget to optimize your newsletters and confirmation emails sent to your customers.
SEO-friendly URLs
Before reading or opening any product (or page or post) on your website, users will always read the title. This is the first interaction with your customer, and if this first touch is not attractive enough you may lose their attention.
Always use SEO-friendly titles for your products, pages, posts, or anything you publish on your site, it’s necessary to have unique titles for search engines, it will boost your ranking and your store will be easy to discover and easy to use for any user.
Some of the best practices of using the right titles
Create unique titles.
Use the right length, not more than 60-70 characters.
Use the right keywords in your title.
Often use the brand name in the title.
Use action words like “Buy” “Free” “Online” in the title.
The simple structure of the site
Site structure defines how easy it is to use your site and how good a user experience you may offer to your customer. It also helps search engines and users to find relevant information on your site and spend less time searching. Keep your site structure as simple as possible, it’s not a good idea to create 3 or 4 levels of the menus on the site. Make it more simple, use a maximum of 2 levels.
Besides the proper structure of the site, you may also need to consider internal linking to related products and posts on the site, it will improve SEO score and you will be able to properly display upsells and related products on the product page.
Major factors to consider at this point is:
URL structure that follows your navigation.
Make your hierarchy logical
Number of categories
Don’t forget, a properly structured website is easy to crawl by search engines and it’s easy for visitors to navigate as well.
HTTPS
HTTPS is another way to optimize a WooCommerce business website. Based on the latest Google announcements, sites with HTTPS protocols will receive minor SEO benefits compared to the sites without it. HTPPS is a must-have protocol for an e-commerce site, (no matter if it’s WooCommerce, Shopify or any other e-commerce solution). This holds particularly true for the checkout and the payment pages. Without it, anyone who added a product in the cart will abandon it if you don’t support the HTTPS protocol.
What HTTPS does is that it secures the connection between the user and web server, which means that all the data sent and received during this process is fully secure and you may trust to send your credit card or any other private information, so, make sure you always have that green padlock on the left side of your website URL in the browser.
A quick list of the benefits of HTTPS enabled sites:
You are more reliable for your users, they trust you
HTTPS protects the integrity of your website
HTTPS is great for SEO and search rankings
Your users will be notified by the browser if you don’t have a green padlock
HTTPS is essential for Google accelerated pages
To get your site HTTPS ready, you need to install an SSL certificate. Many website hostings include this feature for free as part of their hosting plans. You can also consider buying from third-party resellers such as SSL2BUY.
Image optimization
Image optimization also plays a key role in optimizing a WooCommerce business website. Images and mainly product images on your site are probably one of the biggest reasons why your users will decide to visit your site or buy anything from you. Good quality images are crucial for your website but aside from its benefits, it may be a problem if you don’t optimize them.
To put it briefly, if you’re running an online store, you have to master image optimization at a high level. Your goal is to reduce the image size as much as possible without sacrificing quality. In other words, the primary goal is to keep the best balance between the lowest file size and best image quality.
There are many benefits of image optimization but let’s list the most important ones here:
Name them properly, use a good description and leave out the unnecessary parts.
Optimize alt tags with proper and relevant text.
Reduce the file size as much as possible however don’t forget about quality.
Be aware of the file types. JPG is traditionally acceptable but the latest image formats like .webp are better.
Optimize thumbnails as well.
Remove extra plugins
WordPress plugins are one of the main features of the content management system, and it’s the main reason why they are so popular and widely used. Today almost any task can be solved by the plugins, and with the right plugins, you can add any functionality to your website, from social sharing solutions to advanced user tracking and behavior learning plugins.
Unfortunately, solving lots of problems by using multiple plugins also has its problems. Using too many plugins will definitely reduce your website’s performance.
There are many reasons why you need to remove extra plugins from your website. Take a closer look and ask the following questions to yourself: Do I really need them? Is the added feature mandatory for my business? Can I survive without it? If the answer to these questions is not an emphatic “yes,” then you might want to consider deactivating and deleting some plugins.
It’s important that after deactivating and deleting plugins from your site that you remember to run a clean-up and database optimization plugin. This will delete all the data left behind by any unused and/or deleted plugins. In my personal opinion, the Advanced Database Cleaner is excellent.
Personalize your store
The last point in our list when optimizing a WooCommerce business website is personalization. Personalization will optimize user experience. So when a visitor exits your site without purchasing anything, you’ll probably want to track them and offer discounts to win them back. Our latest project Growmatik can help you do just this and more based on user behavior. Growmatik is an all-in-one marketing automation and personalization tool for WordPress and WooCommerce websites.
In Growmatik, you can create different types of actions based on user behavior and provide the best user experience for your site visitors. The most important features of Growmatik are:
Segmenting users based on behavior and interests
Automating your entire marketing stack on one screen
Personalizing experiences as unique as your customers
Sending beautiful and personalized emails based on advanced customer behavior
Smart popups: highly-targeted magnets to initiate and motivate leads
Assessing your marketing performance at every level
Attribution made simple and actionable
You can check for more details about Growmatik functions on our website.
Conclusion
I hope you’ve found some of the information in this article useful. Please note that some of the tips mentioned here should be tested before implementing them onto a live site. It’s important that you always have a backup plan in case you need to cancel any changes you’ve made. If you’d like to add something about any of the methods mentioned here, please don’t hesitate to leave us a message in the comment section below!
Review websites are very popular nowadays as many people search for reviews before making a purchase online. Furthermore, reviews are the most effective type of content for driving traffic, because many users trust online reviews as much as they would trust advice from a friend.
Creating a review website is a simple process – just find a niche that is perfect for you, and write reviews for the products belonging to that niche.
I’ll use this Movie Review demo as an example of building a review website in WordPress.
Required plugins for review website
Elementor isn’t enough to build a review website Here is the list of the required plugins for the Jupiter X theme (they are already bundled with the theme):
Elementor
ACF (Advanced Custom Fields)
JetEngine
Jupiter X Core
To learn how to install the bundled plugins, you can read this Artbees Documentation.
Creating a custom post type
By default, Jupiter X provides posts and portfolios post types. You may need to create a custom post type for your reviews product. In our example, we’ll create a Movies post type to provide reviews for different films. The JetEngine plugin is excellent for this purpose.The detailed tutorial on how to create a custom post type can be found in the JetEngine knowledge base.
Creating a custom taxonomy
In our example, we’ll divide movies posts into custom taxonomies: director, actor, genre. They can be also created with the JetEngine plugin via JetEngine > Taxonomies.
You can read more detailed instructions on how to create taxonomies for custom post types with JetEngine in this article.
Creating movie posts
Now let’s start adding posts to our custom post type. Under the Movies menu, click on “Add New Movie,” write the title (for our purposes, we named it “Knives Out”) and add the rest of the fields that were added as meta fields when you created a custom post type in JetEngine.
Don’t forget to select director, actor, genre and add a featured image. Then, click on Publish.
Now if you visit this movie post, you’ll see that the page was created but that the custom fields are not displayed. This is where Jupiter X Core and its single post template come into play, allowing us to create a template for single posts and to display custom fields.
Go ahead and create several other movie posts so you have something to work with.
Creating a single template for a custom post type
If you click on one of the movie posts, you’ll see a page with the default theme structure. You need to build a single template to display the content correctly.
Under Templates > Saved Templates, click on “Add New”, select the single type and name your template (for example, “Movie Single Template” in our case).
Now let’s add dynamic content to the template so that it loads the appropriate data for each movie post.
We created the meta fields in the JetEngine settings for the movie post type. To be able to show a “Movie Poster” field, you can add the section in the Elementor editor and select “Custom Image” in the background settings under Style tab and select the “Movie Poster” field.
Other meta fields can be added with a Dynamic Field element, just select the “Source” as “Meta Data” and select the field you want to display.
You can find our more detailed information about the Dynamic Field element in this article.
As for the ratings, it can be a meta field too that you created in the JetEngine settings for the movie post type, and you can show it in the post with Dynamic Field element as well as other meta fields.
You can add a star icon for the rating field and customize the output like this (%s/10), in which 10 is the highest rating.
You’ll see this on the frontend:
Another way to show ratings is by using the plugin Rate My Post. You can add a shortcode [ratemypost] into the Shortcode element on the single template so that the users are able to leave their ratings.
To show rating results, use the shortcode [ratemypost-result]
The texts can be changed to your needs in the plugin Settings.
Read the full documentation for the Rate My Post plugin to study it in more detail.
Once you’ve added all needed content, click on Publish and your template is live. Now, it needs to be assigned to the movie post type. Go to Jupiter X > Control Panel > Settings and enable your custom post type (in our case “Movies”).
Then go to Jupiter X > Customize > Post Types > Movies > Movies Single and select the custom template.
When visiting one of the movie posts, you can see that your template will appear exactly as you designed it.
Creating an archive template for a custom post type
Creating an archive template is a similar process to the single template – you just need to select the Archive type.
Before creating the archive template, we need to first create a Listing Grid to set up the content of the custom fields. Go to JetEngine > Listings > Add New and create a new listing. Here, you can see that I’ve already created the “Movie Archive” listing.
The Elementor editor will open, and you can add dynamic fields to show the data of your meta fields, just like we did for the single template.
More details about Listings can be found in the JetEngine article.
When the listing is finalized, go back to the Archive template under the Templates menu and add the Listing Grid element to show your listing on Archive pages and customize the settings.
When it’s ready, you need to assign the template to the Movie post type. Go to Jupiter X > Customize > Post types > Movies > Movies Archive and select a custom template.
Your archive is live! You can visit any category page in the Movie post type and see the list of movies.
Wrapping Up
As you can see, building a review website in WordPress is easy with the Jupiter X theme and with its bundled plugins like Elementor and JetEngine. You can also import a demo to save more time and simply edit the content to fit your needs.
And the great thing? You can view many other demos offered by Jupiter X in case there are others that align more closely with your goals.
If you have any questions, feel free to write to us in the comment section below.
This is a guest post contributed to Artbees Themes Blog by Vishnu Goyal.
If you are here looking for ways to improve customer communication on your WordPress website, chances are you already own a website for your business or you are working on another’s website to make it communication friendly. In any case, you have landed on the right page. Welcome!
As of 2020, we have 4.5 billion internet users worldwide who stay online to live, work, play, shop and do everything in between. For a business to succeed in the internet-dominated world, a thoughtful online presence is not optional but a necessity, Today, if you want to connect with your prospects and customers, you can’t miss the opportunity to get your business online, start conversations with your target audience and build customer relationships on the internet.
Your business website is the centerpiece of your online presence and overall digital marketing and thankfully you already have one. Now, having a website up and running is just one aspect. Setting it up for success and growth requires a lot of effort in regular optimization and keeping the conversation going. The primary purpose of your business website is to generate leads who you can turn into your customers and keep the show going.
With a communication friendly website, you can make sure that you are not letting your visitors leave without talking to you. And once they are in contact, you are the best person to let them explore more about you and convert into customers.
So, once you’re done with the hard work of getting visitors on your website, the next focus should be to make it easy for them to start a conversation with you. And that’s the agenda of this article: to help make your WordPress powered website customer communication friendly and let you spark as many conversations as you possibly can on your online space. Without further ado, let’s get started.
5 ways to make your website “customer communication friendly”
5 tips to improve customer communication on your WordPress website. [Illustration by Agnesh Jha/MyOperator]
Here are 5 ways (plus a bonus one) to improve customer communication on your website and step up your lead generation game, as well as improve your overall sales cycle process:
Have a dedicated Contact Us page
No website is complete without a dedicated Contact Us page. If your visitors want to contact you, it’s likely that they are going to visit your contact page. So, make sure to have one. See, when it comes to communication, different people have different preferences. Some like to pick up the phone and call, some like to chat online, while others may find it comfortable to fill a contact form, email you or visit you at your location.
In any case, it is best practice to include all available contact options. For best user experience, besides building a custom Contact Form, consider including the following communication options on your contact page:
Your business email address
Your business phone number
Your office or business address
A Google map of your location
Contact us page on PeopleMetrics website with contact form, business address, Google map, business email ID, and phone number.
In case you have multiple locations, you can add all those onto your page. Also, don’t forget to mention your preferable business hours.
Install a chat widget on every page
We are living in the age of instant gratification. It’s an age where people don’t have time to wait, and they want everything in real-time. Your customers are no different. As per recent trends, 41% of customers expect live chat on your website.
Can you let them down and lose business? Nope! That’s why live chat has moved from “nice-to-have” channel to a “must-have” communication channel.
MyOperator uses a live chat widget on every page of their website to provide 24/7 connectivity for their customers. It also displays a 24/7 helpline number in its header section making it easy for customers to connect on call with the MyOperator support team.
To help you get started with live chat on your Jupiter WordPress website, we have curated a list of Best Live Chat WP Plugins. Feel free to check that out.
Don’t bury your business phone number
While phone calls are one of the oldest modes of business communication, they are still one of the customer-preferred ways to connect with brands. This holds even more true for small businesses.
According to a recent study study, 60% of customers prefer to call small businesses on the phone. That number alone is sufficient to realize the importance of having a business phone number. If you already don’t have a dedicated business phone number, consider getting one. Thanks to their advanced calling features like toll-free calling and Interactive Voice Responses integration, those connect your customers with you in the most personalized way.
And once you have your business number, display it proudly to enhance customer communication on your WordPress website. A few website sections where you should display your business contact number include:
Website menu bar
Website footer section
Your contact page
By mentioning your phone number there, you are making it easy for customers to call you in a click and talk business.
Ask visitors to contact you
You might be thinking about how can you ask each visitor on your website to call you, initiate a chat or fill out that contact form. Worry not. It’s quite easy. I’m sure you are aware of that thing called call-to-actionor CTA, right? While we all have heard of CTAs and how good ones can skyrocket online conversions, still they are often not used to their full potential.
See, you must be working hard on building your brand, putting lots of effort into content marketing and SEO, or might be spending huge money on online ads to get visitors to your website. So, to do justice to your work, you must take measures to make the most of every page and every visit.
On every page, you need to have a clear one call-to-action that you want users to click on. Every article on your blog is also an opportunity to include a relevant CTA and invite users to take action as they consume meaningful content on your website. For example, the team at gaming site Solitaired used a CTA to solicit feedback on their solitaire games. Through the user insights they received as a result, they ended up adding features like hints and redos, which drove their user engagement by over 10%.
Thanks to the simplicity of Jupiter WordPress, you can create attention-grabbing CTAs in one click, without writing a single line of code.
Be eager to adopt modern means of communication
The ways businesses connect with their customers are always evolving. While channels like email and SMS marketing, phone calls, 1:1 personal chat have been helping businesses for years to stay in touch with their customers, there are new yet very helpful channels adding to this list. For example, Facebook messenger for business and WhatsApp Business chat widgets are two of the most popular customer communication options used by modern websites. Those can be integrated on your website with few lines of code and provide your visitors with the ability to contact you in one tap.
A website using Facebook Messenger Chat Plugin. [Source: Facebook]
Another trend is AI for websites and chatbots. With an AI chatbot, you can automate a big chunk of your customer communication by automatically replying to the frequently asked questions while connecting visitors to your support agents for complex questions.
The point is to stay ahead in the communication game. You always need to make the best use of available channels plus also keep an eye on new channels along the way. After all, first-mover advantages do help a lot, and it also brings a distinct identity for your brand.
Last but not least: Pay attention to your website design and content
If you want visitors on your website to take action, you need to make your website design user friendly and appealing. As a perk of running your website on WordPress, you have a nice collection of WordPress themes and page builders at your disposal to instantly upgrade your website design.
To entice visitors into action, make your website copy actionable. Here are a few quick tips to make your website content action-worthy:
Use lingo that your audience understands: Avoid jargon or fancy words. The simpler, the better.
Speak to your leads: Shift the focus from you to them! Let them know how you can solve their problems.
Include CTAs: A copy without a clear call-to-action will not benefit you much. Make it clear what action you want visitors to take.
Give opportunity to engage: Ask questions from your visitors and give them a way to respond. Meaningful engagement often ends up in long-term relationships.
What’s next?
By using all the above techniques or a combination of them, you can spark new conversations and engagements, which will help you enhance overall customer communication on your WordPress website. This will also enable your prospects and customers to speak to you and literally convert your website into a lead generation engine. What follows next is a growing customer base, thriving business and more success to you that you are working so hard for and so deserve.
Most theme developers simply don’t pay that much attention to the design of the author page. If you have a blog or magazine website and want to display author information on a specific author page, you are often limited to your theme’s default author page design – and it might not be enough.
Fortunately, there are tons of methods to overcome this issue. Possible ways to customize an author’s page in WordPress range from developing the author’s page template on your theme directory, to using different types of archive templates or using third party plugins, all are. Let’s discuss three of these methods and explore the pros and cons of each.
1 – Using the Ultimate Member plugin
The Ultimate Member plugin has wonderful user management features. One of its features is the User Profile pages. By using the profile pages, you can easily get additional author info when you click on any author link in your blog. Let’s see how it looks.
Install and activate the Ultimate Member plugin through the WordPress -> Plugins pan.
Installing the Ultimate Member plugin
After installing, click on the Create Pages button on the top notice bar to make sure you have all the required pages for the Ultimate Member plugin available.
Create Ultimate Member pages
If you don’t do that, you need to create the pages manually and set them through the Ultimate Member configuration.
Setting the Ultimate Member profile page
The user page will be considered as your author profile page. So, if you just refresh your author page, you will see that it will be redirected to the profile page and will look different.
Ultimate Member default profile page
If you wish to add more info and custom metas to your profile, you can do it via the Ultimate Member form editor. Just navigate to Ultimate Member -> Forms and click on the default profile. Please note that you can create custom login and registration forms with custom meta fields and you can then show those fields on the profile pages.
Ultimate Member default profile form
You can edit the layout and add as many meta fields as you want into your profile page. I added a registration date field to show you how it works.
Adding custom fields to the profile page
And here are the final results:
Registration date added to the profile page
You can see the author posts in the posts tab and the comments in the comments tab. You can add as many tabs as you want using this extension. The user can also have a cover image on the profile page. You can disable this cover image through the Ultimate Member configuration.
Ultimate Member posts on the profile page
There are several other options you can use to customize the profile pages, and you can also override the Ultimate Member template files in your child theme. If you found this useful, don’t hesitate to rate them on WordPress plugins repository.
This approach might be useful when you have lots of guest authors and you want to run a member’s directory and make it possible to show each user profile.
2 – Using custom archive templates
Jupiter X has a built-in custom archive templating feature, which allows for you to easily make an author’s page in WordPress. Since the author’s page will be considered as archive pages, you can create a custom author’s page using the archive template feature. The upside is that you won’t need an extra plugin. However, the downside is that you won’t be able to distinguish between the author’s page and the calendar archive pages.
So, in order to create a custom archive page, you can use the Customizer and navigate to Blog -> Blog Archive and create or assign an archive template.
Assigning an archive template in Customizer -> Blog
This feature was introduced in Jupiter X 1.10, and you can use it only if you are using Jupiter X theme. For more information, please check out this article. The results would be like your archive page (depending on your designed template) with the title of the author’s name.
Authors page using the archive page template in Jupiter X
3 – Using custom made pages with 301 redirection
There is another excellent approach to customizing an author’s page in WordPress if you have a few authors. This approach allows you to have a fully customized authors page and it uses a simple mechanism: create your custom pages then redirect the author’s page to the custom pages one-by-one using a 301 redirect plugin. This way, you won’t have any limitations at all. You’ll be able to add whatever design, layout and type of content you want to your author page, and you’ll benefit from all the features available on your page builder. To do that, simply create a page and add your content to it.
Adding a new page and editing via Elementor
I will add a CV template from the Elementor templates repository to make the process easier.
CV template in Elementor template respiratory
After adding the template, I’ll go ahead and add a Posts element into the page and set it to only show the posts from my desired author.
Adding the posts and filter to show the desired author posts into the page.
This will be my final author page:
The only thing left is to redirect the authors page to the custom-made author page. To find the author page, navigate to WordPress Users and hover on the author’s name. The “view” button has the correct author page. Copy that link.
Finding the author page links
Now, you’ll need to either install a 301 redirect plugin or use your .htaccess file to redirect your old author page to the new custom author page.
Using the 301 redirect plugin, you’ll need to install it through WordPress -> Plugins -> Add New.
Search for the “redirect” keyword and install one of the plugins.
Installing a redirection plugin
Now, add the Source URL (your current author page), the Target URL (new custom author page) and add the redirection.
Adding a redirection to the author’s page
Now if someone clicks on the author’s name anywhere on your website, they will be redirected to your customized author’s page. It’s also a good idea to include author boxes at the end of your posts containing your name so readers always catch a glimpse of it.
Redirecting the default author page to custom authors page
Wrapping up
There are other methods out there to create a custom author’s page in WordPress. Sometimes it’s worth developing the author template files on your theme or child theme. But not everyone wants to go through the hassle of coding. In this article, we discussed three methods to override the default author’s page. There certainly are more methods and plugins available to do this. If you believe there are easier steps to create an author page, please do not hesitate and share it below in the comments section.
This is a guest post contributed to Artbees Themes blog by Rosie Greaves.
Suppose you’ve been dreaming of creating a beautiful website for yourself or your business. In that case, you’ve probably started to do your research and found there are loads of website builders on the market.
If you don’t have a wealth of technical know-how, a SaaS website editor complete with customizable templates could be the right solution for you. It’s the easiest option for realizing your website ambitions without diving into complicated code.
That said, when it comes to website creation, you want to make your exact vision come true. So, there’s a good chance you’re pondering these kinds of questions as you consider whether the website builder you’re looking at is the right fit for your business:
If I use a website editor with pre-set templates, will my customization be limited?
How are web domains and hosting handled with this SaaS platform?
Are their website themes professional-looking, mobile-friendly, and SEO optimized?
What kind of performance do websites with this platform boast?
Is this platform secure?
In response to these questions, this article breaks down how to create a beautiful website with a custom WordPress.com design. We believe WordPress.com boasts the perfect compromise between functionality and attractive design, and with a little instruction, the customizability options are nearly endless.
Before we dive into how you create a stunning website with WordPress.com and the Jupiter X theme, let’s quickly cover a question that confuses many.
What’s the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com? Which one should you use to create your custom WordPress design?
WordPress.org is an open-source software you download as an operating system for your blog and websites. With some technical skills, you can create high-quality websites where your only limit is your imagination. With WordPress.org, you are responsible for finding your own hosting and web domain. You’ll also have to maintain the performance and security of the site yourself.
On the other hand, WordPress.com is great for beginners as you don’t need any technical know-how to setup, and it takes care of your web hosting for you. No downloads or installations are required. You simply create an account and choose one of WordPress.com’s plans. As quickly as that, WordPress.com handles your website security, manages your web server and provides an array of gorgeous website templates to use.
We think WordPress.com is the most customizable and intuitive way of developing a beautiful website. With that in mind, we’re going to delve deeper into how to achieve exactly that…
Introducing our Champion for custom WordPress design: WordPress.com
First things first, let’s acquaint ourselves with the platform. Did you know that WordPress powers over 38% of the internet? Many website creators flock to the WordPress editor for its reliability, customizability and top-notch blogging tools. It’s a giant in the website building industry, and for a good reason. WordPress.com also offers a seemingly endless array of plugins to help you expand the platform’s functionality.
Host a Website, Without the Hassle
WordPress.com takes care of webserver management and hosting for you, which saves you lots of time researching and laying the foundations for your website. In fact, with WordPress.com, you can get on the web in less than half an hour. Just choose your WordPress.com subdomain or upgrade to one of WordPress.com’s paid-for packages to connect your own domain.
WordPress.com also provides an SSL certificate with each site you create with them so that you can rely on high security.
Install Plugins for More Functionality
When you first sign up to WordPress.com, the most vital features are available to you from the start. However, as soon as you’re ready to expand, you can upgrade to WordPress.com’s Business plan (or higher) and start installing plugins.
A lot of essential functionality is built into WordPress.com. That said, there are thousands of plugins available, some of which enable you to:
Support multiple languages on your website
Add an online store to your site with WooCommerce
Dig deeper into your SEO strategy
Integrate with popular email providers
Utilize event calendars and scheduling tools
Integrate with social media
Install a helpdesk to boost your customer service strategy
…and much more!
Grow Your Audience with Industry-Leading Blogging Features
WordPress.com is famous for its blogging functionality. But, it doesn’t just provide an excellent blogging platform; it also comes with a ‘Reader’ app. This lets online readers browse through WordPress blogs, making it much easier for your target audience to find you.
WordPress.com provides users with all the blogging basics.
Use one of WordPress.com’s many sleek layouts to structure your blog content
On top of these foundational features, you can also:
Add tags to each post for improved SEO
Organize posts into categories
Add a short excerpt description to your blogs
Schedule your posts to go live for whenever your audience is most receptive
When you combine all of WordPress.com’s native blogging features with the sheer array of blogging-related plugins available, WordPress.com undoubtedly makes content marketing accessible to even the greenest of marketers.
Optimize Your SEO
WordPress.com prides itself on being an SEO-friendly platform, providing users with a robust infrastructure for climbing search engine rankings.
For instance, you can edit meta descriptions, add title tags, edit image alt-text, and write the most appropriate URL for all your subpages. WordPress.com also makes it easy to create and submit a sitemap, which, again, is fabulous for your SEO.
On top of that, with the Business plan and above you can integrate with Google Analytics for more SEO insights and add plugins like Yoast SEO to access more advanced SEO tools.
Endless Customizability, at Your Fingertips
WordPress.com comes with a powerful editor for customizing your website. The Block Editor allows you to keep things simple with its default settings. Or, you can drag and drop blocks and edit each page element as you see fit, and customize font sizes and color schemes to bring your vision to life.
Alternatively, if you boast the coding smarts, consider upgrading to one of WordPress.com’s paid plans to dive into the style sheets and make whatever changes you desire.
Jupiter X
In the past, WordPress’s segmental editing style made it more cumbersome to use in comparison to its competitors. However, with the Jupiter X theme, WordPress.com users can easily achieve endless customizability.
Jupiter X, brought to you by Artbees, uses the Elementor page builder to ensure access to a robust editing tool suite. With this theme, you can customize absolutely every element, from adjusting sizing, placement, and color to effortlessly dragging and dropping widgets. Elementor gives you full control over the layout.
You can resize columns, set the width and height of sections, and position your content exactly where you want it. You can even set padding, margins and edit the gaps between elements.
Even more impressive: with the Jupiter X theme, you gain access to blending modes, shadows and borders, so you can take the advanced design experience provided by tools like Photoshop and translate it onto the web!
How to Create a Personalized Website on WordPress.com
To start creating your own personalized website with WordPress.com and Jupiter X, there are only three steps you need to take:
Step 1: Create a WordPress.com Account
Head over to WordPress.com to create an account. Signing up is completely free, and you can start building your site and creating content without paying a dime. All of WordPress.com’s essential features are included with its free plan, making it great for personal websites or first ganders.
However, if you’re serious about creating a professional-looking website that’s a hit with a broader audience, upgrading to a paid plan unlocks plenty of benefits:
Personal: This isintended for startup blogs and personal websites. You get 6GB of storage; you can link your own custom domain, and WordPress’s advertising is removed.
Premium: The Premium plan grants you access to unlimited premium website templates, more advanced design, and social media tools. If you’re serious about creating a beautiful custom WordPress design, this plan provides a great starting point. You also get a Google Analytics integration, and you can accept PayPal payments.
Business: This plan, as its name suggests, is best suited to anyone looking to monetize their website. You can most notably start installing third-party plugins and themes, which opens a whole new world of functionality for your custom WordPress design. You also get access to priority support and a backup feature to save previous versions of your site.
eCommerce ($45 per month): Finally, if you’re building an online store and hoping to grow your audience with a beautiful WordPress.com site, the eCommerce plan is essential. You can accept payments from over 60 different countries, integrate with top shipment carriers, and gain access to premium customizable starter themes. The additional design options will prove invaluable as you go about creating the store of your dreams.
Step 2: Choose Your Site Name and Web Domain
Once you’ve decided on a plan, you can choose your site name and domain. At this point, if you’ve purchased a premium package, you can link up your own domain. Otherwise, you can use a WordPress.com subdomain to start with.
Your domain name is like the home address to your website, with WordPress.com being the house and your content making up the interior.
So, when you choose your domain, pick something professional and memorable. Also, don’t forget to check if other creators are already using similar terms. The more unique and noteworthy your domain, the easier it is for readers to distinguish you from the rest.
Step 3: Choose a Template for Your Custom WordPress Design
WordPress templates lay the perfect foundations for your web design. If you opted for the Business plan, there are tons of premium themes available, so you’re bound to find one that suits you.
If you want to change your website theme after creating your site, navigate to the left-hand bar of your WordPress.com Dashboard, and click “Appearance.” From there, you can select “Themes” and quickly switch to a new design.
Unlock Endless Customizability with The Jupiter X Theme
The theme is loved by over 143,000 designers and developers and offers over 420 pre-built website templates for you to choose from. All of which are designed with lead generation and conversions in mind. You can filter through these themes, depending on the purpose of your site. For instance, online shopping, events, education, blogging, corporate sales, creative portfolios, amongst many more.
In short, if you are looking for a different design option, the Jupiter X theme presents a solution with its powerful, 100% visual editor.
Start Customizing and Adding Content to Your Custom WordPress Design
With so many powerful web design tools at your fingertips, developing a custom WordPress.com site is a breeze. Especially if you’ve opted for a professional, highly customizable theme like Jupiter X. Here are some of the first things you’ll want to do to your website with WordPress.com and Jupiter X:
Add Posts and Pages
First off, you’ll want to add posts and pages to your website. To clarify, ‘posts’ are dynamic web pages typically used for blogs and portfolios, where your newest ‘post’ is automatically placed on top.
In contrast, ‘pages’ are static areas of your website that remain in the same place.
To add either a new post or page, click on the ‘+ Write’ button located to the top-right of your WordPress.com admin. From there, you can add content to your post or page – i.e., write text, embed media, edit your headlines, etc.
As you construct your content, use a sensible headline structure. Not only does this make your content more readable, but it’s also essential for SEO. This means breaking your content into H1, H2, and H3 tags in order of importance. For example, the overarching title should be marked with an H1 tag. Then, subheadings with an H2, and headings under that with an H3, and so on.
Customize Your Website
Now that you’re all set up, there are a few other things you can do to customize your WordPress.com design.
One of the first things you’ll edit is your logo. You can do so via the “Design” tab, then click “Customise,” followed by ‘Site Identity.’
You can also modify your navigation bar to enable visitors to find the information they’re after quicker. Again, head to the “Design” tab, then click “Customise,” followed by ‘Menus.’ Here, you can design your menu bar’s look, the pages you want to include, and the order the pages are listed in.
You can also add widgets for the app store and decide where they’re displayed on your site. For instance, subscription forms, social media feeds, and post navigations.
Don’t forget: you can change your site’s theme at any time, and with a template that supports Elementor Editor (like Jupiter X), your customization options vastly increase. At this point, it’s worth noting, there are tons of Jupiter X templates you can install with just a click – Handmade shop, Car rental, American football, just to name a few!
Optimize Your SEO and Improve Conversions
Finally, we wanted to cover a few best practices for ensuring your custom WordPress.com design works for you. When you’ve put in time and effort, creating a beautiful website, you want to see the fruits of your labor.
In light of that, be sure to heed the advice below:
Do keyword and topic research to ensure you create relevant, high-value, and SEO-optimized content
Post a mixture of long-form and short content
Include images and media to engage your visitors
Use internal and external links to improve your SEO
Always have a clear CTA (Call to Action) at the end of your posts
As well as all the above, you’ll also want to have a sign-up form where readers can subscribe to hear more from your brand. You can install one of WordPress.com’s many plugins to create useful opt-in forms and email funnels.
You can further optimize your SEO by:
Updating your meta descriptions
Using Yoast SEO
Adding alt-text to your images
Using post names as URLs
Are You Ready to Create Your Own Custom WordPress.com Design?
As hinted at throughout this blog post, getting started with WordPress.com is a breeze. You can create a professional-looking site no matter your design or coding skills. WordPress.com boasts powerful customization features, advanced blogging tools and excellent site performance.
When you use one of WordPress.com’s many sleek themes, you’re so much closer to launching a professional-looking website. But if you want to really encapsulate your vision using a fully custom WordPress design, look to the Jupiter X theme by Artbees.
Sign up to WordPress.com today and try its core features with its free plan. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Then upgrade whenever you’re ready to kickstart your professional web creation journey.
Let’s be honest – no one likes seeing a popup when they are browsing a webpage. But what if a popup is extremely relevant to what you wanted at that time? It could offer just the thing that you were waiting for. Imagine that you’re tired of focusing on your screen while working on a project and suddenly someone brings you a glass of your favorite beverage and then asks for something. This scenario is completely different from when someone turns off your WiFi and forces you to work on something else. This is why many users use ad blockers to avoid being interrupted whenever surfing the web. The point is, in both cases, you may lose your focus but the result is definitely not the same.
The example above goes to show you that there are popups that you cannot ignore, while others will cause you to be distracted. Inconvenient popups can ruin user experience, but relevant ones can be unbelievably helpful in growing online businesses – that’s if you understand how to design your popup campaigns.
In this article, we’ll learn what should be considered when choosing a popup tool, how to create effective popups in WordPress and then explore different real-world examples. Let’s dig in! Before starting, let’s go over how popups can help with a website.
Are popups still relevant?
Yes, in general, popups can not only expand online businesses but also attract drastically more followers. Indeed, there are different campaigns that you can design and run to provide more user retention. You can design popup campaigns for newsletter subscriptions or visitors signing up to grow your email lists. You could also display a popup once a user visits a post or product category and offer related or recent items for more engagement.
Furthermore, popups can be used to remind customers to complete their abandoned shopping carts or encourage them to buy products with a discount coupon. They can even be used to send a greeting message or ask users to agree to your terms. Stick with us to the end of the article to see some of the best popup examples in action.
What to consider when choosing a popup tool
Effective popup campaigns are not designed by chance. Here, all our goal is to create a popup with the highest expected feedback rate. Choosing the appropriate tool is as important as how we are using popups and what our strategies are. So, you should take the following factors into consideration when selecting a popup tool:
Ease of use
Everybody enjoys creating and designing popups without any hassle. The tool you select should provide a visual interface while offering the needed elements right at your fingertips. An ideal tool would offer a 100% drag-and-drop builder with essential tools such as text, image, button and form elements. Additionally, advanced elements such as dynamic keywords and coupons could help you to further personalize your popups.
Targeting and automation
There’s an unspoken rule that goes like this: the less your popup interrupts with user experience, the better the result you’ll get. Hence, it’s important not to display the same thing to every user – and it would be even worse if you don’t consider the right time to show the popups. This is where the targeting feature becomes important. This feature makes it possible to show popups based on specific regions, periods, user behavior and much more. Also, automation provides you with the power to define and display any popup when the conditions are met without wasting time.
Segmentation
Segmentation capability is another feature that divides users into certain groups and will let you choose which segments will see which popup. These groups can be like VIP customers, newbies, registered users, etc.
Performance and analytic reports
The tool that we want to use wouldn’t be comprehensive if it didn’t support analytics reports, which allow you to see if your popup campaigns are effective enough or not. On the other hand, to avoid performance issues, the selected tool should use its own resources instead of your WordPress server when running popup campaigns.
How Growmatik can help
Growmatik is a marketing automation tool that can help you create effective popups in WordPress and then display them on your site. It provides a visual popup builder with more than 15 ready-made templates. To access the popup builder, just navigate to the Workshop within the dashboard, select Popups and then click on the Create Popup button. It opens a window where you’ll find pre-designed popups. You may select to edit or create a new one. That’s when the builder appears as the following image.
You can add not only dynamic text keywords – such as the audience’s first name, username, region, sign-up date, total spent time, number of viewed pages, number of orders, last purchased item, etc – but also individual elements like images, socials, buttons, videos, coupon codes, and forms to create a tailored popup. Besides, it’s possible to customize the size, position and shape of the popup using the Popup settings button.
To automate popups, users can define rules for every three main segments of guests, leads and customers. Growmatik presents deeper targeting conditions as well as UTM tags, domains, regions, devices (mobile, tablet, desktop), date and time, page/product visits, and behavioral actions (shopping activity, scroll percentages, exit intent, time spent, among more). Setting the condition is done via a few simple clicks. Unlike other tools, there’s no need for shortcodes to define the conditions.
Finally, you can track popup campaigns and see the results to refine and improve over time. Moreover, Growmatik is working independently from your servers, so it won’t ever slow down your WordPress website performance.
Best practices and sample popups for different common purposes
Now, let’s find out the best popups we can create to impress the audience.
Display a popup with dynamic keywords
Dynamic keywords are the elements that you can apply for your popups to nurture your guests, leads or customers and take them right to the next level. There are different types of dynamic keywords available in Growmatik. In this example, you’ll get familiar with how to use personal details like first names, daytimes and UTM parameters as dynamic tags within your popups.
Signed up users are the probable customers who have the potential to buy products from your online store. We call them leads. To nurture these users, you should serve them relevant and personalized content. One simple way is to directly appreciate them right after their sign up forms are completed. Use their first name to say thanks and give them the feel of cordiality.
In Growmatik, select the Text element in the popup builder, click on Dynamic Keywords, then Personal details and choose First Name to put in your design as in the above image. Save your design and move to the Automations section. Click the Plus button for the leads. After that, you can set the condition to User behavior > Sign up and set the action to Show popup. Now, pick the popup you designed before.
When you want to personalize the experience for the visitors referred by a specific URL, referral UTMs are helpful to your marketing campaign. For example, setting the utm_medium to CompanyNames allows you to customize the popup for every company entering your site with the following URL:
You can also offer a discount coupon for a limited time using daytime dynamic tags for an occasion like a special sale off instantly after they visit your website. The below popup design contains two different dynamic tags, the {{UTM MEDIUM}} where it’s supposed to show company names and {{WEEKDAY}} that will display that day as a time limitation.
To automate this popup, you may add a rule with a Source condition (UTM_medium) for guests as below:
Display a subscribe popup on exit intent
Marketers use an exit intent popup to retain guests and turn them into leads. These popups should be convincing enough that visitors cannot help but engage with the site further. Add the audiences to your mailing list by asking them to subscribe just before they leave your website, and in return, send them discount coupons through emails. This can be a decent win-win situation.
To automate an exit intent popup for guests, select All guests as the condition and set the popup to show as the action On exit:
Display a giveaway popup
Giveaways can be anything tempting, but the question many may ask is what would it be? Of course, it depends on your business type and what you are presenting to your audience. For example, if you have a website for your cafe, it’s a good idea to offer a free dessert for a subscription and make them your regular customers. Usually, giveaways include the following: free e-books, coupon codes and premium learning materials. Just make sure to be creative in designing eye-catching popups like this:
You can automate this popup for your leads who are visiting your site in the evening and bring more customers to your business. Open the Automation Section > Leads > Custom rule and then select evening as the condition and Show Popup as the action:
Display a discount popup for loyal customers
As you know, popups are not just a tool to bring more customers but also a great instrument to retain them for longer. In this case, nothing ignites the sense of commitment for your loyal customers more than special appreciation, and this would be by offering a discount code for your products. You can say thanks and let your customers know why they’re getting a discount coupon like this:
In Growmatik, it’s easy to define your loyal customers by setting the numbers of orders placed by a customer. Just follow Automations > Customers > Custom rule and select User Behavior and click on Orders Placed and set the value to 5. This action means that any customer with 5 successful purchases is a loyal one, and if you choose Show Popup as the action then your popup campaign will be ready after considering the popup you designed before.
Display a regional popup
Have you ever thought about just delivering your popups to a specific region and offering what is relevant to them? This is another way to create effective popups in WordPress. With Growmatik, it’s available to promote visitors and target a group of audiences that are located in a country. Suppose that you’re living in Italy and have a plan to invite just outsiders to win a trip to the city of Rome.
Choose Automation > Leads > Custom rule, and select Location as the condition, set it to Other Countries or the particular area you like to target. Then pick Popup to Show as the action.
Display an abandoned cart popup
Every year, online businesses lose a huge percentage of their revenue because of abandoned shopping carts. It’s proven that abandoned cart popups will increase the engagement and conversion rates of the customers. Be creative about designing a popup to convince customers to buy the products they wanted to and complete their order.
You can automate this process by setting the user behavior to Abandoned Cart as the condition and Show Popup as the action for customers.
Display FOMO popups to drive sales
This is a natural psychological reaction when we feel like we’re being left out of something. FOMO is a common marketing technique that is defined as the Fear Of Missing Out to drive sales. You can use deadlines as FOMO elements in popups. This means that you can suggest a tempting offer only for a limited time. Find out this type of element we used above in the “Popups with dynamic keywords” section. You can automate these popups for every segment by using the Period element as the condition.
Display occasion-based discount popups
It seems that discount coupons are always exciting for customers but it’s nothing you can always present. Offering occasion-based discounts is one of the most popular methods of discount pricing such as seasonal or promotional ones to rebate product prices without hurting your sales. Consider a discount rate based on your business, product and also the occasion you choose to design your popup and automate it using Growmatik for your segmented users whenever you want.
Wrapping up
Combine the methods mentioned above to create an effective popup in WordPress for your campaign. Try to personalize the popups using dynamic keywords, and show what audiences really need. Imagine yourself as the visitors or customers of your online website, and ensure that you design your popups with minimum interruption. Besides, never forget to trigger the popups for a targeted group and not for every single visitor.
