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Engagement Tips to Woo Clients and Extend the Honeymoon Phase

Having a brilliant website isn’t enough. Even if your business came with a substantial, pre-existing customer base (and let’s face it, most don’t), continuing communication is essential for retainment and growth.

Running a successful business means building and maintaining a connection with your clients – existing and potential.

There are, of course, many ways to reach your business prospects in today’s digital world: paid ads, social media, real-time messaging platforms, chat, and more.

But would you be shocked to learn that email – approaching its 45th birthday! – remains the most used, most successful platform for customer engagement?

According to Tom Wozniak, of OPTIZMO Technologies: As audience tracking and targeting become more challenging, the email address will continue to be the most valuable piece of audience identification data. [Forbes]

In this article, we’re going to look at why email is the most effective way to promote, proffer, and position your business for prime growth. Plus, we’ve hand-picked a selection of WordPress plugins that handle the various outreach tasks quite effectively.

Keep reading, or jump ahead to any section:

Okay, off we go to the electronic post office…

Which (Customer Acquisition) Channel is Best to Watch

The ways in which you reach your audience are your customer acquisition channels. They are also the avenues for increasing your customer base.

Though some might rule it out because it’s the oldest, email remains one of the best acquisition channels available. [Lesson: Don’t throw the baby granddaddy out with the bathwater.]

Email is simultaneously simple yet powerful in terms of content that can be delivered. And it’s separate from third-party elements (eg, social media, search, etc); meaning, there’s no algorithm to work around. It’s a straight shot into the hands (ie, inboxes) of your customers.

Here are some telling stats:

  • By 2025, the number of global email users is expected to reach a total of 4.6 billion [Statista]
  • When it comes to online advertising, email has seen higher click-through rates than on social media [Statista]
  • 59% of marketers say email is their biggest source of ROI [Sopro]
  • 59% of survey respondents say marketing emails influence their purchase decisions [Sopro]

Email is also extremely cost effective, allowing for a minimal investment in a tool/platform that will likely have most of the important features that mirror its high-end counterparts. It’s also easy to scale as your business grows.

With consumers averaging an online time of 397 minutes daily – giving you a golden opportunity of 6+ hours for engagement – there is simply no better way to speak directly with your customers than email. [Oberlo]

email vs social media marketing stats
Email topples social media in marketing stats. [Source]
Three more stats on email’s impressive reach: [OptinMonster]

  • 44% of users check their email for a deal from a company they know, whereas only 4% will go to Facebook
  • 60% of consumers state that they have made a purchase as the result of a marketing message they received by email
  • There are 400 million more email users than social media users

Repeat: Four hundred million MORE. If those numbers don’t convince you, I don’t know what will.

Now that we understand the value of email as a customer acquisition channel, let’s look at the different types of emails you can employ to build relationships and drive sales. Plus, one very important bit of housekeeping that needs attention first.

How to Deliver Successful Results Easily and Reliably

Whether you run a simple website or a large eCommerce store, reliable email-sending is a necessity. As fantastic a CMS as WordPress is, it has multiple limitations when it comes to sending emails.

Because WordPress uses PHP mail functionality to send emails:

  • you can’t easily build HTML templates, embed images, or add attachments; and
  • it lacks proper email headers, which often results in delivery impediments, causing emails to land in spam folders (or not get delivered at all)

Luckily, there’s a simple solution.

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SMTP server infrastructure. [Source]

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (ie, SMTP) provides an easy way to improve successful sending of WordPress emails, increasing email deliverability by using authentication and assuring that your intended audience receives what you send.

SMTP can be set up manually using the PHPMailer library (more difficult), or connected through the use of a plugin (easier).

SMTP Plugins

There are a number of plugins for setting up SMTP in your WordPress email. After looking at the most popular, here are the five we like best.

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1. WP Mail SMTP

This plugin sits at the top of this list, allowing over three million WordPress users to send their emails reliably.

When using one of WP Mail SMTP’s built-in SMTP mail provider integrations (see below), emails are sent using the provider’s direct API. This means even if your web host is blocking SMTP ports, your emails still send successfully, helping you fix the not-sending-email issues that are prevalent in WordPress.

An easy-to-use setup wizard and detailed documentation will guide you through the process, and for most options, you can specify the “from name” and “email address” for outgoing emails.

You can send emails using your own or third-party SMTP email server, or by using integrations with popular email providers, such as:

  • SendLayer
  • SMTP.com
  • Sendinblue SMTP
  • Gmail SMTP (Gmail, Google Workspace, G Suite)
  • All Other SMTP

Instead of having to use different SMTP plugins and workflows for different SMTP providers, WP Mail SMTP brings it all into one, providing the ideal SMTP solution for WordPress.

They also offer paid plans, which include additional features (like one-on-one support, white glove setup, and native integrations for Microsoft, Amazon SES, Zoho Mail, etc).

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2. Easy WP SMTP

With 700,000 active installs, Easy WP SMTP resolves email deliverability issues using transactional mailers or an SMTP server.

The plugin offers configuration from a number of popular mailers, including SendLayer, Mailgun, Sendinblue, and more.

Easy WP SMTP also allows you to debug events that log any failed email sending attempts and the error that caused them, and the ability to specify a Reply-to or BCC email address.

Premium, paid versions are also available, and add more features (like shopping cart plugins, priority support, and reports).

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3. Post SMTP Mailer

With active installs at 300,000 and climbing, Post SMTP Mailer is a next-generation WP Mail SMTP plugin that improves email deliverability for your WordPress websites, sending emails to millions of users worldwide.

Post SMTP has a smart setup wizard that covers everything from getting started to sending test emails. It uses a commercial-grade connectivity tester to better diagnose server issues, has a built-in email log that can help with any failed email problems, and uses OAuth 2.0 security to increase the protection of email passwords.

Post SMTP also offers premium upgraded integrations, through a number of pro extensions. These are: Zoho Mail Pro, Mail Control, Twilio, Office 365, and Amazon SES.

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4. Branda

WPMU DEV’s Branda plugin, known as the White Labeling wunderkind, also has an easy SMTP tool built right in, and is completely free. Setup is a cinch with our easy-to-understand documentation.

Branda allows you to customize every aspect of WordPress to fit your brand. Transform your dashboard, customize system (default) emails, quickly toggle maintenance mode and “coming soon” landing pages, change every aspect of your login screen, remove or replace logos, create color schemes, and much more. Branda has everything to rebrand WordPress for free without touching any code or hacking modifications.

There is also a pro version of Branda, if you’d like to get the full collection of 30+ modules, along with a membership that includes an entire suite of plugins, premium 24/7 live chat support, and more.

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5. WP Offload SES Lite

WP Offload SES Lite is trusted by more than 20,000 sites to send their email, with good reason – it works exceedingly well.

This plugin is different in that it’s not sent over SMTP. They believe that going the SMTP route makes you prone to hitting rate limits, and is also missing some key features (like an email queue).

WP Offload SES Lite gives you the high deliverability, powerful managed infrastructure, and low cost of Amazon SES, with the support of a quality WordPress plugin that’s easy to set up and notifies you of sending failures.

Some of WP Offload SES Lite’s top features include:

  • Effortless configuration with an easy step-by-step setup wizard
  • Configure the default email address and name that WordPress uses for notifications
  • Set up a custom “Reply To” and “Return Path” address
  • View statistics on your Amazon SES send rate

There is also a pro version, which gives you additional features like premium support, open and click reporting, engagement analysis per specific emails, filter/search functionality, and more.

The Marketing Tools and Strategies You Need to Know

With your WordPress email primed and ready for most effective delivery, let’s turn our attention to the best ways to engage with your audience using email.

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First, you need to collect that all-important contact information (email addresses and names, at the very least), so you have a concrete way to reach interested parties.

Second, you’ll want to offer something of value, to establish a sense of fairness/generosity and drive interest in what you do. This free offering to potential customers, in exchange for a piece of their personal information (e.g. an email address or social media follow), is a tried-and-true marketing technique.

Common incentives – like a discount coupon, downloadable, or other item of interest – can be offered as compensation for providing an email address, in order to attract potential customers. Hence the name: lead magnets.

Finally, you’ll want to measure and track which campaigns or giveaways get the best results. That will give you a sense of how your site is performing; the number of visitors to your different pages, and where you’re getting conversions from. All of which help you understand which content performs the best.

This is where lead generation tools come in. They are specifically designed to identify, capture, store, and analyze leads – with the goal of turning visitors into paying customers, and paying customers into repeat business.

Lead Capturing Plugins

Employing tools and services specific to lead generation is a great way to collect the desired information, without requiring any manual work on your part. The tools automate the process, allowing you to focus on other areas of your business.

Various methods for lead capture include:

  • On-page, opt-in forms and sign-up campaigns
  • Email address finders
  • Customer Relationship Management (CRM); sales funnels
  • Communication channels (chat)
  • Advertising (social media or paid ads)

It’s not a bad idea to experiment with different options from the methods above. But for the purposes of this article, our focus will be on-page, opt-in forms, as they are the simplest to employ and incredibly successful.

Why? Well, you’re collecting contact details from people who already have an interest in your business, even if it’s at the most basic level. They’re on your site, and therefore the most likely to provide you with their contact information. After all, they came looking for you, not the other way around.

Additionally, studies have shown that most people are receptive to emails that come from companies they’ve already shown an interest in.

Here are our top 5 picks for lead capturing plugins.

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1. Forminator

Of course we’re partial to our very own contact form, payment form and custom form builder, Forminator, but it’s more than just us who think so, with more than 400,000 happy users.

Forms, polls, quizzes… nothing’s off limits with Forminator. Create new campaigns in minutes with the easy-to-use, drag-and-drop form builder, using pre-fab templates or starting from scratch – with the ability to customize settings, style, and behavior.

Forminator is the easiest way to create any form, such as a contact form, order form, payment form, email form, feedback widgets, interactive polls with real-time results, Buzzfeed-style “no wrong answer” quizzes, service estimators, and registration forms with payment options.

Speaking of payments… take donations, down payments, full payments, sell merch and more with the included Stripe and PayPal integrations. (No Pro upgrade required!) SCA-compliant Stripe and PayPal come included. Just enter your publish keys to activate the Forminator payment module for both fixed and variable payments.

Forminator comes stacked with crowd-favorite third-party integrations – email services, CRM, storage, and project managers such as HubSpot, Google Sheets, Trello, MailChimp, AWeber, Slack, and any generic webhooks (such as Zapier).

But wait – there’s more! Forminator also has these amazing features:

  • Gutenberg Block – say goodbye to shortcodes and quickly add forms to posts with the Forminator block for Gutenberg
  • Email Routing and Pre-Populate – make your site more efficient, from visitor input to email response times; use query strings to pre-fill visitor information and deliver forms direct to specific teams with email routing, auto-response and conditions
  • User Front End Post Submissions – visitors can submit post ideas from the front end of your site so you can easily curate and publish their thoughts
  • Captchas – stop the crazy bots without making it hard on your visitors (ie, no more hard-to-read random phrases)
  • Collect, Track and GDPR ready – store and organize submissions to sort, analyze, and manage responses; all while complying with the GDPR and other legal privacy policies

There is a pro version as well, which contains all the same features as the free version, plus the additional “E-Signature” and “Stripe Subscriptions” features.

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2. Formidable Forms

Formidable is a solutions-focused WordPress form plugin. Use drag and drop to create a contact form, survey, quiz, registration form, payment form, lead form, or calculator form.

Formidable is 100% mobile responsive, so your forms look great on all devices (desktop, laptop, tablets, and smartphones). It’s also optimized for speed and maximum server performance.

This free version of Formidable comes with a variety of features, like advanced email subscription forms, multi-page forms, a smart form with conditional logic, stack on repeater fields, payment integrations, form templates, relationships, and cascading dropdown fields.

Submissions are stored in your WordPress database so you won’t lose any leads, and quiz and survey entries can be viewed right from your WordPress dashboard. Also, the form generator is GDPR-friendly (even though entries are saved), and you can turn off IP tracking or stop saving submissions entirely.

Create a payment form and accept credit card payments right from your website, with seamless integration with PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net. You can even create a WooCommerce form with custom fields.

There is a pro version as well, that includes many more features and functionalities that help you build more powerful and larger applications.

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3. Ninja Forms

Design beautiful, complex forms with a dedicated support team at your back.

Easy drag-and-drop fields, row and column layouts, multi-page forms, conditional forms… you don’t have to be a designer to create forms that will blend beautifully with your WordPress website.

You can accept PayPal and credit card payments securely and easily from any of your WordPress forms: single payments, subscriptions, fixed, variable, or user entered amounts. Give your customers or donors all the options, or just one with a PayPal form, Stripe form, and more.

Grow your mailing lists and bring in new leads using integration with MailChimp, Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor, Salesforce CRM, Zoho CRM, Insightly CRM, and more.

Ninja Forms is also GDPR compliant, as it doesn’t collect or store personally identifiable information, or any information, from your forms. Easy-to-use templates are included for Right to Be Forgotten and Data Export requests, and tie into native WordPress GDPR features for automated compliance.

Includes pre-built templates for a contact form, registration form, application form, MailChimp form, quote request form, PayPal form, Stripe form, and more. Also mobile responsive and design-adaptable to fit in with any theme or brand.

Ninja Forms offers additional features and upgrades in two ways: per add-on, or through a membership (different tiers vary in the number of allowable sites and add-ons).

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4. Contact Form 7

At five million+ active installs, Contact Form 7 is the OG WordPress plugin for contact forms.

It has stood the test of time, still able to create simple and multiple contact forms, while allowing for the customisation of the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup.

Forms support Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering, and do not track user data or use cookies. However, activation of certain features may invoke personal data to be sent to service providers (eg: reCAPTCHA, Stripe).

While the plugin boasts massive numbers and is still popular, it is becoming less so as more advanced, feature-rich competitors have become available. Especially since most of these are free to use as well.

Additionally, unlike newer plugins, an additional plugin is needed (they make one called Flamingo) just to save submitted messages from contact forms in the database.

They have also started requesting contributions from users, citing the difficulty in continuing support and development of a free plugin.

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5. Hustle

Hustle in the ultimate marketing plugin for building a mailing list and converting site traffic.

Incredibly versatile and engaging, Hustle has a myriad of options and customizations.

Easily grow your mailing list or display targeted ads across your site with popups, opt-ins, slide-ins, widgets, and shortcodes.

Build a social following with Hustle’s diverse social sharing capabilities.

Choose colors, animations, layouts, drop shadows, and display conditions for all your marketing modules from easy-to-use design settings. (There’s even CSS if you really want to go all out.) All a cinch with Hustle’s flexible appearance settings.

Default layouts and templates are fully mobile responsive, while allowing for granular adjustments (margins, padding, borders, container sizing) so you can make every module your own.

Target visitors with email opt-ins or ads using Hustle’s behavior and condition settings, and set up intelligent conditions if desired as well (e.g. specific pages/posts, visitor device/browser, country, browser cookie, etc).

Smart triggers allow you to set up a range of options for popups and slide-ins, including time on page, scroll, exit intent, and more.

Schedule when you want your marketing modules to deploy by selecting start/end dates, or show them on specific days of the week, time of day, along with custom time zones.

Easily follow up on user engagement with manual or automated email messages, and build your following on social networks with floating widgets and shortcodes to add followers.

Hustle smoothly integrates with popular form builders (like Forminator), to embed those forms/polls/quizzes into popups and slide-ins for interactive lead generation.

While you’re at it, integrate Hustle with an email service; 19 of the most popular are offered (including AWeber, MailChimp, Sendinblue, MailPoet, Zapier, and more).

Rounding out the additional features you get with Hustle:

  • Gutenberg WP editor block
  • ReCAPTCHA spam warrior
  • Ability to override Ad Blockers that try to prevent popups and slide-ins
  • Intelligent tracking on each module (including conversion stats, insightful charts, custom dashboard widget)

There is also a pro version of Hustle, which gives you all the same settings and options as the free version does. The difference is, Hustle Pro offers unlimited opt-ins, custom content, and social sharing, whereas the free version allows three of each type (popups, slide-ins, social share bars, and embeds).

Email Campaigns and Analytics Plugins

Once you’ve got those all-important email addresses collected, it’s time to set your sights on the various campaigns you can use to turn casual interest into a revenue stream.

There are a number of ways to use email campaigns to engage your audience and increase sales.

Blog posts can help by specifically targeting your audience, catering your content to them. It’s a proven way to align with your audience by providing (free) information of value to them, while keeping the connection warm. Plus, they can be kept in a devoted section of your website, making it easy for both old and new customers to partake in the historical canon unique to your business.

Newsletters and announcements are great for keeping your audience up to date on any site changes, or to promote particular products or discounts. Announcements could include down-time notices (for example, planned changes where your site will be offline briefly), or information about sales, coupons, special offers, etc – anything that is a change in your ‘norm’ that falls within a specific timeframe.

We looked at some email plugins early on, where the purpose was to improve email delivery by directing through SMTP servers or transactional mailers.

There is another category of full-featured email plugins/services that provide additional marketing, campaigning, and analysis features on top of trustworthy delivery. These can be quite handy if you want to avail yourself of pre-designed email templates, auto sending schedules, and tracking customer journeys.

Here are our favorites in this category.

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1. MailPoet

More than 600,000 websites use MailPoet to keep in touch with their subscribers, delivering 30 million+ emails each month to inboxes, not spam boxes. Enjoy high open rates with their unmatched deliverability rate and rock solid infrastructure.

MailPoet works seamlessly with your favorite CMS so you can start sending emails right away. Quickly add content and images directly from your media library. No need to upload files to third-party services when it’s all right there, ready to use in your WordPress dashboard.

From first hello to loyal customer appreciation, send emails to the right people at the right time. Welcome new subscribers with an automated series of onboarding emails and enjoy open rates of 40% and higher.

Automatically send email updates to let subscribers know about your latest blog posts, in your choice of sending schedule (daily, weekly, monthly) and bring them back to your website.

Create email updates and newsletters your subscribers can’t wait to open with beautifully designed templates you can customize to match your personality (and brand). With plenty of design options and advanced features, you can choose from a template, customize whatever you need, then send it out. Quick previews allow you to always see how your emails look before hitting send.

MailPoet is available via paid plans as well, which add features and functionality like more subscribers, unlimited emails, advanced analytics, the ability to remove branding, priority support, and more.

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2. HubSpot

HubSpot is an extremely popular, all-in-one CRM platform with tools and integrations for marketing, sales, and customer service.

The CRM in HubSpot’s WordPress plugin is your site’s command center, with 360-degree views of your customers, where you can easily:

  • Manage contacts (CRM)
  • Engage visitors with live chat and chatbots
  • Add beautiful forms to pages; create engaging email marketing campaigns
  • Capture leads with custom or existing forms; send newsletters and automated marketing campaigns
  • Track site health with easy-to-understand analytics, directly from the dashboard
  • See a unified timeline of a contact’s page views, past conversations, and more in a WordPress CRM

You’ve also got full-service email, newsletter, and marketing automation software, from which you can build professional emails in minutes, then send them to your entire contact database.

Features here include:

  • 20+ pre-designed email templates to match your campaign goals
    (Choose from templates such as newsletters, ebooks, welcome emails, and more)
  • Drag and drop email builder; adjust typography, designs, colors, and more to create campaigns your subscribers will love
  • Email automation, tracking, and A/B testing
  • Send emails anytime someone fills out a form or engages with your live chat/chatbots
  • Send messages immediately or use email scheduling to send messages later
  • Email tracking assures all of your emails are logged in your database; measure engagement of each with reports for open rate and click rate

Forms and popups are included, with a variety of templates (contact us, newsletter signup, ebook download, etc) and display options (embed, standalone page, pop-up box, dropdown banner, etc). Choose from a variety of settings, color schemes, and fonts — or start from scratch.

HubSpot also allows for integrations with other WP form builders and lead generators (like Forminator and Hustle 🙂).

And there’s much more, such as:

  • Live chat and chatbots (with custom styling, real-time messaging, Slack integration, 24/7 live support on autopilot)
  • Analytics (email, traffic, WP; marketing, sales follow-ups; time-onsite)
  • Reports (blog posts, landing pages, email campaigns)
  • Seamless use of more than 1030 integrations – including social media, ads (Facebook, Google, LinkedIn), Hotjar, YouTube, Zoom, Gmail, Hustle, MailChimp, Sendinblue, Shopify, WooCommerce, Forminator, LiveChat… and the list goes on

In addition to their free version, which offers a taste of limited features, HubSpot offers a number of paid version packages – Starter, Starter CRM Suite, Business, Professional, and Enterprise – with many different combinations of features and services to suit all needs.

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3. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is a customer acquisition and lead generation plugin. As a SaaS, its use requires an OptinMonster account, but that’s quick to set up.

OptinMonster’s popup maker allows you to create popup campaigns, email subscription forms, sticky announcement bars like hello bar, gamified spin-a-wheel opt-in forms, and other types of interactive popups for your site. Use the drag-and-drop editor to customize the look and feel of your campaigns, or choose from hundreds of templates.

OptinMonster also offers mobile popups so your marketing messages look great on all devices (mobile, tablet, laptop, and desktop). It’s also optimized for both web and server performance.

Popup options include:

  • Lightbox
  • Floating Bar
  • Slide-ins
  • Fullscreen Welcome Mats
  • Gamified Spin a Wheel Popup
  • Countdown Timers

OptinMonster also has targeting behaviors, like page level targeting, geolocation targeting, popup behavior automation, and WooCommerce. Plus trigger behaviors, like exit intent, scroll trigger, and time-on-site popups.

There are also quite a few email and CRM integrations available, such as Constant Contact, MailChimp, AWeber, and more.

A free account includes three campaigns and up to 500 campaign impressions, which never expire.

OptinMonster also offers premium, paid versions which include more features and remove the limits imposed in the free version.

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4. Sendinblue

Sendinblue is a powerful all-in-one marketing platform, trusted by more than 165,000 companies around the world to deliver their emails and SMS messages.

Sendinblue optimizes deliverability using a proprietary infrastructure over SMTP, with options that include email, SMS, Facebook, chat, CRM, and marketing automation.

The Sendinblue WordPress plugin uses their own API to synchronize contacts, send emails and get statistics. Synchronization is automatic, so it doesn’t matter whether your lists were uploaded on your WordPress interface or on your Sendinblue account: they will always remain up-to-date on both sides.

Sendinblue’s free account takes less than two minutes to set up, and allows you to send up to 300 emails per day on their free (forever) plan.

Sendinblue integrates with most lead capture and advanced form builder plugins, but also contains their own native subscription forms, with the following features:

  • Form designer with WYSIWYG and direct HTML, and CSS editing (if desired)
  • Integration as widget or shortcode
  • Send a confirmation email – you choose the template and the sender
  • Use a double opt-in confirmation – you choose the template and the sender
  • URL redirection
  • Confirmation / error message customization

The following additional options are included as well:

  • Contact lists (unlimited custom fields; CSV and TXT import; advanced segmentation)
  • Marketing campaigns (drag-and-drop tools; template library; advanced scheduling)
  • Transactional emails (with auto replacement of default SMTP)
  • Statistics (real-time and exhaustive)

Sendinblue offers a free (forever) plan that includes 9000 emails per month and unlimited contacts, with no hidden costs.

They offer premium, paid plans as well, which remove the limits, and include additional features (like removing the Sendinblue logo, A/B testing, marketing automation, priority support, and more).

Follow the Leader to the Very Top

Lead generation is often the difference between the smashing success or abject failure of a business.

And while there are many components that go into lucrative marketing, you can tap into WordPress’s generous supply of free plugins to eliminate the heavy lifting.

As shown in this post, email still holds the #1 spot when it comes to customer acquisition channels, with significant reach and conversion rates.

Determine the plugins that best meets your needs, and get going on cultivating your contact lists, securing good delivery with SMTP sends, and setting up email campaigns that drive customer engagement, traffic, retention, and loyalty.

If you want to really ensure best results, make sure you have trusted, dedicated hosting (we’re a top pick for web developers), speed and SEO optimization (our memberships come with a suite of premium plugins, including performance and security), and world-class, always-on support.

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How This Web Dev Went from 0 to 60 (Websites)

This is the first in a series, Member Success Stories, where we ask WPMU DEV-ers who are killing it in the WordPress web dev business to share key contributors of their success with us – and you.

Today we welcome Phil, the owner of Capital Web Design, a Canadian web services agency based in Ottawa.

WPMU DEV: Congrats on your professional success, Phil. Please tell us straight away, how did you grow your business so fast?

Phil: I wouldn’t say the business itself grew that fast. I’ve been building websites in some way or another since the early 2000s. Either static sites coded by hand (HTML + CSS + Javascript), using frameworks (VueJS), or with WordPress.

I started my freelance web design company in 2014, after being approached to do a replacement build for what was a costly, difficult to maintain website – and that became my first client. From there I found small and medium businesses in my hometown that had old, unsupported and unmaintained websites, or who had no website at all.

As I continued my efforts, my business ethos emerged: help companies, nonprofits and individuals in my city build a web presence they can be proud of. I focused on creating bespoke WordPress web design based on well-supported multipurpose themes, WPMU DEV and other dependable plugins, and fully managed white-glove web hosting.

Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of working with 20+ clients, and have built 60 websites targeting a multitude of industries and commercial sectors.

WPMU DEV: That’s awesome. Did you know about WPMU DEV at that time?

Phil: I had known about WPMU DEV since around 2016-18, back when you offered dozens of plugins for all sorts of functionality. I couldn’t justify the cost of a membership then, but I popped in every so often to check and see what progress was being made.

In 2019, Hosting was added as a WPMU DEV service – and this really caught my attention. During the Black Friday promotion that November (lifetime reduced membership cost!), I joined as a member, and I can’t see myself ever leaving.

It was a perfect storm: high-quality plugins + managed hosting + 24/7 support + highly reduced cost.

WPMU DEV: So as you were building your clientele, you were putting together your professional tool box. Can you give us a peek inside?

Phil: The tools and services from WPMU DEV have been invaluable to me.

Plugins have provided me with consistency and reliability for all of the most important aspects of WordPress websites.

Knowing that I can count on Hummingbird and Smush for performance optimization allowed me to stop using other freemium plugins such as W3 Total Cache, Autoptimize, WP Super Cache and EWWW Image Optimization. I found these plugins were all good at some things, but had a lot of paywalled features that Hummingbird and Smush offered out of the box, for free.

Defender has been a great peace-of-mind addition to my repertoire, as the one-click recommended fixes are super straightforward and quite effective.

Forminator forms may be difficult at times to style with CSS, but that’s more than made up for in functionality. The drag-and-drop UI makes it much easier to build forms compared to Contact Form 7, and the amount of extras that are baked in (calculation, email routing, etc) blow other (often paid) form builders out of the water.

WPMU DEV: Aside from plugins, you mentioned our services have made a huge impact as well. Can you expand on that?

Phil: When it comes to services, it’s hard to put into words just how much The Hub and the associated Hosting have helped me throughout the last few years.

I have worked with hosting providers like 1and1, DreamHost, Media Temple, Digital Ocean VPS, and Bluehost. Each had their advantages, but in the end it always became a chore to use their services. It was clear that the quality of their offerings reflected the low cost they positioned themselves at. They were in a perpetual fight to undercut their competitors on price, at the cost of quality of service and support.

WPMU DEV Hosting came in late in the game, but out of the gate addressed two of the major concerns I experienced at other hosts: lack of support, and lack of trust in the infrastructure.

By having dedicated resources (versus shared), the web servers were consistently fast, reliable, and offered premium features such as staging, backups and WAF.

WPMU DEV: Walk us through a typical work day; what you reach for the most, and your usual workflow.

Phil: I keep The Hub open in a tab at all times, refreshing it every once in a while to keep track of ongoing community discussions, website maintenance statuses, and plugin updates.

I subscribe to key email notifications to receive alerts of technical issues on my managed sites, as well as member discussions in the WPMU DEV member forums, blogs and newsletter.

When a technical issue occurs, I’m able to troubleshoot it quickly. If I’m unable to resolve it on my own, the LiveChat support is always there to help me right away.

WPMU DEV has allowed me to optimize my workflows across the board, in areas like:

  • Faster site creation with one-click managed WordPress server provisioning from The Hub.
  • Easier client invoicing using Client Billing.
  • More efficient website monitoring and maintenance through The Hub.
  • Lower maintenance effort required with WPMU DEV plugins.
  • Faster technical troubleshooting with the LiveChat support.

WPMU DEV: Outside of your own talent and determination, what would you say has contributed most significantly to your growth?

Phil: WPMU DEV has reduced my server build-out time from 30 minutes to 3 minutes (90% reduction). Over the past few years I’ve stood up well over 75 servers, so this has saved me many hours of effort.

At the time of joining, The Hub allowed me to manage about a dozen sites from a central location as opposed to manually logging in to each separate site. This was a reduction of biweekly maintenance effort from approximately 60 minutes to 2 minutes.

Client billing and streamlined invoice creation allowed me to save approximately 20-30 minutes per invoice creation, which throughout the past few years I estimate has saved me over 30 hours of work.

All of these time and effort savings have allowed me to comfortably take on more projects and clients.

Since joining WPMU DEV, my completed projects count has grown approximately 416% – with each project being more efficient to produce than the last.

WPMU DEV: As a self-proclaimed diehard fan, you know we’re constantly upping our game and adding new features and services to our offerings. What’s a newer release that you’re really getting into?

Phil: Reseller focus. I look forward to adding WPMU DEV automated site provisioning via the reseller offerings, as well as domains and email reselling.

WPMU DEV: One last question; let’s close it out with a fun one. If you could talk to yourself at the start of your career, what would you say?

Phil: At the start of my career, I often looked up to senior staff who seemed wise beyond their years. I was afraid of making mistakes or breaking something, for fear that those-who-never-broke-anything would look down on me.

I would try to explain to a younger me that wisdom comes with experience, and experience comes from doing things, failing, and working through the failure.

The more things you work on, the more you get exposed to what works and what doesn’t. Failing or breaking something isn’t strictly negative, because every failure is a learning opportunity: troubleshoot what went wrong, understand how to fix it, and implement a solution.

Do this cycle enough times and you start to pre-emptively detect patterns, plan for success, and you get faster at fixing problems. Don’t be afraid of failure because the more you fail, the more you learn and the wiser you will become.

That wraps up this premiere episode of our Member Success Stories. Thanks to Phil for his candid, insightful answers in our interview.

Phil is one of WPMU DEV’s Agency Partners, and usesCapital Web Design - Ottawa Web Design his 20 years of web design experience to achieve one goal: give back to his hometown by building modern websites for businesses and nonprofits in the Canadian capital.

You can reach Phil via his agency partner listing or visit Capital Web Design.

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Where to Put Your Logo? What the Research Says

You’ve got a beautifully designed logo. Well done. Now, what do you do with it?

Once your high quality logo is designed and ready to go, it should appear on all your branded material, including your WordPress website. Typically, there are three schools of thought as to where logos can go: in the top-left, top-middle, or top-right corners of a page. So this begs the question: which position is right for your logo?

If we’re going strictly based on UX logic, then your logo belongs in the top-left corner of your website. No questions asked. There are two reasons for this:

  1. For those of us with a native language that reads from left to right, our eyes naturally look to the left first.
  2. In the earlier years of web design, logos were always on the left, and that’s where most people assume they are located now.

Despite what logic says, there are some websites that have eschewed the norm for logo placements in the center or right corner of a website. Would a unique placement of your logo fit better with your brand identity?

Let’s take a closer look at what the studies show, and see if left really is right for your site.

Experts Weigh In: Where to Place Your Logo?

According to the Nielsen Norman Group, there are three purposes that logos serve on modern websites:

  • They remind visitors where they are. In other words, whose website am I on?
  • They allow for easy navigation to the home page since most websites no longer include a “Home” button in the navigation.
  • They aid in brand recognition as the logo always remains there at the top of the site, and sometimes even follows visitors as they scroll down a page.

The NNGroup performed two studies to find the ideal logo location. Here is what they found:

Left vs. Right

In the left-versus-right study, the NNGroup tested and observed the response of 128 users. Similar to an A/B test, each user was shown only one version of a website: either the original with the logo on the left or the one the NNGroup manipulated in order to place the logo and navigation on the right.

They gave the users a minute’s time to review their version of the website. They were then asked a series of questions and shown photos of 10 hotel websites. This test aimed to establish what sort of effect logo placement had on brand recall.

These were the results:

  • Left-aligned logos lead to greater brand recall. Specifically, the average brand recall for left-aligned logos was 39% as opposed to 21% for the right-aligned version.
  • Left-aligned logos are more likely to be labeled “unique.” Despite the traditional placement of a left-aligned logo, respondents were still more likely to label a left-aligned logo as “unique” and “stylish” than one that appeared on the right.

Left vs. Center

The Nielsen Norman Group conducted an additional study to discover what happens when users were exposed to a center-aligned logo. They conducted two different tests to determine the viability of a centered logo.

Unlike the A/B test conducted between left- and right-aligned logos, this first survey provided 50 users each with one retail website to interact with. Eight of those websites had a centered logo whereas six had a left-aligned logo. They were then asked to complete different tasks that would test their ease in using the navigation and return to the home page.

This was the result:

  • Left-aligned logos are better for navigation. In the study, only 4% of users failed to navigate home in a single click when the logo appeared on the left. When the logo was centered, however, 24% of users failed to get there in one click.

In the second of these tests, the NNGroup presented 128 users with five different hotel websites. Four of the logos showed variations of a logo on either the left or in the center, while the fifth site included a right-aligned logo. Users were then asked a series of questions to determine brand recall.

This was the result:

  • Brand recall is unaffected by the difference between left or centered logos. Despite presenting users with variations of the same logo in different spots, brand recall was inconsistent in this comparison between left-aligned and centered logos.

The Winner Is…

After reviewing the results from the logo placement studies, it appears that logic does prevail:

Left is best.

Here’s why:

  • Many people don’t think about looking in the right-hand corner of a website for a logo, and so brand recall can be severely compromised as a result.
  • Many people are conditioned to look for a navigation in one of the top corners of a site, so placing a logo and/or navigation in the center confuses the process of getting around a website.

In summary, left-aligned logos are ideal as they are located exactly where the eye is naturally drawn.

Just remember that web design’s primary concern should always be with the user experience. While a centered logo may look sleek, it probably isn’t ideal if you have more than one page on your website (and you expect people to visit those other pages). The same goes for a right-aligned logo. It may seem like you’re giving your site a unique edge, but you may hurt your brand’s recall in the process.

It’s also important to keep in mind that it’s not just logo placement that matters. Logos should be exported in a high-quality file format, created using a legible font face, and positioned on top of white space so that background imagery, shadows, and colors can’t distract from it.

Wrapping Up

If you’re trying to get creative with your WordPress site’s design, there are other ways to go about doing it. You could create a killer landing page, add push notifications, or revamp your CTA buttons.

If this study has shown us anything, it’s that you shouldn’t mess around with the placement of your logo. Left is always best.

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The Beginners Guide To WordPress Contact Forms

Have you ever heard of the Seahawks’ 12th Man? Those who follow football know that only 11 players from each team are allowed on the field at any given time. However, Seattle’s fans have been branded as the “12th Man” ( or “the 12s” for legal reasons) because of the profound effect their vocal presence and support has had on the Seahawks’ games.

That’s how we feel about websites.

They might not be a living, breathing team member who can call leads and attend company meetings –  but they are still an incredibly important part of a business’s sales, marketing, and customer relationship efforts.

When executed well, a WordPress website will help businesses achieve a number of those goals.

While the goals may vary based on the type of business or services offered, there is one universal goal that every website strives for:

Lead generation.

And to generate leads, you need to offer a way for customers to engage with you – whether that be through a phone call, email, live chat, social media inquiry, or by filling out a form.

It’s the latter that we’re going to focus on today.

More specifically, we’ll be diving into the benefits of using contact forms on your WordPress site, and what type of form is the best for various occasions.

First let’s start with some contact form basics…

The Logic Behind Using Contact Forms

WordPress contact forms are the ultimate tool for lead generation, making it easy for customers to get in touch, and more!

Today’s consumer prefers a multi-channel communication approach.

What does this mean exactly?

Well, consumers want options. Gone are the days of phone book searches in order to find a business’s contact info.

There are now more options available –and consumers expect to have access to them.

That’s why a website is an essential contact point for every business – from the independent blogger to the multi-chain retailer.

When someone Googles the type of service or information they’re looking for and finds your website, that’s the first step in their customer journey.

It’s then your job to guide them through the rest of that journey and to the end-goal: contacting you.

Regardless of which method of communication visitors to your WordPress site prefer, it’s important to have contact forms at the ready.

It’s even more important to make sure your contact forms are engaging. After all, research shows that 81% of people abandon a form after beginning to fill it out.

The good news is, once you’ve planned out your contact form strategy properly, landing those conversions should be a piece of cake.

7 Reasons You Need Contact Forms On Your WordPress Website

Every business and, consequently, every website, wants to achieve the same thing.

They want to reach the right audience—the audience who needs their services, information, or products and are willing to contact you to learn more.

There is a lot of work that goes into driving the right traffic to your site, but once they’re there, it’s your job to call them to action.

Contact forms are a very popular form of CTA as their inherent nature is to help businesses and customers (or prospects) more easily engage with one another.

And because of this, there are a number of advantages you can expect from using contact forms on your WordPress website:

The Little-Known Benefits Of Using Contact Forms

1.Increase Your Site UX / Audience Satisfaction:

By including simple forms that require minimal contact info in exchange for what visitors want, you’re giving them a no-fuss solution to reach you. It also puts the onus on you to make that phone call or send that email, which many customers will find an attractive option.

2.Protect Yourself:

Spammers and spambots are known for sweeping websites in search of mailto: tags, so publishing your email address information on your website may be opening you up to a number of vulnerabilities. To save yourself the hassle (and possible security threats), contact forms are a great alternative for the visitors who want to message you online.

3.Save Time:

There are many ways contact forms help businesses save time: 1) Less of a need for cold calling. 2) Less data entry when contact forms are linked to a CMS. 3) Less need for back-and-forth when FAQs and next steps can be shared during or after the contact form submission process.

4.Collect Consistent Information:

Whatever information is needed from a visitor (general contact info or perhaps more comprehensive answers regarding their needs), contact forms ensure that businesses are collecting the same info from everyone, every time.

5.Stay Organized:

Contact forms are a great way to help businesses keep their customer and lead information organized with electronic records from every submission.

6.Generate Leads:

Even if you’re using forms for content giveaways, surveys, or some other more creative purpose, contact forms still provide you with a way to collect new lead information for future use. (e.g. If they signed up for a white paper in the past, they may be interested in hearing about your services when you contact them in the future).

7.Increase Engagement:

If there’s anything social media has taught us, it’s that consumers want to engage with brands.

A contact form offers them an easy way to do that and demonstrates to your visitors that you’ll be there when they’re ready to take that next step.

Remember: when used correctly, contact forms can be a very powerful sales and marketing tool; i.e. your 12th Man.

Now it’s time to figure out what type of form will work best for your site.

How To Choose The Right Type Of Contact Form

Many websites will use a mix of contact forms in order to convert visitors through different means.

What you end up choosing for your website will depend on what you have to offer.

Consider the following WordPress form options:

The Basic Contact Form

This is the generic form you’ll find on every website. It usually appears on the Contact page, but will also be present after blog posts and at the bottom of special landing pages that want visitors to take a specific action.

If your purpose is to entice visitors to contact you, this is the form to use.

An example of our own WordPress contact form

The Giveaway Form

The giveaway form is for businesses or marketers who can give something away for free and get visitors’ contact info in exchange for it. So for marketers, you usually see this in the form of a “Free White Paper” that requests an email address in exchange for the free collateral piece.

A look at a giveaway contact form example
HubSpot always do a great job with their lead magnets and forms.

For other businesses, the perfect example of this is when a website offers up a chance to win a free trip [gift, assessment, etc.] in exchange for the contestant’s email address as an “entry fee.”

The Purchase Form

An example of our own WordPress order form

Any website dealing in the selling of goods or services online will have an order form.

Depending on how extensive the ordering process is, these types of forms can become quite lengthy and this is usually where you’ll find multi-page forms put to use.

The Calculator Form

When sales people talk to customers about how their product will help them save X amount of dollars every month, they will almost always have a tried-and-true formula in place to back that up.

So for websites hoping to land sales (or just get the conversation started), having a calculator form on the site is a great way to get those prospects interacting, discovering what they can gain from those services (or lose without them), and ultimately reaching out for more info.

The Login Form

For websites that offer memberships or special access to parts of their website to partners, customers, suppliers, etc., a sign-up and login form is a necessary piece of that process.

An example of WPMU DEVs WordPress login form
Make login forms as simple as possible to keep your audience coming back!

The Survey Form

Survey forms can serve a number of purposes. They can serve as a way to get visitors engaged with an interesting or informative topic.

They can serve as a way to help you collect information for building case studies and reports.

And they can serve as a way to learn more about what your audience wants and help you adjust your business model accordingly.

The Subscription Form

Websites that produce regular updates to their content will usually offer short subscription forms.

So for someone who produces a lot of blog posts or a regular newsletter, this form is a great way to stay top-of-mind with visitors as new updates are pushed out while collecting information for future use.

An example of a WordPress form that WPMU DEV uses
Our own subscription form for the WPMU DEV blog.

The Google Form

An example of a Google contact form
Google contact forms can be a handy way to put out event invites and more. (Image: https://zapier.com/learn/google-sheets/how-to-use-google-forms/)

Chances are you’ve seen a Google form recently. They’re very easy to set up and very flexible in terms of the type of information you want to collect (job applications, surveys, service requests, etc).

Stored in the cloud with all your other Google documentation, these forms provide websites with a free way to collect information from customers (as opposed to a CMS) and keep it all in one place.

The Pop-Up Form

A look at one of WPMU DEV's WordPress popup forms

For those trying to maintain a minimal site design or for those simply wanting to put a form in a hard-to-miss location, pop-ups are a great alternative.

The Multi-Page Form

Many of the form types above could potentially take up multiple pages (especially anything having to do with the ordering process).

The ultimate purpose is spreading a form submission out across many pages is to make the process of filling out so many fields a little less daunting for customers.

It also helps to ease them through different (but logical) phases in order to reach the end-goal.

The Easiest Way To Create Your Own Contact Forms in WordPress

Contact forms should always be reflective of what your business does and what sort of information you need from visitors in order to take the appropriate next steps in building a relationship with them.

Regardless of how extensive your needs are, the following three step guide and suggested tools will set you well on your way to getting the most out of the contact forms on your site.

Step 1: Select a Contact Form Plugin

Some examples of WordPress contact forms you can find in the plugin directory
There are plenty of great contact form plugins to choose from in the WP Directory.

If you want to create a contact form, the easiest way to do it, is to use a plugin.

You’ll want to first identify what sort of form you need from the list of form types we talked about earlier. It will also of course depend on the context of how the form fits in with your website.

To help you choose the right plugin, here are 5 of the best contact form plugins as chosen by us to get you started. Also, here’s another list of some great pop-up plugins we put together if you’re wanting to go that route.

Put off by the thought of using a pop-up on your website? Don’t worry you’re not alone. But we think you should really give them a chance!

Check out this fantastic article we put together about how to create pop-ups that don’t scare off your visitors.

Step 2: Install The Contact Form Plugin On Your Website

Once you’ve selected which plugin to use, the next step is of course setting it up on your website.

Here’s a great step by step tutorial on how you can easily build your own contact form in WordPress using our own Forminator plugin.

Even better, you can check out this full video tutorial breakdown if you’re a more visual type of guy or gal.

Step 3: Close The Contact Form Loop

The last step in the setup of any form is to make sure you’ve provided a quality experience for your site’s visitors from start-to-finish.

So that doesn’t just mean having a fully functioning form that provides them with the product, service, or phone call which they had sought out.

That means that once they submit that form, they’re redirected to another well-thought-out page.

Does the contact form leave visitors wondering what’s next? Send them to a landing page that explains next steps or contains a comprehensive FAQ.

Does the form complete a purchase? Send them to a confirmation page.

Or is the form just a subscription to your blog? Then direct them to a Thank You page or to a blog post that may be of interest.

You’ve spent so much time designing a great website. There’s no reason to lose your visitors’ interest once you’ve got their info.

Well Executed Forms Are Your Express Ticket To More Leads And a Better UX

Ultimately, the purpose of a WordPress contact form is to give visitors a chance to reach out to you when they’re ready.

Regardless of the type of form (or forms) you use, keep in mind the following before you begin to build any of these out:

  • Try to only have one form on any given page. Too many competing CTAs can create a confusing and negative experience for visitors.
  • Keep the number of form fields to a minimum. The less work visitors have to do, the more receptive they’ll be to give you their information.
  • Create strong, but simple messaging within the form. You want to draw in their attention and hold it until they submit their information.
  • Part of the reason you’re using forms is to cut down on the amount of data entry required of you, so make sure to link your forms to a CMS or payment process for easy data collection and processing.
  • For some of these forms (like the Contact page form), you’ll want to include alternate contact info alongside it so your visitors are still presented with a variety of contact options.
  • In terms of where to place your form, you really won’t know what works best until it’s been on your site. While above-the-fold forms do seem to perform better, that’s not always the case. Consider using A/B testing to find the optimum spot.
  • If you’re ever collecting customer information (in this case, you definitely are), make sure you have a privacy statement set up and that you have provided proof of it near the form.
  • Always, always, always make sure it’s responsive. If your contact form doesn’t properly work on mobile devices, you’ll be missing out on a huge opportunity to convert.

Follow most of the tips above and you’ll be well on your way to collecting new leads with ease.

As an added bonus, you’ll improve UX and potential customers will already be impressed by your brand before they officially reach your doors.

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*Really* Get to Know Your Site Visitors using WordPress with HubSpot

Having a fast, beautiful and responsive website isn’t enough anymore. Your visitors expect more. And in this post we are partnering with HubSpot to show you how to deliver just that, for free!

Visitors to your site want to have their questions answered instantly. They want to be able to see what your products cost without having to speak with a salesperson or request a quote. They want to be able to click a button and speak with a customer service representative if they need additional help. And, the list goes on…

While your customers are demanding a better experience, you may be asking yourself, “How do I make my prospects and customers happy while not breaking the bank, having dozens of different software plans, and hiring more employees?”

Well, we have some good news to share with you – with HubSpot’s completely free all-in-one CRM, Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service WordPress plugin (not sure what a CRM is, find out more here) you can better attract, engage, and (who knows, maybe) delight your prospects and customers effectively all in one platform without spending a single penny.

Your new, free, CRM in action.

In this article, we’ll go over how to engage your visitors & customers more generally and how you can go about doing that with the HubSpot WordPress plugin.

Convert your website visitors by adding value with Forms

Forms vary in many ways – length, format, content type, appearance and purpose. However, they should fit your business’s needs, collect the information you want from your visitors, and ultimately provide value to your prospects and customers.

If you already have forms on your website, that’s great! Submissions should automatically sync with your HubSpot contact database when you have the HubSpot WordPress plugin installed. HubSpot can monitor any submission on your website and pull in the details that the user inputted.

 

If you don’t have forms on your website yet, that’s okay! HubSpot has a free form builder in the plugin, or you can use another forms plugin, such as Forminator (which is pretty amazing, just fyi), and have them automatically connect with your HubSpot account. Forminator’s extended HubSpot integration allows for setting up a free WordPress support ticketing system too.

Engage & help your visitors with Live Chat

Sometimes, your visitors don’t want to fill out forms. There are many reasons for this… maybe your call-to-action is too generic or even too invasive by asking for a lot of information.

Have you recently been to a website and engaged with someone in sales, customer support, or even a bot? It’s best to give your visitors different options to engage with your business.

 

In a recent study asking, “when you have a question or problem you need help with, how do you like to connect with a company’s customer service group?” 48% of the respondents answered with live chat, and 57% of the respondents said they are interested in getting information from bots when browsing a business’s website.

With the big shift in how customers are shopping and researching online, live chat and bots are an easy way to help your customers and save you massive amounts of time and energy. And, it’s very simple to add live chat and bots to your website. In the quick walkthrough below, you will see how easy it is to create a step by step bot that asks questions to qualify your visitors and learn more about their interests.

 

With HubSpot’s WordPress plugin, you can add live chat to your website in less than a minute and build chatbots to engage with your visitors while you’re away from your computer or even sleeping! If you care to chat with your visitors, you can use HubSpot’s free mobile application or the web app.

Organize, enrich, and track each visitor in a tidy timeline with Contacts

Typically, when someone submits a form on your website, you would receive a simple kickback email with the details they entered and most likely a record saved in your WordPress form editor.

What you may not know is that you’re missing out on a lot of additional information that would help you better engage with your prospect. These additional insights include what pages they viewed, how many times they’ve visited your website, how they found you, and so much more.

Here’s a gif showing a contact’s timeline with all the valuable details:

 

Imagine being able to know everything about what people are doing on your website, when, and who exactly they are. You can use these details to notify your sales team, trigger an email, and much more.

You can manage up to 1 million contacts in your HubSpot account for free, forever.

Create segmented contact groups with Lists

So you want to know which contacts are visiting your pricing page? Which customers are looking to upgrade or even cancel? You can use Lists in the HubSpot WordPress plugin to create filtered groups of your contacts based on their specific interactions, behaviors, and other metadata that you’ve gathered.

For example, if a lead visits your pricing page, it’s a good inkling that they might be evaluating your products. You can use this valuable insight (and others like it) to reach out and help them, create a tailored chatbot, or even send them an automated email to move them closer to purchasing.

You can use these segmented lists to power more personalized content in email, ads, and in your content.

Follow-up with automated personalized messaging with Email

Educating your contacts and customers through targeted, personalized email is a great way to drive engagement. If you’re sending blanket emails today and hoping they work, you may be getting large amounts of people to unsubscribe from your communication due to its spammy nature. People’s inboxes are overly cluttered, and one of the easiest ways to cut through the noise is to personalize your messaging with things like their name or company name in the subject line and copy.

Think about this: You now know every page each contact is looking at on your website, if they are customers or not, and other information that you’ve gathered when they fill out forms or engage with your chatbot. You can create segmented lists to group very similar contacts together. And, now you can send beautiful, responsive emails to them that feel personalized and helpful!

 

The goal of any business is to help its customers! Understand your customer’s needs, be helpful and personalized, and always be timely. Now you can do it more easily.

Measure business performance with Dashboard

Now that you’re starting to get the hang of engaging and delighting your contacts and customers, you must be wondering how you can see how your business is performing.

With HubSpot’s Dashboard built into the WordPress plugin, you can view your growth and highlight the areas you need to improve upon.

You can view basic reports and even build custom reports to analyze any part of your business. Since all of your valuable contact data is stored in your HubSpot account, you can build dashboards showing each part of your business’s success.

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13 Best AdSense Alternatives For Your WordPress Blog in 2020

Google AdSense is ‘THE’ advertising tool for monetizing your WordPress blog. But what if your account gets suspended, banned, or you can’t access it? Even worse, what if you’re not a fan of the Googs?

There has to be an alternative to Google AdSense – and lucky for you, we’ve found 13 of them.

But First…

When did the Google AdSense platform start, and why/how did it get so popular?

Because let’s face it, before you can choose a solid alternative to AdSense, you need to study the originator first.

What Is Google AdSense and How Does It Work?

Google adsense is one of the most popular ad networks on earth

AdSense is an online advertising program launched by Google back in 2003.

Initially there were some doubts about the platform, and in 2004 poor results and complaints forced Google to allow advertisers to opt out of the AdSense network.

But that’s where the trouble ended.

And in the years since, it has become the go-to advertising platform for bloggers and website owners looking to monetize their websites.

How Does AdSense Work?

Here’s the simplified version:

You start by creating a Google AdSense account, selecting the type of ads you want to show on your site, and then pasting the HTML code where you’d like the ads to be shown.

Google does the rest, and automatically shows ads that are deemed relevant to the content of your website or blog.

From this point on, visitors to your website will see ads, and every time someone takes action (click, conversion, etc) you get a cut of the advertising revenue.

Straight From AdSense’s Mouth

I don’t think we could explain it any better than this:

The cycle of a google Adsense ad

*For more information on inserting ads into WordPress do check out our article: “11 Quick Ways to Insert Ads into WordPress… and Increase Your Income This Year.”

Phew!

Now all the (bori..) informative stuff’s out of the way, I think we’re ready to get into some AdSense Alternatives.

Here Are 13 Adsense Alternatives You Can Use To Monetize Your Website Or Blog Today:

1. Media.net

A look at the media.net Adsense alternative

First on our list is one of Adsense’s biggest direct competitors.

Media.net lets you to ride the wave of the Yahoo! Bing Network – one of the largest marketplaces for keyword targeted advertisers.

The company boasts one of the most advanced portfolios of advertising technology. Offering users a number of on-site ad solutions including search, display, native, video, and more.

Implementation is easy. All you have to do is drop a short snippet of code on your website or blog. Activating and running contextual, video, and native ads can also be done without extra code or integration work.

Because Media.net is a contextual ad network, the advertisements displayed on your website or blog are always relevant to your content.

So if your blog is all about cats… yep, your visitors are getting slapped with more cat ads than they can handle.

Without it feeling spammy of course.

Their customer support is also top notch. For example, once your website or blog has been approved, you’re immediately given a customer representative to help optimize your site’s ads.

 

2. Infolinks

A look at the Infolinks ad platform

Infolinks is the third largest publisher marketplace in the world, generating income for over 100,000 website and blog publishers across 128 countries.

The company also works with several big name brands including: Nike, Virgin Airlines, Target, and Netflix.

Infolinks lets you monetize your site without having to overhaul its look and style. Their ads blend in perfectly with your content and can be customized to increase engagement.

The ad types you can choose from include: InFold, InText, InArticle, and more. These ads and who they’re shown to are also supported by an intelligent algorithm. This helps the ads displayed on your website to be as relevant as possible.

Integrating Infolinks ads into your website is simple. Once your application has been approved you’ll receive a unique script you can add to your sites HTML. Paste the code anywhere on your website and you’re ready to start earning dollars.

Also, if you use Google Analytics or other JavaScript tools, the Infolinks JavaScript can be inserted right before their code.

 

3. Amazon Native Shopping Ads

Use amazon shopping to entice visitors

Who wouldn’t want to leverage the behemoth that is Amazon?

After all, more than 197 million people from all around the world visit the eCommerce store.

To put this into perspective, that’s more than the entire population of Russia!

Amazon’s native shopping ads give your users direct access to the eCommerce giant’s millions of products.

Even better, they can be made to fit seamlessly with your content and all the products shown are highly relevant and appropriate.

The ad units Amazon offers fall into three different types:

1.Recommendation ads – These ads show recommended Amazon products at the bottom of your content. Of course, the products will be relevant and based on the pages content and it’s visitors. All of these units are also mobile responsive and will adapt based on the container.

2.Search ads – This ad unit allows your visitors to view search results from Amazon directly on your website. This includes recommended Amazon products based on search phrases and keywords.

3.Custom ads – Hand pick specific Amazon products you’d like to promote to your visitors. These units are highly flexible and can be personalised to feel more natural. E.g. “My favorite headphones to use in 2019.”

 

4. Propeller Ads

A look at the Propeller Ads Adsense alternative

More than 150,000 publishers use PropellerAds and the company has over eight years of market expertise and experience.

If you’re worried about your site showing annoying or spammy ads… the good news is, all their ads are moderated 24/7.

This ensures no viruses or inappropriate content gets through, and you’re showing clean and relevant ads only.

The ad units can also bypass ad blocking software. Even though this might seem a tad sneaky, getting passed ad blockers has been shown to increase ad revenue by 20%.

I mean, it’s sneaky of the visitor to be blocking ads in the first place, right?

To set up Propeller ads, simply register for an account, and then wait to hear your website has been checked and approved.

Once this is done, all you have to do is paste the shortcode of Propeller’s ad units on any page of your website.

The types of ad units you can display on your website include: push notifications, on-click ads, widgets, interstitials, and smart links.

The platform also offers decent payment terms. Giving users weekly payouts every Thursday, and a minimum withdrawal amount of $5.

(AdSense has a threshold of $100 for reference).

You can add a “plug n play” payment integration to your account to help you keep track of your earnings.

Propeller Ads also play well with other ad networks, so you can diversify and add more income streams if you wish.

 

5. Revcontent

A look at the Revcontent platform

Revcontent specializes in “native” editorial content, which means the ads shown on your website will be relevant articles and blogs – as opposed to product or service ads.

As the name suggests, the idea behind these kinds of ads is they blend in with your content and are made to feel more natural.

In most cases, this means higher engagement rates as native ads tend not to interrupt the UX as much (as pop ups for example).

Another thing that sets Revcontent apart is their specialized ad system – which uses highly responsive widgets, gallery implementations, infinite scroll, and unlimited API customizations.

You also have a nice range of ad types to choose from including media, technology, and entertainment widgets.

However, one thing to be aware of is Revcontent has a minimum traffic requirement of 50,000 visits per month. Therefore it may not be suited to smaller blogs and websites.

When it comes to payment, Revcontent pays on Net 30 terms (the full amount is payable within 30 days). Their minimum payout threshold is $50 and can be paid via PayPal, wire, or ACH transfer.

 

6. Evadav

a look at the Evadav Adsense alternative

Evadav is an advertising network that offers you a number of different ad units – including video sliders, banners, native content, and more.

However, their speciality is push notifications.

Yep, we’ve all seen them… the automatic notifications that appear as small pop-up windows on your device screen – whether it’s your PC, tablet, or mobile phone.

Netflix for example, often uses push notifications to let users about newly released shows or films they might be interested in.

Visitors who agree to receive push notifications from your website will continually make you money every time they interact with an Evadav ad.

Another great thing about Evadav is it connects you with a global advertising exchange. Which means you can reach visitors all around the world.

The advertisements that appear on your site are also all verified and come from the Evadav’s own domain.

In terms of payments, they pay weekly, with a $25 minimum payout. You can also choose between CPM, CPA, and RevShare models.

Set up easy and you’re provided with a handy tutorial video to help you get started.

 

7. Adsterra

The Adsterra platform allows you to monetize your blog or website

Adsterra is a fast-growing advertising network for publishers that specializes in “popunder” ads.

After all, why be “okay” at everything when you can be awesome at one thing?

However, if you really need they do offer: video ads, direct links, push notifications, banners, pre-roll videos, and more. Ads can be run over both mobile and desktop devices.

You also don’t have to worry about showing your visitors spammy ads that send site visitors packing. Adsterra offer protection against malware and inappropriate ads through a third-party fraud detection system.

If you need assistance the team has your back ASAP. They have a ticket system and you’ll usually hear back from them within a day. If it’s urgent you can also get in touch with someone instantly through Skype.

In terms of how and when you’re paid…

You get a pay out every two weeks (NET15), but they do require a $100 minimum to be eligible. The payment integration options include: Bitcoin, PayPal, ePayments, and more.

As expected, the set up process is also super easy: Register – get approval – place code on site – start monetizing.

 

8. PopAds

A look at the Pop Ads Adsense alternative

With a name like PopAds it wouldn’t be a wild guess to say the ad types they specialize in probably include the word “pop” in them.

And if you guessed this you’d be right!

PopAds are an advertising network that specialise in “popunder” ads for publishers and advertisers.

As well as their love for popunders, they also offer popups, tab ups, tab unders, and more (yep, all the under and ups).

Something unique about PopAds (that you often don’t get from other platforms), is they can pay you daily providing you earn more than $5 each day. This means you don’t need a ton of traffic to meet their minimum payout limit.

Your ads can reach an audience spanning more than 50 countries using the PopAds network, and you can adjust their frequency if you want to give your visitors a break.

You can contact the support team anytime via email or instant messenger. If you’re not a fan of NET30, NET60 payment terms, you’ll also enjoy the fact you can request to withdraw your PopAds earnings at anytime.

 

9. ylliX

ylliX is a platform that lets you monetize your blog

ylliX advertising network serves up a hassle-free registration process and ultra-low payment thresholds for publishers looking to monetize their blogs or websites.

But first the all important ad unit selections… we’re talking: popunder ads, layer ads, full page ads, and more.

And yes, they also run across both desktop and mobile devices.

If patience isn’t your strong point, you’ll be pleased to know that your account will be activated immediately after you register. No waiting days for your website to be approved.

Once you’re signed up and ready to go, ylliX gives you direct access to a self-serve platform you have 100% control over when running your campaigns.

Another great thing about this platform is they offer daily payments along with a super small $1 minimum payout threshold (remember AdSense’s is $100).

They also operate using a RevShare (revenue share) model. So the more you earn, the more they earn (everybody wins!).

 

10. BuySellAds

BuySellAds is a great platform for running ads on your website

If you’re planning on spending a couple of hours a week monetizing your website or blog, BuySellAds probably isn’t the platform for you.

They focus exclusively on English-language ads for high-volume sites with 100,000+ engaged audiences.

(Yep, they ain’t messing around).

However, if you’re comfortably hitting that number, you may have found your AdSense alternative.

Also, since the (view) cost of entry is higher, you’ll also receive bigger payouts. Expect around 75 cents per every dollar earned by the ads on your site.

When it comes to actual product, BuySellAds offers everything you’d want from this type of platform – non-intrusive, relevant, and brand-safe ad placements. The ad units you can choose from include: display, native, emails, and sponsored content.

They also specialise in niche developer, designer, and tech audiences. So you’re in luck if your blog targets any of those niches.

Their native ads in particular are optimized for user experience and come in many different forms including: “Image + text,” “fancy bar,” “flex bar,” and “sticky box.”

 

11. PopCash

A look at the PopCash ad platform

PopCash offers popunder advertising with a helpful UX twist.

The setup isn’t anything new… but it sure happens fast! Websites can be approved in just one hour on business days, and up to 12 hours on weekends.

Once your domain is approved, individual visitors are then shown a popunder ad once every 24 hours.

You might think limiting ad time limits revenue opportunities, but on the flipside it provides a better user experience, and ensures visitors don’t always have ads in their face.

If you want, you can use PopCash alongside other advertising platforms to diversify and bring in added income.

The platform also comes with a low minimum withdrawal limit ($10), and you can request to be paid through PayPal, Paxum, wire transfer, and more.

Transfers usually take around 24 to 48 hours. You also get to keep 80% of the revenue you earn from advertisers.

If you’re in need of assistance, staff are always on hand to offer fast support via email or Skype.

 

12. Bidvertiser

A look at the Bidvertiser ad platform

Bidvertiser offers website and blog owners an easy set up process, along with a unique payment model.

However, it does present users with a slight dilemma…

When you register for this platform you’ll be approved instantly so long as your website doesn’t breach any basic website standards (explicit, misleading, and spammy content etc.).

There is some bad news sadly, another reason it’s so easy to get approved is because the ads shown on your website won’t necessarily be related to your content.

Buuut, hold on, all is not lost.

Although the ads shown might not be relevant, they will be some of the top performing ads the platform has access to. So it’ll be largely up to you to decide whether it’s worth showing high performing ads that aren’t related to your website.

If you do choose to stick with Bidvertiser… something unique about the platform is the fact they mix CPM and CPA payments, along with the traditional CPC model.

This basically means you have the opportunity to earn, not only for per click, but per conversion as well.

The ad units you have access to include banners, popups, sliders, and more.

You can also easily integrate with payment providers like PayPal and Bitcoin, and the platform’s withdraw limit is a low $10.

The ads are also scanned 24/7 by a compliance team, as well as internal and third party tools. So you know your website is safe from Malware and inappropriate content.

 

13. OIO Publisher

OIO publisher can be installed as a WordPress plugin

OIO Publisher offers a PHP ad management script and a WordPress plugin to monetize your blog through ads.

Although, there are a couple of details you should be aware of when it comes to this plugin:

First, it does come with a small set up cost and isn’t free like the other AdSense alternatives on this list.

Second, to get the most out of OIO, you’ll need to be proactive in finding the best advertisers and deals yourself.

But aside from that, once everything is in motion this plugin is one of the most cost-effective AdSense alternatives.

Why?

Because with this plugin there are no middle people involved, and you keep 100% of the revenue.

As well as this, you’ll get paid up front and you won’t have to wait for payouts. You also don’t risk being banned or losing your earnings.

Once you’ve installed the plugin (you’ll find plenty of documentation on how to do this), you can search the OIO marketplace and begin reaching out to advertisers.

There’s Plenty Of Life Beyond AdSense

If you’ve been thinking about monetizing your blog or website, the best thing you can do is survey all of the options available to you.

Although AdSense is the top player in this department… any one of the platforms mentioned in this article would make a great alternative.

You could even argue that some may be better than AdSense depending on what you’re trying to achieve.

While the platform has been sitting at the top hill for some years, others have been quietly carving out their own niches and catering to specific customer needs.

For example, if you want to specifically run push notifications you might use a specialist platform like Evadav. Or if you want to only show native editorial content you might go with Revcontent.

What you choose will largely come down to the type of blog you’re trying to monetize and the content you’re publishing.

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The Top eCommerce Trends To Keep An Eye On in 2019

New eCommerce trends emerge at a staggering space. It’s hard to keep up-to-date with them all, so we’ve researched and collected the hottest eCommerce trends of 2019 in this post.

eCommerce sales will account for 10% of money spent by shoppers this year. If you run or manage an eCommerce store, it’ll help you a great deal knowing the latest trends in your industry. After all, knowing is half the battle won!

While you don’t have to follow all the trends listed here, the knowledge can help you identify areas in your online store where you can improve.

Let’s go!

Get Chatty

They’re almost everywhere now. The global takeover of chatbots is imminent. Over the last year, Chatbots recorded a massive 24.3% growth (CAGR). In a end-user survey, 45% of users preferred chatbots as their first choice for raising customer service requests.

In another study by Drift, 38% of consumers preferred engaging with a bot over a human.

Say hello to our new chat overlords!

2020 is going to be a big year for chatbots. Salesforce’s global “State of Service” survey (August 2019) found that 53% of service organizations are planning to use chatbots within the next 18 months.

With the rise of messenger apps such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, chatbots are slowly invading users’ mobiles too. And for a good reason.

Chatbots help you reach your customers in a fun and meaningful way. And it happens with the least friction possible. There’s nothing to download or install, no registration or login page. It’s right there for the users to jump in right away.

Think Inside The Box

Everyone uses email—to keep in touch with friends, family, and their favorite brands. There’s a new use for emails now: email checkouts. It’s a way for consumers to complete their purchase directly from an email.

Interactive emails were popularized by a startup named RebelMail (acquired by Salesforce recently). It has grown in usage tremendously since then.

Interactive emails with checkout feature directly in the inbox
Checkout without leaving your inbox.

Interactive emails allow subscribers to take quizzes, review products they’ve purchased, and even checkout abandoned carts, all within the body of the email itself.

For instance, Old Navy used it to let customers view photos of a product, choose its color & size, add it to their cart, and then finish the purchase.

Here’s a cool interactive email from Harry’s that suggests a product based on your choices (this ties into the personalization trend too).

Despite the rise of other communications channels, emails are still the most used medium. It makes sense then that brands will maximize its potential by letting customers buy directly from their inboxes. Its scope is so huge, that it just may give rise to a new eCommerce category—emailCommerce.

It’s Time To Get Personal

Delight your customers with how unique they are to get great marketing results. A study by Experian Marketing Services found that personalized emails achieve 6X higher transaction rates than those that aren’t.

To win at personalization, you need to cover your customer’s journey from start to finish. A majority of shoppers do research before committing to a purchase, so help them with that. Build personalized content and search features to attract your target audience.

Reward your customers for sharing their personal information. You can then use this data to personalize their shopping experience. And later, you can customize your customer loyalty schemes too.

Guide your customers throughout their online shopping journey.

For instance, Victoria’s Secret guides you with a sports bra selector interface. The North Face helps you find the perfect jacket. Bodybuilding.com helps you find the right supplement in just three easy steps. IKEA’s planner tool helps you plan your dream home.

Victoria Secret's Bra Selector interface
Know your customers’ secrets to serve them better!

Personalizing the consumers’ shopping experience helps simplify purchasing decisions by helping them find exactly what they’re looking for.

Brands that learn how to do this will have better chances of winning against their competition.

Keep Your Users Hooked

Instagram’s ad revenue more than doubled in 2018 and generated 9 billion dollars. This growth is mostly due to its new eCommerce push, and is expected to continue through 2019.

Currently, Instagram is the No.2 social media platform with 768 million monthly active users (MAU), right behind its parent company Facebook. By 2023, it’s expected to reach more than 1 billion MAU.

Instagram's new Checkout on Instagram eCommerce feature Yet another Insta-hit in the making. (Source: Instagram)

Instagram’s eCommerce-friendly features are growing by leaps and bounds. Their product tagging feature and shoppable Instagram Stories stickers have been a huge success with brands and marketers alike.

Early this year, they announced the Checkout on Instagram feature (still in beta), which allows shoppers to buy products they see on Instagram without leaving the app. Nike, Adidas, H&M, Prada, and Burberry are some of the top brands testing it out right now.

All Hail The Supreme Leader Of Marketing

If content is king (or queen), videos are the supreme leader.

55% of online users watch videos every day.

90% of consumers think product videos are helpful in making a buying decision.

Facebook generates more than 8 billion video views daily.

Having a video on your landing page increases conversion rates by 80%.

The math is simple. Invest in video marketing.

WPMU DEV's YouTube Channel Screenshot Have you subscribed to our superhero league yet?

Another area to pay attention to is Live Video Streaming. According to Social Media Today, live videos drive 300% more engagement than regular videos. It’s slated to be the next big trend in video marketing for driving engagement and conversions.

Create A Seamless Shopping Experience

Mobile is still on the rise. By 2021, 53.9 percent of all eCommerce sales are expected to happen on smartphones. A majority of consumers browse products or services on their mobiles, but finish their purchase on a desktop.

An top view of a desk with a person holding tablet. Also seen are a laptop and a smartphone along with various gifts.
Be there for your customers on all major devices and platforms.

Hence, it’s important to have your eCommerce store present on all devices. This is called an omni-device eCommerce strategy. It helps customers switch shopping easily between their various devices.

Even inside a physical store, 80% of shoppers used a smartphone to look up product reviews or compare prices. They usually visit social media pages, YouTube, and review sites to feel confident about their intended purchase.

Thus, it becomes crucial for brands to have a presence on all platforms. Even if they’re majorly a retail brand. This is called a omni-channel strategy.

An omni-platform and omni-device strategy puts your customers at the center of your marketing efforts, rather than your brand. It aids them in their shopping journey, no matter which device or platform they’re on.

If you already have an eCommerce store, it’s worth checking out the benefits of Progress Web Apps (PWA). PWAs are websites that work pretty much like apps, but they’re platform independent. So, they work on almost all devices. They’re heralded to be the future of mobile apps.

Super Progressive Web Apps is a highly-rated WordPress plugin that you can use right now to convert your WordPress site into a PWA.

The Future Is Unreal

Virtual Reality gives customers an experience that’s equivalent to traditional shopping. Well, almost. Plus, there’s no hassle of traveling and being physically present at the store. If you’re wondering how, here’s a cool in-store VR demo by inVRsion.

According to a survey conducted by Frulix—a virtual reality startup that helps create VR videos right inside your browser, 72% respondents said they’d be interested in buying things through a VR experience. 58% thought that VR could be a game changer for retailers.

As per IDC, spending on virtual and augmented reality is predicted to surpass $20 billion in 2019. IKEA, Converse and Lego are some of the top brands who have invested heavily in VR and AR.

Conver's AR app to try their shoe styles virtually with your phone
Converse’s AR app lets you try their styles virtually.

As the VR space picks up pace, eCommerce brands will need to create better experiences for their consumers. It’s definitely a trend to keep an eye on (pun intended).

Raise Your Voice

Voice-commerce accounted for $2 billion in sales last year, according to OC&C Strategy Consultants. This number is estimated to grow to $40 billion by 2022.

Voice assistants like Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa are growing popular day-by-day. They can be used hands free while doing other things, and also help you get answers and results faster.

"Alexa, Play Despacito" meme
And buy me a bag of chips while you’re at it!

Naturally, using them for purchasing things is just a matter of time. More than 62% of households that own smart speakers have used voice assistants to buy groceries. And 35% of them have used the same to buy retail items.

As the tech matures, eCommerce businesses are eager to leverage this new platform to create dynamic shopping experiences for their users.

EMarketer predicts that smart speakers market in the US will grow to 76.5 million by 2020. This combined with consumers’ preference for smart assistants would mean that voice-commerce will play a significant role in the growth of eCommerce industry.

Move Fast And Don’t Break Things

On the internet, slow speed kills. First, it kills businesses by damaging their conversion rates. And then, it kills them by damaging the site’s reputation.

According to a user study by Google, 53% of smartphone users abandon a site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. And 79% said that they won’t return to a site with poor performance.

That was a major reason behind Google’s Speed Update to their search algorithm last year. With all things being constant, the faster your site loads, the higher it’ll rank in Google’s search results.

WPMU DEV Hosting's landing page screenshot
Get your eCommerce store a partner that makes it fly!

Hence, if you’re running an eCommerce store, you need to go with a reliable hosting partner that delivers (hint: WPMU DEV Hosting is blazing fast).

Online shoppers are looking for speed and performance. Just make it happen!

Let’s Go (Social) Shopping

More people today shop online, buy items on social network platforms, become brand ambassadors and contribute to other users’ purchases through User-Generated Content (UGC) and buying recommendations.

Instagram, for example, let’s you set up a mobile shopfront, tag products in photos, videos, and stories, and turn posts into opportunities for millions of users to buy from your store. You can display your Instagram shop and products on other social platforms like Facebook and on your WordPress eCommerce store.

With a little creative thinking, you can launch UGC initiatives like competitions asking customers to share photos and stories of themselves consuming, wearing, or engaging with your products and services. Users can share products they want with their social network and get feedback and suggestions on purchases from their friends.

Wallis website with user generated content request notice highlighted
User-Generated Content marketing campaigns are a growing social eCommerce trend.

Did You Just Propose To Me?

How do you tell customers that both they and your business are special and deserve to be together? Successful eCommerce businesses are finding ways to do this by combining their Unique Selling Proposition (USP) with personalized user experiences.

Focusing on micro-markets, building a community, and holding in-depth conversations with potential and existing customers are just some of the ways businesses are accessing better user data to figure out what customers are looking for, deliver them a unique and special experience, and create the perfect match.

In a recent BazaarVoice survey, 70% of retailers listed personalization as a top priority [PDF]. With trends like dropshipping, vendors can craft a unique selling proposition, set up online stores focused on micro selling, and use personalization tools to improve customer engagement on their website.

Laptop screen with illustration of a group of people holding signs.
Customers want to buy special things from special places that make them feel, well… special!

Sell Once, Get Paid Forever

Frictionless shopping is all about making the buying process faster, simpler, less stressful, and more enjoyable to consumers. Subscription-based eCommerce is a perfect example of this.

According to global management firm McKinsey, subscription eCommerce has grown by more than 100 percent each year for the past five years. Online subscriptions alone generated more than $2.6 billion in sales in 2016 (up from $57.0 million in 2011).

Whether customers buy online to avoid running to the shops all the time or to save themselves the embarrassment of asking for personal products over the counter, more companies are offering auto-shipped products, allowing users to subscribe and get anything and everything home delivered.

Amazon subscribe and save store page.
With subscription services, you never have to run out again and inconvenience yourself.

If It Looks Like A Duck And Thinks Like A Duck…

New eCommerce experiences are combining artificial intelligence (AI) with augmented reality (AR), particularly in areas like mobile commerce.

AI and AR are separate but complementary technologies. AI-based predictive technologies can learn and identify users’ buying patterns and behaviors to tailor-make customized shopping experiences and generate timely offers, and 3D-based modeling with AR tools can be used to let users visualize, ‘test out’ and ‘try’ things like homeware products and clothing apparel or accessories before they buy.

By 2022, BusinessWire predicts that global retailer spending on AI will reach $7.3 billion per annum by 2022 (up from around $2B in 2018), and PR Newswire estimates that over 120,000 online stores will use AR to offer their customers a richer buying experience and that by 2020, 3% of all eCommerce revenue with be generated by AR experiences.

image of camera showing augmented reality picture of a couch.
Augmented reality lets you couch things in different material perceptions and try before you buy. Source: augment.com

One eCommerce Channel To Rule Them All

How can you target your ideal customers online when there are so many places they can be found? Businesses today need to have an online presence everywhere and be able to deliver an exceptional level of personal service that will make customers feel special and want to return and buy again and again.

The key is to be very targeted in your marketing efforts and concentrate on building your business using a multichannel (omnichannel) approach that provides customers with a seamless, consistent, and personalized shopping experience no matter where they are located or how they interact with you.

So… if you want to get somewhere with them, be everywhere and be there for them!

Omnichannel marketing illustration.
Wherever they are, be there and be ready to serve them!

Something Old And Something New

If you believe that the growth of eCommerce will lead to the demise of brick and mortar stores, think again. Retailers are embracing eCommerce and finding new ways to augment the online experience with physical stores.

Many brands are profiting from ‘brick and click’ stores that combine retail and eCommerce, require less physical footprint areas and employees to operate, and offer a more personalized and interactive in-store visit. Amazon’s “4-Star” stores, for example, let customers interact with top-selling devices and products in person.

Digital kiosks allow users to engage directly with the store. Pop-up shops, trade shows, and mobile field reps are embracing flexible technologies like POS-enabled tablets, mobile card readers, on-site/on-demand printing, and flexible space leasing arrangements.

Customers today can order meals in restaurants through interactive menus, and fashion retailers are placing tablets inside change rooms, so shoppers can request more clothing items to try on. Some retailers are even integrating virtual shopping experiences of their physical stores and showrooms using AR technologies.

Tesco virtual store inside a Korean subway station.
Buying groceries from virtual stores underground is a totally ‘off the wall’ experience.

We Know What You’re Searching For

Remember the good ole’ days when you spent hours online researching gaming laptops to find one that fits your budget and used keywords like “Alienware 13 Gaming Laptop PC i7–5500U GeForce 960M” to search for it in your favorite computer store website?

Well, you no longer have to. Typing long keywords to search for products is so 2018! Intelligent search algorithms and filters are getting better at learning what customers are looking for, even if they misspell the words or just search for things like “gaming laptop under 2000”.

Smart technologies like dynamic filters allow customers to quickly sort and find what they want on sites with huge product catalogs and many variations like prices, size, color, budget, brands, makes, models, and more.

We’re not quite at the “Think It – Found It” stage yet of product search, but we’re definitely getting closer…

Amazon product results page.
Smarter search technologies know what you need… probably better than you do.

eCommerce Security: No Blankie Solutions

With eCommerce, success ultimately depends on customers feeling confident, safe, and secure when buying online. It’s estimated that retailers will lose around $130 billion in digital CNP (Card-not-Present) fraud between 2018 and 2023.

There are no blanket solutions that can address all online security concerns, but eCommerce security methods and standards are evolving.

More businesses are now implementing multilayered fraud management strategies to reduce risk, improve data security, and increase consumer trust and confidence. This includes choosing eCommerce platforms with secure shopping cart software that meets PCI security standards, sensitive data encryption, multiple firewalls, and no credit card data being stored on sites.

Image of man with credit card making an online purchase.
This website is PCI compliant? Then shut up and take my money already!

Has eCommerce Lost Its Head?

eCommerce began as a way to order and buy products online through desktop computers and web browsers. When people began making digital purchases using mobile phones and wearable technologies to ‘tap and pay’ for purchases, companies realized they had to rethink their approach to eCommerce.

The solution? Headless commerce. This is where the frontend and backend use different services and platforms to handle eCommerce processes. Customers interact with the frontend like a browsing a website, mobile app, or scanning a QR code label on the back of a wine bottle, and a separate platform handles backend areas like managing and tracking inventory, processing transactional data, payments, shipping and fulfillment, invoicing, and other functions using various web services and Application Programming Interface (API) calls.

The benefits of headless commerce for web developers means spending less time putting together an entire eCommerce solution for clients, focusing on creating a better experience for their users instead, and then easily joining the frontend and backend together to get projects done faster.

Simple diagram to illustrate headless commerce.
Headless commerce lets you grow your eCommerce business without getting a head.

Next Steps… A Roadmap To eCommerce Success

The eCommerce trends listed above have a common thread. It’s all about making the customer’s online shopping experience safer, more convenient, and more personalized.

While the idea of using innovative technologies like chatbots, AI, AR, virtual reality, and voice search to engage customers in your online store may seem a little daunting, the basics of business haven’t changed. It’s still all about delivering on the promises you make.

If your eCommerce store runs on WordPress, we can help you. We are the all-in-one WordPress platform that can provide everything your business needs to run an online store on WordPress, from super-powered hosting to technical support, site management, and award-winning plugins. Just ask some of the tens of thousands of members who choose our services for WordPress security, performance, SEO, marketing, and more!

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Poppin’ Conference Swag and Giveaways People Want

In just a few short weeks over 3000 WordPress fans like ourselves will descend on Berlin, Germany for WCEU to network, connect, celebrate, learn, and of course, collect bags and bags of swag!

We’re proud sponsors of this mega WordCamp and as such our super design team was pumped to break from digital design for a short moment to create physical goods. As a distributed team, it’s not often that we get our hands on tangible WPMU DEV swag or get to hug Devman.

But our team is showing up in force (+30 WPMU DEVians) including Devman himself. Needless to say, it’s been a massive organizational undertaking.

 

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So how does a software company put together physical products for promotional giveaways? How do you even print swag for international events when you don’t have an office nearby?

Whether you are an online company trying to find branded products for a social giveaway or prepping swag for your next meetup, this post is for you. We’re gonna share our favorite services and, for our WCEU attendees, tease at what to expect when you stop by our booth – swag, giveaways, and more.

Stickers, Stickers, and more Stickers

In the 80’s I had a sticker book jammed with Garbage Pail Kids, scratch’n’sniff fruit, and transformer dye cuts. Today my laptop is adorned with Devman’s face, the WordPress logo, a cactus designed specially for my local camp, and cuddly Wappu’s from around the globe.

In my wildest dreams, I’d never imaged the ease of churning out stickers. Thank you, Sticker Mule!

 

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Of course, we’re running off thousands of their custom vinyl stickers​, but early in January I did a small run of 30 for a family event and was surprised at how affordable it was. No crazy setup fees or ridiculous minimums.

For your event (large or small), a special gift for the office, or a creative ‘thank you’ note to your clients, stickers are a big hit.

Pro tip: Sign up for the Sticker Mule newsletter. They regularly run 10 for $1 promotions here​, and weekly deals here for customers worldwide.

Been There. Done That. Got the T-Shirt

True story. I was wearing a WPMU DEV Wapuu shirt at a coffee shop last week and my barista asked if I could get him one… so I took it off and gave it to him, right then and there. Ok I gave him one I had at home. But anyway, our swag is winning me points with my barista.

Everybody likes a t-shirt. Even if every other booth is giving out t-shirts, people want to rep your brand. It also helps that we have superhero mascots. Who doesn’t want a shirt with Hummingbird on it?

Depending on quantity, cut, and design t-shirts are very affordable. The trick is factoring in shipping. Most often the hurdle we’ve faced when printing new items for global events is in coordinating shipping. For this, we’ve ended up working with printers around the world to find a printer on the right side of the pond.

But what about a social media giveaway where swag is included? Set up a Printful account. It’s a bit more expensive, but they’ll print and ship quality one-off branded merch to our winners. It’s like having your own in-house screenprinter and distribution center. No storage unit or trips to the post office needed. We can give everyone on our marketing team access to a single account and can even set up a company store.

If t-shirts are too cliché, try a pillowcase, coffee mug, or beanbag chair. Printful has some fun and unique options on-hand to get your creative wheel spinning.

The Grand Prize!!!

We all want to be seen and heard. To get the attention of the masses, whether at a WordCamp or on social media, a charismatic spiel and the right grand prize will go a long way when it comes to growing your mailing list, social following, leads, and (fingers crossed) your member base.

No pressure!

Here are a couple of things to consider when putting the right package together:

  • How will the winner get this home? Something BIG is always fun but could be a huge pain for people traveling to the event… or more than double your budget with shipping costs. Be mindful.
  • Will it attract and convert the right audience? Drawing a big crowd doesn’t always mean more conversions.
  • Would I want it? Ideally you are so in tune with your users, if you’d want to take it home, they would want to take it home. If you’d stop and drop your business card in the jar for a chance to win, chances are, other interested parties would too.
  • What should I ask for in return? If you make it difficult for people to enter your giveaway you’ll likely get fewer entries… but the entries you get will probably be higher quality leads. If your goal is social proof and a huge following you can enter people with a simple like and share… for a more grandiose gift built to attract quality leads, don’t be afraid to raise the bar.
  • Am I having fun yet? People love free stuff. We like to overthink everything so if planning a giveaway is stressing you out…relax. At the end of the day, people will remember your brand’s generosity, excellent service, awesome product, and amazing support.

Flaunt it Like You’ve got It

A great prize will only get you so far. I mean, how will people know about your epic grand giveaway without a little flare? For a social campaign a video goes a long way. It doesn’t even have to be overproduced. Your phones video recorder can produce Hollywood quality magic.

And here’s a production tip from an old video nerd. Put a second phone in your shirt pocket to capture audio when a lapel mic is not around. It doesn’t take much to make yourself look and sound like such a kween!

“Step one – make sure people see my giveaway… got it”

If you’re feeling a little extra and want to help the global economy you could outsource a flashy design for your giveaway on UpWork.

Of course, our super design team has been tasked with some neck turning designs for our physical WCEU event booth including this rad coloring book you can download and print off for yourself if you’re feeling frisky.

But the showstopper for us has always been photo ops with the actual Devman himself. If he’s not at the booth just look for his entourage, he’s always drawing a crowd.

 

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WCEU Prizes for All

We’ve run all kinds of promotions over the years but WordCamps are a rare joy where we want everyone to win – even if you’re an existing member.

Stop by, chat, and let us say “thank you”. Grab a sticker, get a t-shirt, and enter to win our grand prize package including world-class noise canceling headphones and 1-year of WPMU DEV absolutely free.

Can’t make the trip and dreaming of better times at WCEU? Win swag (delivered to your doorstep) and a 1-year membership. Here’s how:

  • Follow our Facebook and/or Twitter accounts
  • Post or tweet @wpmudev with a link to this post
  • Use #idratherbeatwceu and #WCEU
  • Tag a friend or two… or three or four…

Winner will be announced on June 22nd. Now you can win even if you can’t make it.

And if you’re like me, and feel like you never win anything, we’ll set you up with 30-days of WPMU DEV free. You don’t need to do anything and you’ve already won :) Just claim your 30-day trial and get our complete performance, security, 24/7 live support, reports, automated site manager, and dedicated hosting (3 sites included) all at no charge.

Need more, maybe a lifetime membership…for free!? Share WPMU DEV with your friends and if they join we’ll give you a lifetime membership. So. Many. Ways. To. Win.

Whether you’re a freelancer or small agency trying to grow your social media following, a WordPress maintenance service sponsoring your first meetup, or a large brand looking to give back to the community, giveaways are a great tool for connecting with a new audience and re-engaging your clients.

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The 13 Best CRMs for Your WordPress Site 2020

Whether you’re a solopreneur, agency, or freelancer, it’s important to have a CRM in place to manage the new contacts resulting from all the traffic your WordPress site is getting. Without a CRM, you can find yourself missing out on valuable deals and losing customers. Definitely not a place you want to be.

If you take nothing else away from this post, the most important idea is that if you don’t separate ‘sales’ from the rest of your business, it will suffer. Don’t be like us.

The best first step you can take to ensuring that you’re growing the sales side of your business is to leverage the power of a CRM.

Why Do You Need A CRM?

Illustration of Business Handshake
A CRM helps you better manage your business relationships online.

CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, plugins are designed to help you balance the needs of past, present, and future customers.

They allow you to track customer interactions with your business and keep all of their information organized neatly in a dashboard.

CRMs can also automate parts of your sales, marketing, and customer service processes to take the pressure off of your teams.

Important Features

Illustration of checklist
Make sure your CRM features tick all the boxes!

CRMs make it a lot easier to manage the leads and customers who come onto your WordPress site and give you the tools to interact with them in meaningful ways.

Here are the important features that you’ll find in most CRMs:

  1. Customer/Contact Database – A good CRM will let you customize the fields and entries to tailor to your business. A better CRM will have an integration that will pre-populate data or pull it in from other services you may be using. Organize your contacts and all information about them.
  2. Sales Funnel – Create the progression of leads to customers that makes sense to you. For example, with our Enterprise hosting service we use something like, “Lead > Demo > Quote Sent > Trial > Migration/Onboarding > Customer”. With the CRM, we get a visual view of where all leads are in the funnel at all times.
  3. Lead Scoring – Once you have your database organized and your sales funnel in place, you will start to notice trends of who your ideal leads are. Many CRMs even help generate ‘lead scores’ to identify potential customers that are more likely to convert. You may have a different funnel or process for those, or choose to spend more time and resources on them to optimize results.
  4. Reports and Stats – This is the feature that I obsess over most. At any time, we can run reports to help us forecast sales over the next quarter and year, identify where leads in the funnel fall away, and track how long it takes for the average new deal to close. For existing customers, we can identify trends over time of the verticals and niches that we serve. Without a CRM, we would spend ages trying to sort through all of this data.
  5. Rules and Workflows – Be reminded when you have not heard from or updated a lead in a while. Don’t let contacts go cold because you are pulled in so many directions that you forgot about them.

Bottom line: CRMs are a game-changer for managing customer relationships, streamlining communication, and providing a positive customer experience.

But with literally hundreds to choose from, it can be difficult to know which one to pick. So, we’ve compiled a list of the best WordPress CRMs you can use to keep your leads from falling through the cracks.

Illustration of dog choosing between three bones.
So many CRMs to choose from…it can drive you barking mad!

The Best CRMs For WordPress

  1. HubSpot CRM
  2. WooCommerce Customer Relationship Manager
  3. Agile CRM
  4. Capsule CRM
  5. Zoho CRM
  6. WP ERP
  7. WP-CRM by Usability Dynamics
  8. Zero BS CRM
  9. vCita
  10. Maximizer
  11. Less Annoying CRM
  12. Drip
  13. Insightly

1. HubSpot

View all your contacts and CRM data inside your WordPress admin with HubSpot's free plugin.
The HubSpot free CRM WordPress plugin lets you view all your contacts and CRM data inside your WordPress admin.

One CRM we can confidently recommend is the one we use: HubSpot.

HubSpot’s WordPress CRM plugin is an awesome solution for managing everything related to your customers. With it, you can track all of your customers’ interactions with your site including which pages they visit, form and popup entries and live chat conversations. All of that information will be automatically synced to robust customer profiles in HubSpot CRM.

My favorite, and almost hidden surprise, feature of HubSpot is the meeting calendar link, which you can send to leads and customers to eliminate all the awkward back and forth that typically goes into finding an agreeable date and time.

Best of all, for most of your needs, HubSpot is completely free. You can get started at the link above or by installing the HubSpot plugin. We do pay for the additional ‘Sales Hub’ features, as our team and needs have grown, but the cost is worth it.

2. WooCommerce Customer Relationship Manager

WooCommerce Customer Relationship Manager is a CRM tool that lets you manage your existing and potential customers.
Manage your existing and potential customers with the WooCommerce Customer Relationship Manager CRM plugin for WordPress.

WooCommerce Customer Relationship Manager is the eCommerce business owner’s dream. Designed to help you track customers from their first interaction to their final purchase, its dashboard collects data on every action they take, including orders and previous purchases.

Once this data has been collected, you can use WooCommerce’s plugin to assign a status label to each person. This enables you to keep all of your leads and customers organized while helping your team know what actions to take next. With WooCommerce, you can even jot down notes on specific interactions to enrich customer profiles.

On top of that, WooCommerce also helps you reach out to customers, by allowing you to send emails or make phone calls directly from your WordPress admin dashboard.

And with added import and export features, you can easily upload existing customer lists into the CRM and move current CRM lists into other tools and apps.

3. Agile CRM

Agile CRM is an all-in-one CRM that lets you automate your sales, marketing, and service in one platform.
Automate your sales, marketing, and service in WordPress with Agile CRM.

Built for the purpose of making enterprise CRM software accessible to small businesses, Agile CRM’s plugin offers a wide range of features for sales, marketing, and customer support teams.

At its core, Agile’s plugin is designed to work like a standard customer relationship management tool. It collects data on your site visitors and stores them in a dashboard as leads—providing you with stats to help you nurture and track them throughout their customer journey.

But Agile is also a great solution for interacting with customers. First of all, the plugin lets you share your calendar with your WordPress site visitors—giving them the ability to book meetings on-demand. This frees up your sales team to meet with leads and chat with repeat customers, as the scheduling is automated by Agile.

You can also leverage Agile’s dashboard to easily create landing pages, web forms, pop-ups and marketing campaigns that enhance your WordPress site. All you have to do is use Agile’s drag-and-drop interface to build campaign flows, select a template and customize the design. Yep! No coding on this one.

4. Capsule CRM

Capsule CRM lets you manage all your customer relationships and see everything from one place.
Manage all your customer data from one place with the Capsule CRM WordPress plugin.

Capsule prides itself on being a simple, yet powerful CRM. And from contact management to reporting, Capsule’s WordPress plugin offers just that.

Capsule is not unlike other plugins, in terms of collecting customer data from your website. However, Capsule goes beyond the basics of this functionality, by synching customer profiles with their social media alter egos. This feature is great for sales and marketing teams, as it gives you a complete 360 view of your customers.

Once leads have been added to the dashboard, you can also populate their profiles with information, manually. Quickly add notes and other documents to keep everything together, add tags for faster searching, and divide your customers into groups for easier viewing.

Capsule is also designed to help teams work better together. You can tap into this functionality by color-coding tasks in Capsule’s calendar and assigning customers to specific teams and employees. You can also use its Kanban style board to organize leads in your pipeline and assign tasks to specific team members. You can even track your teams’ overall progress in a specialized dashboard to see what’s working and what isn’t.

5. Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is a WordPress CRM plugin that lets you manage, connect, and automate business processes across your organization.
Manage, connect, and automate business processes across your organization with the Zoho CRM plugin for WordPress.

Zoho CRM Lead Magnet is a robust plugin made to support both big and small WordPress businesses alike. Using its intuitive interface, you can organize your leads and customers, design templates for different lead nurturing projects and customize your dashboard.

Being the first omnichannel CRM, Zoho is a proven solution for managing customer relationships across multiple platforms. The tool supports communication on almost every channel—including live chat, social media, email, and phone calls—and offers analytics, AI and filtering to help you track and forecast each interaction with your business. Using these features, you can streamline communication with your customers by managing all conversations in a single platform; and monitor the success of each interaction by using widgets to look at stats side-by-side.

With Zoho CRM, you can also automate many of your tasks to save time. You can add new leads to your CRM, update customer profiles and even send follow-up emails, without having to lift a finger. You can even build workflows to keep your team working effectively and efficiently.

6. WordPress ERP

WP ERP CRM suits any small to medium business with integrated HR management, CRM and accounting tools.
Use WP ERP CRM to integrate HR management, CRM and accounting tools in WordPress.

Created specifically for WordPress businesses and websites, WordPress Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) offers a powerful CRM plugin for tracking leads and managing customers.

With this tool, you can keep tabs on your site visitors, subscribers and customers all in the same place. Tag customer profiles based on urgency and importance to make sure you’re taking advantage of the best sales opportunities. Add comments to customer profiles to keep everyone on your team in the loop. And set reminders to minimize the likelihood that customers will be lost in the shuffle. These functionalities are available to B2B companies too, as WordPress ERP allows you to save and modify company profiles like you would individual customer profiles.

WordPress ERP is also a great tool for communicating with customers, as it allows you to message them directly from their profiles. This eliminates the need to toggle back and forth between pages and minimizes the risk of email threads or messages being misplaced.

Best yet, WordPress ERP is compatible with a bunch of different extensions, making it easy to integrate it into your existing website.

7. WP-CRM by Usability Dynamics

WP-CRM is a customer relations management system that integrates seamlessly into your WordPress control panel.
WP-CRM is a customer relations management system that integrates seamlessly with WordPress.

The WordPress CRM plugin developed by Usability Dynamics is an all-around solid option for most businesses. It offers a clean UI, easy-to-modify forms, and a simple hierarchical setup.

With WP-CRM, you can import contacts, manually fill in attributes, and add notes to create clear profiles for each customer. Once everything has been imported, you can start charting data to track individual customers and find better ways to connect with them. You can also set up notifications so that you don’t miss out on opportunities to interact with a customer or nurture a lead.

The really cool thing about the WP-CRM plugin, though, is its ability to work with tons of different WordPress add-ons.

8. Zero BS CRM

ZBS CRM provides an alternative CRM to over-complex solutions.
ZBS offers free CRM for WordPress with a paid upgrade for a bundle of extra features.

With this one, the name says it all. Built specifically to support entrepreneurs, this CRM plugin is all about making convoluted processes and complex software as simple as possible. In fact, Zero BS actually lets you pick and choose the features you want, so you don’t get bogged down or overwhelmed by anything you don’t need.

You see this functionality right out of the gate too, as this plugin can be installed and set up in just a few minutes. And once it’s up and running, Zero BS helps you get up to speed quickly, by moving all of your site visitors, customers and contacts to your CRM, where you can view them in a minimalist dashboard.

However, your CRM doesn’t just store, organize and track your customers. It also allows you to interact with them via a branded customer portal where you can upload quotes, send invoices, schedule appointments, and log transactions. And all of this functionality is available on mobile, which means you can continue to manage and communicate with your customers while traveling.

Zero BS also prides itself on its dedication to regularly updating the plugin, which means you don’t have to worry about it being incompatible with future WordPress versions.

9. vCita

vCita CRM lets you manage and grow your client base and business inside WordPress.
vCita CRM is a popular client management software solution for WordPress users.

vCita is another CRM plugin that was created with the small business owner in mind. Like other CRM plugins, it automatically generates leads in your CRM by collecting data from live chat widgets. Once there, these leads can be organized, labeled and assigned to different members of your team to keep them moving down your pipeline.

However, vCita isn’t just accessible on your end. It also allows customers to access their data via an online portal that holds everything from their email address to their recent transactions and lifetime spending on your products and services. They can even make new purchases and book meetings directly from the CRM.

vCita isn’t a plugin you need to micromanage or be online to use, though. Not only is it mobile-friendly, but also allows your customers to connect with you via the self-service portal at any time of the day or night. This means your CRM will keep working, no matter where you are or how fast you’re moving.

10. Maximizer

Maximizer provides loads of CRM features inside your WordPress dashboard.
Maximizer CRM software offers fully-loaded features for one all-inclusive price and can be run from your WordPress dashboard.

Being the only plugin out there that offers both cloud and on-premise CRM options, Maximizer CRM is a great solution for businesses with all types of infrastructures. Its features allow you to turn site visitors into leads, track those leads through your sales funnel and nurture them toward final purchases.

Maximizer CRM is also completely customizable, which means you can make it as lightweight or heavy-duty as your business needs. Its list of features is extensive, so there’s little chance you’ll have a need Maximizer can’t meet.

In addition to its deployment flexibility, Maximizer is also accessible from any device, which means you can manage your leads just as effectively on business trips, in meetings and on vacation (not that we recommend you do that!). And you can integrate it with apps and tools from all over the web, keeping your business and WordPress site working seamlessly.

11. Less Annoying CRM

Less Annoying CRM lets businesses manage contacts and track leads from their WordPress dashboard.
Less Annoying CRM offers basic team collaboration and contact management for WordPress users.

Less Annoying CRM is another tool that’s built on simplicity and minimalism. In fact, the entire point of their platform is to make CRM software accessible and editable by the average person. And you can see how that’s the case, just by looking at their dashboard. Everything from customer profiles to team calendars and reports is easy to understand and modify.

Using this tool, you can do standard customer relationship management work like importing leads and assigning them to specific team members. But Less Annoying CRM also offers some unique features like email reminders for teams and pipeline reports to keep everyone focused on the task at hand. The dashboard even includes tasks lists and appointment times, so you don’t accidentally miss opportunities to nurture leads.

Less Annoying is so dedicated to the idea of making their software usable and well…less annoying, that they even offer free phone and email support to help you figure out the platform or troubleshoot problems.

12. Drip

Drip is an eCommerce CRM designed for building relationships with your customers at scale.
Drip is an eCRM suitable for WordPress sites running an eCommerce business.

Drip is another great plugin option for modern eCommerce businesses. With a clean interface, it provides business owners with the data needed to make strategic design, inventory and marketing choices. It does this by gathering data from visitors on your site—like names and currencies—and organizing it neatly into customer profiles.

Drip doesn’t just gather data on customers based on live chat conversations and form submissions, though. With this plugin, you can actually see what your customers are viewing, clicking on and buying. This gives you a leg up on the competition, by helping you know exactly what your site visitors want, so you can build marketing strategies around it.

Using its drag-and-drop dashboard, you can also create marketing and sales workflows to guide leads through an ideal customer experience. You can then design beautiful social media and email campaigns on the platform, to match the style of your brand and the interests of your customers.

And here’s the best news: Drip integrates seamlessly with all types of WordPress eCommerce stores, including WooCommerce and Shopify.

13. Insightly

Insightly CRM software lets you manage your pre-sale and post-sale activities inside WordPress.
Insightly is a SaaS-based CRM solution that can be run from WordPress using a plugin.

Insightly knows that the best way to drive sales is to build relationships with customers—and they built a CRM tool to help businesses do just that. With this plugin, you can not only collect and organize customer data, but you can also route entire customer profiles to people in your organization. This includes everything from general customer information to detailed reports on interactions like phone calls, meetings, and email threads.

This plugin also includes the option to create, manage and automate marketing campaigns that are tailored to the needs of your customers. It then tracks the success of each campaign in an analytics dashboard. This helps you make sure your campaigns are working, and if not, enables you to use data to modify it in the future.

Beyond that, Insightly integrates nicely with loads of different apps, so you can keep the rest of your business processes connected without much hassle.

Getting Started With Your CRM

No matter what CRM you choose, you’ll want to allow a good amount of time for configuring and setting up your customer fields and sales pipeline(s). You can always tweak these later, but the more time you spend upfront, the more useful your CRM will be.

You’ll also want to import and manually add all of your existing customers first off. This will help to ensure that you have all the fields you need and will allow you to get going with any of the analysis you want to do with reports right away.

Once you have the basics down, there’s so much you can do with your CRM.  We hope that if nothing else, this post has encouraged those of you that have yet to take the CRM plunge to bite the bullet and give it a go.

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12 Must-Hear WordPress Podcasts With Fresh Episodes for 2019

We’ve updated our list of must-hear WordPress podcasts for 2019. If you haven’t joined the podcast party yet, you’re missing out on intelligent and entertaining information from the brightest minds in WP. But first, fun-fact. The name podcast was coined way back in 2004, by BBC journalist Ben Hammersley when he combined the words iPod […]
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8 Steps to Taking Over an Existing WordPress Website

As a WordPress freelancer or agency, you will have two types of clients: Those who need a new site, and those who have a site that needs management. It is this second type of client that needs a special type of attention. On the surface, an existing site in need of maintenance is a gift. […]
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The WordPress Agency and Freelancer Guide To CRMs

Every business that provides a service needs a CRM – we learned this the hard way. Don’t be like us. If you take nothing else away from this post, the most important idea is that if you don’t separate ‘sales’ from the rest of your business, it will suffer. One-person freelancers, agencies, and other businesses […]
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How To Make Money Offering A WordPress Maintenance Service

How would you like an extra $100-$300+ per client every month? If your WordPress development, design or marketing business isn’t offering a WordPress site maintenance package you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. Give your clients peace of mind and spare them the horror they would suffer if left to their own devices, all while […]
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5 Ways to Design the First Page of an eCommerce Site for Increased Sales

You know how to design product pages and a checkout funnel for eCommerce sites. But are you actually designing sites that will increase conversions and help boost sales?

Today, I want to move away from the latter half of the customer journey and focus solely on the first part of their visit. In this post, I’ll talk about the five ways to design the first page of an eCommerce site to increase sales.

If you haven’t built your eCommerce site yet, make sure to read our comprehensive guide to planning an eCommerce store with WordPress.

How to Design the First Page of Your eCommerce Site To Boost Sales

With smaller websites that serve a less direct salesy purpose, the formula for increasing conversions is usually quite simple: your goal is to inform, appeal to the visitors’ needs, and gain a lead or client. Because they have fewer layers of navigation to get through, and typically only one call-to-action to consider, it’s easy to design a clear path that takes the visitor from their point of entry to conversion.

But with eCommerce sites, this can get complicated. Inventory can be quite extensive and the target audience varied… which means that getting visitors to conversion isn’t as easy.

Your best bet is to systematically design eCommerce sites so that you tackle each part of the user journey separately.

For instance, you know how to design eCommerce product pages in order to increase conversions. You also know which payment gateways are best for handling eCommerce transactions quickly and securely.

If you think about it, eCommerce sites don’t typically follow the same patterns as traditional business websites. They don’t rely on large hero images and abundant white space to frame their brand messages. Ecommerce sites focus on selling an inventory of products or services, so the design has to rely less on engaging words and more on engaging visuals.

Below, I’ve broken out 5 tips to more effectively design the first page of an eCommerce site and, consequently, increase sales.

1. Show the Value Proposition (Don’t Tell)

Typically, a value proposition is a brief statement that goes atop the hero image on the home page. Usually, a descriptive headline, a sentence or two, and a strong CTA button are all that’s needed to communicate to visitors “This is what we do and what you’re going to get from us”.

This snippet from a QuickSprout infographic shows the elements you’ll usually find in a well-composed value proposition:

QuickSprout Value Proposition
A snippet from QuickSprout’s infographic on value propositions.

When it comes to eCommerce websites, however, less is more. Let’s use this example from IT’s Watch:

IT's Watch Value Proposition
Very few words are needed to explain IT’s Watch’s value proposition.

The home page header is a rotating banner that includes various shots of its watch line. The internal product pages do the same thing, minus the overlaid text (which is a sign of consistent web design) :

IT's Watch Internal Header
Another example of IT’S Watch’s wordless value proposition.

On the home page header, the only text that appears is “Orologi” (watches) and “Cinturini” (bands). Users hover over the one they want and are given a choice for “Women,” “Men,” or season (since they design watches to go with the time of year).

Clearly, there’s no need for IT’s Watch to intrude on the sharp visuals of this product line with an explanation of their watches and wristbands. The images speak for themselves. For eCommerce sites whose value proposition is clear, use this as inspiration in communicating your message to visitors with few or even no words at all.

2. Add Shortcuts to the Header

With many websites, it makes sense that you’d want to design a header and navigation that’s simple and to the point, as WPMU DEV does:

WPMU DEV Navigation
WPMU DEV has a very simple navigation bar.

In so doing, visitors get a quick sense for what kind of information they’ll find on the site before scrolling down to learn more from the value proposition and other home page sections.

With eCommerce, I look at that top bar the same way I look at my own browser’s bookmarks bar. There are certain things I aim to do every time I step inside of Chrome. To save myself time in digging them up, I have all my commonly used pages saved on my bookmarks bar, each is well-labeled, and I have them logically organized.

Design the First Page of an eCommerce Site - Chrome Bookmarks
A bookmarks bar–like eCommerce navigation–is meant to streamline our actions.

They also serve as a great reminder to check in on my business or other writing work since the visual reminder is constantly there.

The eCommerce header bar needs to accomplish the same thing for visitors. Your goal with this site is to enable them to take swift action, not learn about your company and fill out a contact form for more information. This means that all those actions you want them to take need to be easily accessible in that bar.

Take Nordstrom’s website, for example:

Design the First Page of Your eCommerce Site Nordstrom Header Bar
Nordstrom’s navigational header includes all the shortcuts its customers need.

Of course, there’s the well-organized navigation bar front and center. There’s nothing overly simplified here. If someone wants to find women’s handbags, kids’ blankets, makeup, men’s shoes, or clearance items, there’s really no guesswork involved. As the Baymard Institute’s research shows:

“… our large-scale usability testing on Homepage & Category navigation shows that not displaying product categories directly in the main site navigation causes multiple and severe navigational issues for users.”

There are also these additional elements found in Nordstrom’s header:

  • Search bar
  • Sign-in portal
  • Shopping cart

Each of these elements are ever-present on the site, beckoning visitors to take a shortcut and get right down to business. If you’re hoping to increase sales on an eCommerce site, give your visitors a quick way to get to that part of the journey.

3. Give Your Images a Lot of Love

To start, you should only use custom photography and videography on eCommerce websites. Customers don’t have the luxury of seeing your goods in person, so the more visuals, angles, variations, and contexts you can give them, the better.

And, as always, ensure that images are fully optimized before publishing to your site. This should include making each image retina-ready.

Custom photography and compressed image files are only just the start, however. Ecommerce images must also make a huge impact on visitors right away.

To do this, it’s going to take a little experimentation. What works for one website won’t always work for another, so that means being open to playing with factors and elements like color, quantity, variation, text placement, etc. A lot of this comes down to the content within your images, but it does also depend on what kind of store you’re building. Let’s look at a few examples.

Gather is a website that offers a simple organizational solution for users. This means that the “shopping” process revolves more around the customization of one’s own organizational solution rather than perusing a number of products. As such, the website isn’t cluttered with a bunch of products for sale.

Design the First Page of Your eCommerce Site Gather Images
Gather uses strong, singular images to show off the versatility of its product.

It uses full-width images like the one above to show off various models customers could build for themselves using the Gather System.

Then, let’s take the example of Lanbelle, a purveyor of skincare solutions.

Design the First Page of Your eCommerce Site Lanbelle Images
Lanbelle’s home page product images ooze sophistication.

Because the brand’s image is synonymous with providing customers with top results, images need to give off a sense of cleanliness, sophistication, and indulgence. As such, each image is perfectly shot and well-framed.

And, of course, we should look at a massive marketplace like Amazon. These days, Amazon is such a hodgepodge of products that customers really can’t have any great expectations for the display of images on the home page or in search results.

Design the First Page of Your eCommerce Site Amazon Images
Amazon is just too large of a marketplace to be able to effectively consolidate all these products in an organized fashion.

That said, Amazon does do a relatively good job of showing off only high-quality visuals. Organizationally, though, it’s a bit of a mess. Because it’s such a well-known and trusted brand, it can get away with this sort of image overload.

For your own purposes, even though Amazon converts visitors into more customers really well, I’d strongly advise not designing eCommerce stores with this sort of haphazard and overwhelming layout of products and ads. Images should convey the message you want your brand to send to customers; not just be a vehicle to increase the potential amount of products bought from the store.

4. Use Color to Convey Urgency and Scarcity

Color is a very powerful tool for web designers. When designing a website, use color psychology to ensure that you’re appealing to your audience while conveying the right style and message to them about your brand.

With eCommerce sites that have a main focus on selling a product, color can be an unwanted distraction. That is, unless you use color to call attention to messages that will greatly benefit your customers.

For example, we have Leesa:

Design the First Page of Your eCommerce Site Leesa Timer
A great example of a countdown timer from Leesa.

This pop-up offer, in and of itself, is pretty eye-catching. However, take note of the ticking timer in the top part of it in red. With the bright usage of color and the movement of the timer letting customers know that this deal is available for a limited time, Leesa effectively uses these elements to convey urgency.

Amazon is a brand that often uses both urgency and scarcity to compel users to hurry up and make a purchase.

Right now, Amazon’s “Prime Day” is being heavily advertised. It’s a day-and-a-half when Amazon offers a bunch of super-attractive deals to Prime customers only. So, not only are they hoping to increase the number of sales made during that time frame, but they’re likely hoping to get a bunch more Prime customers in the lead-up to it as well.

It’s promotional banners like these that will net them those customers and sales this month:

Design the First Page of Your eCommerce Site Amazon Urgency
Amazon’s sales days and on-site promotions are highly effective in capturing more sales.

As you can see, it doesn’t take much for Amazon to pull this off. Just a simple banner with an image of a product in high-demand and a price so severely slashed that customers won’t be able to help themselves from returning to Amazon to shop that day.

5. Motivate with Pop-ups

Shopify reports that eCommerce websites that publish coupon codes tend to generate more sales. Specifically:

  • Coupon codes increase the likelihood of a sale by 8%.
  • Of all sales that took place on Shopify websites in a year’s time, 17% of them used a coupon code.

(Yes, I realize these are Shopify-specific statistics, but I believe them to be relevant regardless of eCommerce CMS.)

What’s great about this is that it’s really easy to implement coupon codes on websites using pop-ups and sticky bars. My preferred plugin for this? Hustle.

Design the First Page of Your eCommerce Site Hustle Plugin
Use Hustle to improve the design of your promotional offers.

Not only does it help you display beautifully designed coupon codes on your site, but you can collect email addresses in exchange for them (win-win). And you can create as many offers as you want. That way, if someone clicks out of the pop-up because they assume it’s irrelevant, you can nab them with another one stuck to the top or bottom of the website.

Buffy uses this pop-up to give new customers a discount on their first purchase:

Design the First Page of Your eCommerce Site Buffy Popup
Simple in execution, but effective in calling attention to the special offer.

It’s brightly colored, straight to the point, and even has a fun little mascot attached to it.

Polaroid Originals is another one that uses the pop-up to grab attention, but it’s an interesting approach:

Design the First Page of Your eCommerce Site Polaroid Email
It’s an interesting choice of color, but I think it works well on top of the super colorful site.

The website itself is absolutely stunning with a monochrome background transitioning into a much more colorful one. But then you have this pop-up offer that’s all black. It definitely stands in stark contrast from the rest of the website and is sure to get a lot of attention for doing so.

And here’s an example of a sticky bar from the ThemeForest website:

Themeforest Banner
Promo banners have become very popular thanks to mobile-first indexing.

Aside from logos for templates and themes sold on the site, ThemeForest generally has a pretty muted design. But with this small touch of color in the sticky bar, customers will instantly be drawn to the special offer.

Want To Boost Your Sales Conversions? Then Do This…

The bottom line is this: To boost your conversions online, your site needs to make a strong impression right from the very start. And it needs to be unwavering. This means presenting customers with a secure place to shop from, a fast website to peruse inventory on, and giving them the right amount and kind of information they need.

Obviously, this list isn’t the end-all, be-all of design tips for eCommerce. But with the product page design guide, payment gateway suggestions, and now these tips on how to design the first page of an eCommerce site, you have a more comprehensive end-to-end overview of how to increase sales throughout the entire user journey.

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17 Retention Tips To Keep Website Clients Coming Back

Acquiring new web development clients is one thing, having them stick around for the long run is another. In this article we’re talking pro tips for retaining freelance clients and generating recurring revenue.

When you’re first starting a WordPress development business, you need to invest time in finding new clients in order to build a steady base of freelance work.

That said, once you have that consistent influx of clients coming through, it’s time to put some serious effort into retaining those customers.

Here’s why:

“It costs 5x more to obtain a new customer than to keep an existing one.”

It makes sense when you think about it.

You write killer content for your site. You market your services on social media. You attend local networking events.

And you put in all this time, energy, and sometimes even money in order to drum up new business.

But recurring business?

There isn’t much you have to do with that other than continue to foster a positive relationship and ensure continued results.

In other words, generating new business takes a lot of time and money. Retaining loyal customers simply requires you to continue providing high-quality customer service and value.

Plus, relationship-building with clients isn’t always about those first impressions you make.

Sure, those are important, but you should also know how to maintain a positive relationship with your clients while they’re with you.

On that note, let’s take a look at 17 ways you can build upon and improve your relationship with clients today and give them even more reasons to stick with you in the long run.

17 Brilliant Ways to Build a Better Relationship with Clients

1. Be Open and Honest

As a consumer, you know how frustrating it can be going into something and quickly discovering that the reality does not align at all with the expectations set.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a web developer is to over-promise and under-deliver.

This is definitely not one of those times to be a “yes” man.

“I’m sure this site can get you 100 new leads a day!”

“It probably won’t take long to reach the first page of search results!”

“Yeah, we can definitely deliver this new e-commerce site in two weeks!”

It’s always best to be honest and communicate as much as possible about your process, pricing, and project progress.

Your clients might not understand all the technical details, but they’ll appreciate your openness and honesty when it comes to what you can reasonably deliver.

2. Connect Frequently

On a related note, you should schedule regular appointments to speak with your clients.

Obviously, you’ll want to connect for the project kickoff as well as the closing call, but that doesn’t mean you can go dark while the website is actually in progress.

While I realize that meetings often stand in the way of productivity when there are too many of them or when nothing of real value happens during them, I’m not suggesting meeting with your clients for the sake of meeting.

A quick 15-minute call at the completion of each project phase should suffice.

You can discuss the progress made, review deliverables that are ready for input, and provide an update on timelines.

This is also a good time to bring up any potential questions or concerns—it’s better to address them as they arise rather than when a client believes you’re reaching out with their website that’s ready to launch.

Computer screen, lamp and clock

3. Be Positive

You know how they say that forcing yourself to smile can have a positive effect on your mental state?

Well, the same thing goes here.

No matter how frustrated, angry, confused, or stressed you may feel with your team, your clients, or with project progress, it’s best to keep a level head when interacting with clients—even through text or email.

Don’t let your negative feelings create unnecessary tension or apprehension on their end. You’ll only give them reason to doubt you and the work you produce.

4. Don’t Think of Them as Clients

Stop thinking of your clients as just that.

If you can change that mentality and accept them as partners to your project’s success, you’ll find that you’re more than happy to bring them into this joint effort.

Client feedback is valuable and they’ll be grateful for the opportunity to work with you.

5. Don’t Think of Them as Just Another Company Either

If a client gets a sense that you view them the same way you do any other client you work for, they probably won’t be as wowed by the website they receive.

Sure, many of them might realize this is a dollars-and-cents transaction—you create a website, they use it—but others want to feel as though this is a more personal transaction.

After all, you’re creating the face of their digital business. This could make or break their company’s livelihood.

So, do what you can to treat each and every client as a unique individual, one that deserves a website that’s tailor-made for them.

6. Speak Their Lingo

Your clients probably aren’t going to understand why you’d need to create a wireframe for their site or why an SSL certificate is even needed.

Things always seem much easier when you’re standing on the outside looking in, which is why you should learn their lingo.

This means less talk of “UX” and more talk of “the power of clean and simple design”.

While you want to be open about the process with your clients, you don’t want to overcomplicate it.

7. Be Willing to Teach

You’ll find that some of your clients would prefer to wipe their hands of the entire process and just leave you to it.

However, you may find that others are curious about what it is you’re doing. For those that are receptive to it, don’t be afraid to teach.

In order to keep clients like that happy, educate them on your own lingo.

Explain why you have specific phases in your process. Talk about the importance of white space.

You can even show them WordPress so they have a context for some of the things you talk to them about.

Computer screen with graph

8. Be Prepared

For laid back types, it’s probably not a big deal when someone shows up late to work or comes unprepared to answer questions at a meeting.

But that’s not who you’re working for. Your clients are busy business owners or marketers who don’t have time to waste, so always be prepared.

Keep detailed notes of your progress, document every touchpoint you have with them, and deliver what you promised, when you promised it. They’ll appreciate you respecting their time.

9. Put on a Professional “Face”

The way in which you speak to your client is one thing.

The platforms through which you manage it all? Well, that can take their perception of your professionalism and dedication to the job to the next level.

Rather than keep your communications relegated to email or phone, employ the use of a project management platform like Basecamp or Trello to show them that you mean business and have this all under control.

10. Create a Frictionless Process

Do you know how to finish a website project so your clients always come out the other end happy?

The key is to reduce friction and pain points along the way.

While you might not know what those are at first, you’ll quickly pick up on common irritants as you work with more clients. Then you can adjust your process accordingly.

11. Go Above and Beyond

Going above and beyond doesn’t mean “blow your budget”. It simply means you should aim to exceed your clients’ expectations with a smooth and hiccup-less process that results in a beautiful website.

This also means that you should consider what’s going to happen to this website in the future and safeguard against potential issues you might not be around for (but that could still negatively reflect on you).

One way to do this is to protect your clients from themselves after you’ve handed their website over and given them access to WordPress.

12. Accept Responsibility

Mistakes will happen. Misunderstandings will occur.

And someone’s feelings may get hurt along the way. This is what happens when you do business; not every experience will be perfect.

But just because s@#$ happens, doesn’t mean you can afford to let those bad experiences slip by.

82% of people will stop working with a company after a negative experience.

Worse, 85% of dissatisfied customers will complain to others and warn them against working with a company. You can’t afford to let bad news spread about your web development services.

Whether or not the mistake stems from something you did, take your pride out of it, accept responsibility, and focus on recovering your client’s business and satisfaction.

13. Tread Carefully When Delving Into the Personal

Yes, you’ll want to avoid treating clients like a source of revenue. They are your partners in this.

However, that doesn’t mean that it’s appropriate or even safe to tread into too-friendly territory with them.

Asking about their recent vacation to Jamaica is a nice touch. Answering calls from them at 2 a.m. is not the smartest of moves. So, keep it friendly but try to keep your and their personal life out of it.

14. Keep Unwieldy Clients Under Control

There’s always going to be someone who tries to take advantage and get more out of you than they paid for.

And then there are the just plain toxic clients who will throw insults and abuses at you because they felt it was justified (and it never is).

Your first line of defense here is to keep client feedback in check.

This will teach them that you value their opinion, you want them to be a part of this, but it needs to be done within reason.

If you’ve set boundaries, but still are having a hard time getting clients under control and they’re starting to taint the work you do for others, don’t be afraid to let those difficult clients go.

Computer screen with graph, plug and dollar symbol

15. Reward Your Clients’ Loyalty

Since you’re not running a physical shop where you can hold customer appreciation events, the best way to reward client loyalty is to provide long-standing customers with special benefits.

There are a few ways to do this. You could give them discounts if they pay each month’s invoice early. You could provide special “insider” offers on bundled services.

And you could create a grandfather clause that keeps loyal customers at lower, more reasonable rates even as your business booms and prices go up.

16. Provide Helpful Recommendations

Let’s face it: you’re talented, but you’re not going to be able to satisfy all of your clients’ branding, marketing, or business needs.

That doesn’t mean though that you need to leave them to sort that out for themselves.

If you’ve created a network of other creatives and business-savvy individuals around you, direct your clients to these resources that you trust.

By continuing to provide them with helpful guidance on things like logo design, marketing services, accounting assistance, and more, you’ll show them that you’re more than a web developer.

You’re a trusted advisor and partner.

17. Feature Their Website Within Your Own

You should always keep your website’s portfolio up-to-date.

What better way to do that than to include examples from the recent work you’ve done on loyal customers’ websites?

Not only does this show them how proud you are of the work you’ve done (and a designer’s stamp of approval always means a lot), but it also increases their exposure around the web, especially if you add a backlink to their new site.

To Sum Up – Keep Being Awesome

Really, what all this boils down to is this: just be an awesome person.

If you’re killing it as a WordPress developer, you’re delivering amazing customer service, and you’re treating clients with the personalized attention and effort they deserve, you’re going to find that it doesn’t take much work to improve your client relationships and to retain them in the long run.

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11 Creative Examples of Website Testimonials

Whether you’re promoting or reviewing a product, service, website, course — or anything on WordPress, testimonials can be a key ingredient to help generate buzz.

A firsthand account of something is a great selling point on why a person should use it. To really make them stand out, consider using creative testimonials that are memorable!

There are so many ways you can be creative with testimonials on a website nowadays, thanks to plugins. So, there’s no need to rely on antiquated full-page layouts of testimonial after testimonial, inconsistently written or designed.

There are many great examples of companies displaying testimonials on their websites in fun, new, and exciting ways. In this article, we’ll take a look at 11 examples of creatively different ways to handle testimonial pages, banners.

11 Creative Testimonial Examples You’ll Want to Implement

Social proof is a must these days. If you want visitors to trust you, then you need to give them solid proof of it. There’s no better way to do that than by showing them what others have to say.

If the rave reviews are starting to roll in about your business and you want a cool way to add them to your site, then check out these testimonial examples for inspiration.

1. Show Your Overall Ratings From Different Trusted Sources

Display ratings from different sources
This is an instant credibility booster.

Showcasing your overall ratings from different trusted review sites like Trustpilot, Reviews.io, G2, Google, Facebook, Yelp, Sitejabber, etc. will instantly boost your credibility.

You can pack even more social proof punch by backing this up with client testimonials sourced from those sites.

Knock’em out with a one-two combination of ratings and testimonials on your site.

On a similar vein…

2. Testimonials with Ratings

99Designs Ratings
Ratings give testimonials added oomph.

Who’s to say that a service can’t be rated the same way a product can?

99Designs happens to have a volume of clients and a particular service that works really well with this format. This makes it much easier for companies or individuals interested in using 99Designs’ services to find out what other people think much more quickly than if they were to take the time to read through dozens of testimonials.

3. Testimonials with a Face to the Name

Fusebox testimonial

If you scroll down a bit on the home page of the Fusebox website, you’ll run into plenty of testimonials you can scroll through.

Fusebox has included photos of each customer and a testimonial that encapsulates the excitement of why they love Fusebox. It’s a great way to show real people that love the product. Putting a face to a positive experience is a win.

4. Testimonials on Instagram

Blue Apron Instagram account.

Blue Apron had taken a smart approach in how they display customer testimonials by currently posting regular testimonials on their social media. Seeing how other customers would love to see what others have been able to cook up using Blue Apron’s services, they’ve compiled customer testimonials and snapshots of the resulting meals from Instagram.

You can use a plugin, such as Social Feed Gallery to help if you’d like to incorporate testimonials on your WordPress site directly from Instagram.

5. Optional Testimonial Highlight Reel

ChowNow highlights.

While each of the customer testimonials on ChowNow’s website is video testimonials, they’ve also gone through and pulled out the strongest quotes from each.

So, if prospective customers want a “highlight reel” of what others are saying, all they have to do is scan through the snippets on the page. It’s similar to the service ChowNow provides to its customers: it’s a quick and very convenient approach.

6. Simple and Straight-to-the-Point Scroller

Fourlane’s homepage scroller.

Fourlane’s scrolling testimonials are straightforward in execution but well done all the same. The scroller appears in the middle of the home page, but it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle since it automatically slides.

7. Video Background Testimonial

Marie Forleo

Now, here is an interesting way to add a video background to your website. Because the Marie Forleo B-School is a video-based training program, it makes sense that they’d rely heavily on video throughout their site.

In the case of their testimonials, they’ve put a video background of the testimonial reel on the B-School page with a quote laid on top. You can then click through to watch the video that compiles all their stories and testimonials into one place.

8. Celebrity Testimonial

Marucci Celeb

Marucci Sports website includes a testimonial from David Ortiz, or “Big Papi” as Red Sox fans know him.

There are other ballplayers throughout the rest of the site, that include video testimonials and articles about why they love Marucci Sports. The only difference is that the text in this one is a celebrity endorsement.

9. Original, Yet Modern Design

Phocas Design’s testimonials.

Phocas’ page of customer testimonials is beautifully designed. There’s the modern masonry layout, the great use of their brand color throughout, and the strategic use of bolded text to call out important snippets from each testimonial.

10. Clean, Consistent Layout

Zapier is consistent.

The Zapier home page includes a short section dedicated to customer testimonials. It’s clean, clear, and consistently designed to make readers think, “Why not stop and read this?”

You can also tell that each quote was carefully trimmed down to really get to the core of each customer’s benefits from the service.

11. Case Study Testimonial Callouts

Zendesk’s callouts.

It’s clear that Zendesk has gone to great lengths to create a comprehensive set of case studies from clients, big and small. It’s actually quite a testament to the quality of their product that they’ve worked with so many well-known brands and helped each of them succeed in their goals.

That said, visitors probably won’t take the time to click through every single one of the dozens of case studies that appear here. What they can do instead is look at the big-name testimonial callouts that are thrown into the mix.

Putting Testimonials to the Test

While each of the examples above paints a variety of creative scenarios worth exploring for your site, they wouldn’t be worth looking at if they didn’t have high-quality testimonials to show off in the first place. So, keep in mind the following tips when you go about gathering testimonials for your freelance business and putting them to the test:

  • There are a variety of ways to get customer testimonials. You can ask for them (by email or survey), listen for them (in calls or correspondence with your clients), or look for them (on social media or review sites).
  • Keep the testimonials short—ideally, no more than four or five sentences.
  • Make sure the testimonials are direct. Sharing someone’s “Well done!” praise is nice but doesn’t really let others know what specifically you did or what the results were that merited such feedback.
  • Include statistics when possible (like if your client reported a 10% lift in traffic after a rebrand).
  • Make them authentic. In other words, feel free to clean up the quote for readability and make it sound like the testimonial came from an actual person (because it did).
  • Include as many descriptors about the client giving the testimonial as possible; at the very least, a name, title, and company. Photos of the client or logos of their company are even better.
  • Consider grouping testimonials based on the service or product they describe. Then place them on related pages.

We’re no longer in a position where we can rely on word-of-mouth marketing to grow our client bases organically.

With everyone flocking to the Internet to see what other people have said about your company, it’d be wise to work on collecting testimonials yourself and publishing them to your WordPress site. This way, prospective customers won’t have to wander around on Google, Yelp, or social media to find out more about your services or merchandise.

Also, consider adding reviews for your site with the help of a theme or plugin. Plus, you can make sure it goes flawlessly to add reviews the right way to your WordPress site.

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Top eCommerce Payment Gateways for WordPress

Okay, so you’ve created a kickass design, your site’s running in tip-top shape, and your visitors are more than ready to convert. What more could you ask for?

But then your soon-to-be-customers get to the payment gateway and don’t see their preferred provider listed. Or there’s a security warning that’s thrown them off-guard. Or, even worse, they change their minds, want to go back to the site to add another item to their cart, but they realize they’re no longer on your site and don’t know how to get back.

So, what can you do to ensure that UX issues like the ones mentioned above don’t keep your visitors from converting? There’s really only one thing you can do: choose a payment gateway provider (or providers) that will provide a reliable and secure experience.

In this post I’m going to:

  • Explain what payment gateways are and how they work
  • Show you some popular payment gateways, how much they cost and how to use them
  • Talk about how you can integrate these payment gateways with WordPress

If you already know what a payment gateway is, feel free to skip ahead to the section on popular gateways and WordPress integration. :)

What Is a Payment Gateway?

To briefly describe what a payment gateway is, it’s a third-party tool that evaluates and processes payments from your customers. So, rather than set up a basic contact form that requires customers to fill in their information to place an order—which you would then need to manually process on your end—the payment gateway handles it on your behalf.

There are a number of benefits to using a payment gateway. The time savings is obviously one of them. There’s also the matter of PCI compliance. And there’s the flexibility in payment types you can accept by using a payment processing tool.

Of course, like with any other third-party system you bring into your WordPress site, there are a number of things that must be taken into consideration. Here is what you will need to think about:

Cost

With most third-party integrations, there’s almost always an upfront cost associated with it. However, when it comes to payment processors, you also need to take a closer look at the fine print as there are fees you’ll need to pay for each transaction processed. There are some that also charge your customers a fee in order to use the payment gateway—and nothing screams “depart this transaction immediately” more than an unexpected cost.

Payment Location

Some payment gateways enable users to add the payment gateway directly onto their site through an API. This can be a good thing as it prevents that feeling of disruption as visitors are shuttled to a different website to enter their payment information. However, there are some payment gateway providers that are so well-known and trusted (think of PayPal) where the disruption might not matter that much if customers feel more confident submitting payment information through that site instead of your own.

That’s ultimately what you need to keep in mind here: what will your customers be more comfortable with. Do they want one seamless process that occurs entirely on your site or would they be more comfortable paying through a well-known provider? You can use A/B testing to see which option leads to higher conversions or you can solicit feedback from your customers and ask them directly what they prefer.

Merchant Account

You may run into a number of payment processors who require you to have a separate merchant account into which funds are deposited, which means yet another step you have to take care of in order to get your online payment system up and running. However inconvenient that may seem right now, though, it’s important to note that payment gateways who don’t require merchant accounts and are willing to directly deposit funds into your account are more likely to charge you a higher processing fee.

Security

Obviously, this point can’t be stressed enough as security shouldn’t stop even if the purchase experience is handed over to another party. Your payment gateway should be just as secure to use, if not more, than your own website. This means they need an SSL certificate, additional encryption, and must be PCI compliant.

Countries Accepted

The first thing to do before signing with any payment processor is to check your site’s analytics. This will tell you which countries your visitors are located in, so you can include country-compatible payment methods, currencies, and translations in your payment gateway.

Taxes

If you’re collecting revenue through your site, you need an easy way to collect the appropriate amount of taxes. While there will, of course, be local taxes, you’ll also have to be aware of country or region-specific taxes, like the value-added tax (VAT) in the EU. So, if you know you’re going to sell goods out of state or country, your payment gateway should be equipped to calculate those taxes for you.

Automated Payments

For product sales, this might not be something you need to worry about. However, for those of you offering a recurring service or something that customers will purchase frequently enough, automated payments are definitely worth thinking about. One way to do this is to create an option for recurring payments. You may also want to create an auto-pay method whereby payment information from previous transactions can be saved so customers don’t have to re-enter it every time.

Plugin Compatibility

If your site is making sales, then you most definitely have an eCommerce or shopping cart plugin at your disposal. Not every payment gateway will work with your plugin of choice, so confirm compatibility before signing up.

Design

And, of course, you’ve got to think about the design of the payment gateway. Will it allow for branding personalization so that it matches your site? Is it mobile responsive? How intuitive is it in terms of layout, numbers of steps or pages, etc.? Again, this is still part of your customers’ experience and you don’t want bad design to ruin that.

Best Payment Gateways for WordPress

Alright, so now that you know what you’re looking for, let’s narrow down that search and compare the best payment gateway providers for WordPress.

  • PayPal Payments Pro

    If you need a little extra out of PayPal, their Pro option is worth consideration:

    • Cost: There’s a $30 monthly fee to use this service, in addition to the per-transaction fee assessed.
    • Payment Location: You won’t have to send customers to PayPal. They’ll see the recognizable and trusted logo on your site, but they can stay right where they are to make a payment.
    • Merchant Account: There’s no need for one with PayPal, but you do have the option if you want a quick and easy way to deposit funds into your bank account.
    • Security: PayPal provides you with options to keep transactions on your site PCI compliant.
    • Global Friendliness: PayPal accepts only six currencies from credit card providers. If customers make PayPal payments, though, they’ll take over 25 currencies from 200+ markets.
    • Payment Methods Accepted: Because this is PayPal, a good portion of the payment types available come from them, including: PayPal standard payments, PayPal credit, as well as PayPal special financing. You can also accept credit cards, bank transfers, and even phone-based credit card payments.
    • Automated Payments: I don’t believe this is an option.
    • Plugin Compatibility: PayPal Pro supports most major shopping carts.
    • Design: The UI is fully customizable. It also works across all devices, so you won’t have to worry about the mobile payment experience.

    Interested in PayPal Payments Pro?

    Details

  • Stripe

    Stripe is definitely not lacking in features:

    • Cost: There are no setup or monthly fees. Aside from the usual per-transaction charges, the only costs you have to worry about are from customer chargebacks.
    • Payment Location: You can create a totally custom checkout for your site or you can use their pre-built Checkout.
    • Merchant Account: No need for a merchant account.
    • Security: If you’re keeping customers on your site to process payments, Stripe offers developers the option to use client-side tokenization to ensure PCI compliance.
    • Global Friendliness: Strips works in over 100 countries (for your and your customers’ base of operations) and accepts over 135 currencies. There’s no change for currency conversion either.
    • Payment Methods Accepted: Stripe accepts all major credit cards, bank and debit payments, Bitcoin, and digital payments from Apple Pay and Android Pay. Their API tools also enable developers to set up alternative payment processing options like selling products from a tweet.
    • Automated Payments: Stripe is set up to help all e-commerce business types: basic stores, on-demand marketplaces, subscription services, and even crowdfunding.
    • Design: This tool was built with the developer in mind, so its capabilities can be extended with simple APIs.

  • 2CheckOut

    Here are just a few of 2CheckOut’s features:

    • Cost: In addition to the standard fees per transaction, they also charge for international transactions and currency conversion.
    • Payment Location: You can either use the API to put the checkout on your site or you can use “inline” checkout which moves the process to their site while making it still look like it’s on yours.
    • Merchant Account: You need a merchant account in order to accept payments.
    • Security: They are Level 1 PCI compliant.
    • Global Friendliness: Their payment gateway is offered in 15 languages, includes 87 currency options, and they’ll process payments in over 200 markets.
    • Payment Methods Accepted: They accept credit card, debit card, and PayPal payments, among others.
    • Automated Payments: You can create pricing plans, flexible billing schedules, automated payments, and more.
    • Plugin Compatibility: Works with WooCommerce, WP e-commerce, Zoho, Shopify, osCommerce, and more.
    • Design: You can brand the gateway to match your site. The checkout page is also mobile-friendly.

  • Authorize.net

    Authorize.net is another widely accepted gateway that might offer precisely what you need:

    • Cost: There’s an initial $49 setup fee, a $25 monthly fee, as well as per-transaction fee.
    • Payment Location: It’s up to you: this can go on your site or on Authorize.net’s.
    • Merchant Account: You’ll need a merchant bank account to collect your payments.
    • Security: You’ll have free access to Authorize.net’s fraud protection tools if you integrate gateway on your site. Otherwise, Authorize.net is PCI DSS certified.
    • Global Friendliness: While you’re free to accept payments from around the world, you must reside in the U.S., Canada, UK, Europe, or Australia in order to use this service.
    • Payment Methods Accepted: Payment types include credit card, Authorize.net e-checks, as well as digital payments like Apple Pay, PayPal, and VisaCheckout.
    • Automated Payments: There are a number of options available. You can store customer information for future transactions, set up subscriptions, or create dynamic recurring billing schedules.
    • Plugin Compatibility: Works with e-commerce and banking plugins like BigCommerce, Shopify, Magento, Moolah, QuickBooks, and Wells Fargo.
    • Design: You’re free to personalize the look of your checkout page to match your brand.

    Interested in Authorize.net?

    Details

  • Braintree

    Braintree offers another way to accept payments on your WordPress site. Check out some of its features:

    • Cost: There are no monthly fees to use Braintree, just the standard per-transaction fee. Note that the fee depends on which country you’re processing payments from.
    • Payment Location: You can use Braintree’s hosted service or you can use their drop-UI to put it directly on your site.
    • Merchant Account: Since this is a PayPal service, you don’t need a merchant account.
    • Security: Advanced fraud protection is included with this service.
    • Global Friendliness: Braintree’s service will process payments in over 130 currencies and for customers in 44 countries.
    • Payment Methods Accepted: You can accept payments from PayPal, credit cards, Apple Pay, Venmo, Masterpass, and more. In addition, you can split payments with other partners or providers.
    • Automated Payments: There are recurring billing options for repeat customers, subscription-based services, as well as donations.
    • Plugin Compatibility: This tool will integrate with a huge range of e-commerce and sales tools like Salesforce, Magento, Freshbooks, BigCommerce, and 3dcart.
    • Design: You can customize the design of the checkout or use their ready-made interface.

  • Square

    Square also lets you accept payments online easily. Check out Square’s features:

    • Cost: No monthly fee and 2.2% per transaction.
    • Payment Location: Although Square provides its own online store building platform, you can use Square’s APIs to accept payments directly on a WordPress website that you build yourself, or use plugins like a WooCommerce extension to integrate Square’s payment processing and other tools with your online store.
    • Merchant Account: You need a transactional bank account in case of refunds or disputed payments.
    • Security: They are Level 1 PCI compliant and offer layered security with fraud prevention methods.
    • Global Friendliness: At this time, WooCommerce Square is currently only available for the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan and the UK.
    • Payment Methods Accepted: All major credit and debit cards are accepted. Payments are deposited into your linked bank account next business day with their standard schedule, or you can create a custom payment schedule to suit odd business hours.
    • Automated Payments: You can receive automated payments for single and recurring transactions.
    • Plugin Compatibility: Works with WooCommerce, WP EasyCart, Ecwid.
    • Design: You can customize the gateway to match your site. The checkout page is also mobile-friendly.

Integrating Payment Gateways with WordPress

Here’s the thing about payment gateways: you might not be responsible for designing them or developing the code that processes payments in the first place, but that doesn’t mean you can wipe your hands clean of what happens once your visitors land on them. If you’re including a payment gateway on your site, then it’s a part of your visitors’ experience and needs to be accounted for as you shape that experience for them, so it’s important to integrate your payment gateway correctly not just with WordPress, but also any plugins used to enhance or extend your site’s functionality.

For example, our Forminator plugin not only lets you add forms, quizzes, polls, and calculators to your site, but also take payments, donations, down payments, and sell merchandise with built-in Stripe and PayPal integrations. The video below shows you how to build order forms with payments for free in WordPress using the plugin’s payment integration features:

Different types of applications like Learning Management Systems (LMS), membership sites, and listing directories have built-in payment integrations with WordPress.

Below are some plugins that help to make integrating payment gateways and WordPress easier:

  • WooCommerce Square

    WooCommerce Square is a free plugin that lets you integrate the Square payment gateway on WordPress to sync inventory and product data between WooCommerce and Square POS.

    Some of the benefits and features of using this plugin for payment integration with WordPress include:

    • PCI compliant payment processing option that meets SAQ A levels of compliance.
    • Support for WooCommerce Subscriptions
    • Support for WooCommerce Pre-Orders
    • Allow customers to save payment methods and use them at checkout
    • Use an enhanced payment form with automatic formatting, mobile-friendly inputs, and retina card icons
    • Sync product data automatically between WooCommerce and Square.

    See the plugin documentation for setup instructions.

  • WP Easy Pay – Square for WordPress

    WP Easy Pay – Square for WordPress is another free plugin you can use to integrate WordPress with the Square payment gateway and accept simple payments and donations if you are not using WooCommerce or don’t need to add a shopping cart to your store.

    Some of the highlights of using this plugin for payment integration with WordPress include:

    • SCA (Strong Customer Authentication) support.
    • Sandbox support allows you to see test transactions in Square Dashboard.
    • Use a single button to collect donations and simple payments.
    • Users can enter custom amounts to make payments for donations.

    The plugin also has a premium version with additional features like support for digital wallets, email notifications, and reports.

  • WooCommerce Stripe Payment Gateway

    WooCommerce Stripe Payment Gateway is a free plugin that lets you accept Stripe payments through WooCommerce and add payment request buttons like Apple Pay and Google Pay and other payment methods on your website. It also supports recurring payments like subscriptions.

  • Stripe Payments

    The Stripe Payments plugin lets you integrate your WordPress site with the Stripe payment gateway to accept credit card payments.

    Once installed and configured, you can add ‘Buy Now’ buttons anywhere on your site using a simple shortcode and accept donations. After users purchase online with one-click payments, they are redirected to a “Checkout Result” page showing details of the transaction. Payment and order information can then be accessed from your WordPress dashboard.

  • Stripe Payments for WordPress – WP Simple Pay

    WP Simple Pay is a free standalone Stripe Checkout plugin that lets you accept credit card payments with Stripe Checkout on your WordPress site with no complex shopping cart, form builder or membership site plugin required.

    The free version comes with many built-in features, including unlimited payment forms, mobile responsive Stripe Checkout pages, product images display in Stripe Checkout page, optional verification and capture of user details, and the ability to specify payment success & failure pages. The paid version offers additional features including support for subscription payments and options.

  • WooCommerce PayPal Checkout Payment Gateway

    If you’re using WooCommerce, you can add this free plugin to integrate your site with a PayPal in-context checkout payment gateway, which remains hosted on PayPal’s servers, allowing your site to meet security requirements without affecting your theme.

    Refer to the documentation to learn how to integrate this plugin using PayPal’s easy setup method.

  • WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart

    WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart is a free plugin that lets you insert an ‘Add to Cart’ button on any post or page using shortcodes and display the shopping cart on your pages or sidebar. The plugin also has an option to use smart PayPal payment buttons and various additional features.

    See the plugin’s documentation section and video tutorials for setup and integration information.

  • 2Checkout Payment Gateway for WooCommerce

    If you want to process payments online using 2Checkout (2CO), this plugin integrates with your WooCommerce store to provide itemized checkout and pass all billing and shipping data to the 2CO purchase page.

Getting Paid Is The Easy Part

By this point, you should have a pretty good idea of what you want your payment gateway to do and have a few providers you’re thinking of using:

  • Square offers relatively low processing fees and lets small businesses and independent sellers accept most consumer credit cards and facilitate cashless transactions.
  • Stripe is the most developer-friendly platform, so if you really want to get into personalizing your checkout page, this is a good option to have.
  • PayPal is a great choice if you want to leverage the trusted name of a payment processor that over 184 million people already use.
  • 2Checkout seems to be the most global-friendly of the options, so if you’re hoping to cast a wider net, that may be the one you want to turn to.

Probably the easiest way to integrate payment processing gateways with WordPress is to use an eCommerce plugin that already has an extensive list of payment options built-in.  Many eCommerce plugins not only give you this option, most will even provide links, wizards, and helpful tooltips to facilitate this process, so all you have to do is sign up for an account with the merchant, enter a registration code or special key into a settings field, and boom diggity… you’ve saved a whole lot of time!

One last thing to think about when researching payment gateways is how you’re going to deliver customers their goods after collecting their money, especially if you plan to sell physical goods. That’s why we’ve written a companion piece on the top eCommerce plugins for shipping products.

If you haven’t built your eCommerce site yet, make sure to read our comprehensive guide to planning an eCommerce store with WordPress before getting started.