Opinion | The Blog Pros

June 25, 2024

9 Top Donation Form Best Practices to Boost Donations in WordPress

When it comes to getting more online donations through your WordPress website, I’ve found that it all comes down to a few best practices.

By giving potential donors the information they need and removing potential roadblocks, you can easily raise more money from donations. This can help you keep up with rising costs, expand your reach, and achieve new goals.

Luckily, this is really easy to do by making a few key changes to your WordPress donation forms. And today, I’ll share the most important donation form best practices that I’ve discovered can seriously boost donations in WordPress.

Note: This is a guest post by Thomas Griffin, the president of Charitable and WP Simple Pay, two of the best plugins for accepting donations in WordPress. This is an expert column that we publish where we invite a WordPress expert to share their experiences with our readers.

Donation form best practices to boost donations in WordPress

I will cover quite a few topics in this post. Here’s a handy list so you can jump to the section you are most interested in:

Choose a WordPress Plugin Designed for Donations
Make the Donation Form Easy to Find
Explain How the Donations Will Make a Difference
Keep the Donation Form Simple
Allow Donors to Give Securely Using Their Preferred Method
Allow Donors to Choose Preset Donation Amounts
Allow Recurring Donations
Gratefully Acknowledge the Donation
Make It Easy to Share Your Donation Form

1. Choose a WordPress Plugin Designed for Donations

Because there’s so much involved in optimizing a donation form for conversions, my first piece of advice is to choose a WordPress plugin specifically designed for donations.

This won’t just save you time and effort so you can focus on your mission, but these plugins are also designed from the ground up to optimize conversions and boost your donations.

The best donation plugins integrate with secure payment gateways to protect your donors and gain their trust. They also offer the features you need to use the best practices I will outline below.

For many organizations, WP Simple Pay is an excellent choice. It’s one of the best credit card processing plugins for WordPress, includes user-friendly donation features, and its drag-and-drop form builder offers pre-made templates custom-designed for donation pages.

Other organizations may prefer a dedicated donation and fundraising plugin for WordPress. I recommend Charitable because it includes a lot of different features for collecting donations and creating complete fundraising campaigns.

Using WP Charitable to Create a Donation Form

While there are free versions of these plugins to help you get started, you’ll need the premium tools for features such as recurring donations. As a bonus, you won’t be charged any transaction fees, so you can make the most of the money given.

2. Make the Donation Form Easy to Find

It goes without saying that you won’t get many donations if no one can find your form. Making your donation form visible and discoverable should be your first priority.

You can simply start by adding your donation page to your navigation menu in WordPress. Better still, I recommend adding a button to your nav menu and using a contrasting color that stands out.

Donation Button on the WordPress Navigation Menu

Make sure you use clear button text that can be understood at a glance. Some popular examples include ‘Donate’, ‘Donate Now’, ‘Give Now’, and ‘Support Us’.

You should also include the donation form with other important links in your website’s footer.

At key times of the year, you can make your donation form even more visible using a popup. For example, nonprofits make a huge 25% of their total online donation revenue in December, making it an ideal month for a popup marketing campaign.

Using a carefully designed popup to promote your donation form at strategic times of the year can boost conversions by 250%.

Before you add a popup to your site, I recommend taking time to read my team’s helpful list of easy tips for nonprofits to boost year-end fundraising with popups.

3. Explain How the Donations Will Make a Difference

Now that a potential donor has landed on your donation page, it’s super important to grab their interest by explaining how their donation will make a difference. Being very specific can reassure potential donors and gain their trust.

Studies show that donors want to know how an organization spends its money before donating, and 63% of millennials research organizations before giving. However, only 4% of donation pages explain how the donations will be used.

The UNICEF donation page does this well. They use a pie chart that illustrates how each dollar is used. This shows that 82 cents go directly to programs, while 13 cents are used to raise awareness, and just 5 cents are used for administration.

Being Transparent About How Donations Are Used

But they don’t just quote figures. They also use compelling storytelling and photography to connect their work with the reader’s emotions and help them visualize the impact of their donation.

Video content allows you to present lots of information without overwhelming your donation page. It can increase conversions by as much as 86% and is easy to consume on mobile devices.

Telling a Story Through Video on a Donation Page

I often remind organizations that a donation page is essentially a specialized landing page and should be optimized like one. It should start with a compelling headline, provide essential information, and end with a clear call to action.

A landing page is a standalone web page created with one focused objective. It leads visitors towards a single action… This is the page’s CTA or call to action.

John Turner – Co-Founder of SeedProd

That’s why I recommend you study John Turner’s expert insights on the anatomy of a high-converting landing page and use these elements on your donation page.

4. Keep the Donation Form Simple

Complex forms can scare users away. If a form looks like it requires a lot of work or asks too many personal questions, then users might be reluctant to complete it.

It’s a good idea to keep the number of fields on your donation form to a minimum. You should only ask for essential information like name, email address, and donation amount, and pre-fill as many fields as possible to make the form easy to complete.

Some users prefer to give anonymously, so make sure fields that ask for a name or contact details are optional. You can also reassure users by stating on the form that you will not share their personal data with third parties.

If you need help creating a simple and effective donation form, then you can follow this guide on how to create a donation form for nonprofit organizations using WordPress.

When you do need to collect a lot of information, the best practice is to create a multi-page form with a progress bar and ask the easiest questions first. This will help the user start to fill out the form without feeling overwhelmed.

Splitting a Complex Donation Form Into Multiple Steps

5. Allow Donors to Give Securely Using Their Preferred Method

Users who have decided to give money can become frustrated when you don’t offer their preferred payment method. Removing this sort of friction and inconvenience will ensure they don’t have second thoughts about giving to your cause.

Luckily, top donation plugins integrate with secure payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe. This lets you offer multiple payment methods, ensure safe transactions, and build donor trust.

When you clearly display the payment methods you accept, you demonstrate that you value your donors’ preferences and are committed to secure online transactions.

For example, the UNICEF donation page clearly states that all donations are protected by SSL and lists the payment options they accept, including credit card, PayPal, and Google Pay.

Offer Multiple Payment Options for Donations

For maximum flexibility, plugins like Charitable also allow donors to use offline payment methods such as checks, bank transfers, and more.

6. Allow Donors to Choose Preset Donation Amounts

You might be surprised to learn that many first-time donors have difficulty knowing how much they should give. This uncertainty can lead to hesitation or even abandonment where the visitor leaves the page without donating.

Offering a few suggested donation amounts makes the choice easier, allowing users to simply click on an amount on the form. You should also allow donors who know how much they want to give to type in the amount.

It can also be helpful to show the benefits that different-sized donations make.

For example, the Oxfam donation page breaks down what can be achieved with different amounts.

Show What Different Donation Amounts Can Achieve

The World Animal Protection donation form does something similar.

When you click on one of the preset amounts, you see a photo and description of what that amount of money can achieve, such as paying for the monthly vet costs for a bear.

Preset amounts can also encourage larger donations. The Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Florida found their visitor center donations increased 400% when they started suggesting donation amounts.

7. Allow Recurring Donations

Allowing recurring donations on your form can turn a single one-off payment into an ongoing revenue stream. This can provide consistent funding for your long-term projects.

It also makes life easier for donors who want to give on an ongoing basis because any future donations they agree to will be paid automatically.

Let’s look at the math. While the average donation amount for one-time gifts is $121, the average for recurring gifts is just $25 per month. But that $25 is paid multiple times, bringing the average for recurring donations up to $287 each year.

Monthly recurring donations are far more popular than weekly or yearly. Many donation forms keep things simple by offering a one-off donation or ongoing monthly payments.

The donation forms above also highlight that the monthly option makes the biggest impact.

You can find step-by-step instructions on how to implement this in this guide on how to create a recurring donation form in WordPress.

8. Gratefully Acknowledge the Donation

Personalized thank-you messages and confirmation emails make donors feel appreciated. One report found that first-time donors are 80% more likely to give again if you send a personalized acknowledgment.

Both WP Simple Pay and Charitable can easily redirect a user to a thank you page after they make a donation. This is a page where you can express your appreciation and explain the impact the donor’s gift has made.

They also allow you to send a thank you email.

In my experience, showing your appreciation like this can quickly turn a one-time donor into a lifetime supporter. You can also take the opportunity to show the donor further ways they can support your organization, such as by volunteering or subscribing to your newsletter.

One of the best ways a donor can help after giving to your organization is to share your donation form with their friends, family, and co-workers.

This encourages like-minded people in their network to think of making a donation. Plus, studies have found that each share can raise an additional 18% of the gift that was made.

The World Bicycle Relief organization does this by using an effective, multi-pronged approach to encourage donors to share their donation form.

First, you have the option to give the donation in honor of someone else. This allows you to send an e-card or printed card to that person, which may prompt them to match the donation.

Enable Donors to Share Your Donation Form

They also allow you to search for your employer to see if they’ve submitted a policy to match your donation. This could instantly double the donation.

Third, they encourage donors to spread the word by clicking social share buttons.

Finally, at the bottom of the thank you page, they give you a fourth option: fundraising. Donor-driven campaigns are very effective, allowing nonprofits to recruit 300 new donors on average.

For details on how to do this, you can see this guide on how to create peer-to-peer fundraising in WordPress.

I hope this article helped you understand donation form best practices to boost donations in WordPress. You may also want to read this guide on how to add a Stripe donate button (with a recurring option) or this expert pick of the best crowdfunding plugins for WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 9 Top Donation Form Best Practices to Boost Donations in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

June 14, 2024

Google Workspace vs Office 365 Comparison – Which One Is Better?

Trying to decide between Google Workspace vs. Office 365 for your business email and productivity suite?

Google Workspace and Office 365 both offer impressive suites of productivity software and services. If you are not experienced with either side, then you might be looking at the right option to streamline your business operations.

In this guide, we will compare Google Workspace vs. Office 365 to help you decide which one is better for your business.

What Are Google Workspace and Office 365?

After you make a website, the next step is usually to get a professional business email address.

Unlike your @gmail.com or @outlook.com email, a professional business email address is branded with your company name: name@yourbusiness.com

While most WordPress hosting companies offer a free business email address, they can’t compete with the powerful business tools that Google Workspace and Office 365 provide. These platforms have more reliable emails, file storage, documents, spreadsheets, calendars, notes, video conferencing tools, etc.

Google Workspace includes Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Calendar, Keep, Hangouts, and other Google apps that you probably already use and love.

They also have unique offerings such as Apps Script and AppSheet for building custom solutions without coding and Jamboard for whiteboard brainstorming.

Microsoft’s Office 365 includes Outlook, OneDrive, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, One Note, Skype, and other Microsoft apps.

Using cloud productivity suites allows you to save money on maintaining software licenses and installations, running an IT department, and more.

All your data is stored in the cloud, which makes it easier to access files from anywhere using any device. This is great if you are running a remote company or traveling while managing your WordPress blog.

Google Workspace vs. Office 365 Comparison Chart

It can be confusing to evaluate both productivity suites unless you can visually see the differences. That’s why we’ve put together a side-by-side comparison for a quicker overview.

Features	Google Workspace	Office 365
Pricing	Starter – $6 / user / month Standard – $12 / user / month Plus – $18 / user / month	Microsoft 365 Business Basic – $6 /user / month Microsoft 365 Business Standard – $12.50 /user / month Microsoft 365 Business Premium – $22 / user / month Microsoft 365 Apps for Business – $8.25 /user / month
Cloud Storage	Business Starter – 30GB per user Business Standard – 2TB per user Business Plus – 5TB per user	1 TB for all plans 50 GB email storage
Apps	Docs, Sheets, Slides, Keep, Sites, Google Drive, Calendar, Meet, Gmail, Chat	Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, Teams, Outlook, Exchange, SharePoint
Ease of Use	Better admin controls Better web and mobile apps	Better Desktop Apps
Collaboration	Live multi-user editing Hangouts for video conferencing Google Voice for phone calls and SMS	Live multi-user editing Skype for Business (available only with Business Premium or Enterprise plans)
Security and Support	– Data encryption – Data loss prevention – Google cloud security protection – Two-step verification – Built-in spam, phishing and unusual activity detection – 99.9% application availability guarantee	– Data encryption – Data loss prevention – Microsoft cloud security technology – Multi-factor authentication – Built-in spam, malware and unusual activity detection – 99.9% financially backed uptime guarantee
Customer Support	Standard Support (paid upgrade to Enhanced Support)	Round-the-clock phone and online support
Get Started	Buy Google Workspace	Buy Office 365

Why Do You Need Google Workspace or Office 365?

Just about every type of business could benefit from Google Workspace or Office 365, whether you run a small business website, local business, or online store.

Here’s just a handful of reasons to use productivity suites:

Collaboration: Team efficiency comes down to collaboration. Important decisions are made through collaboration tools such as sharing files, instant messaging, and video and audio conferencing.
Cloud-based file storage: Files are arguably the backbone of any organization. Documents, PDFs, spreadsheets, and other files help run the operations of a business. There’s nothing wrong with legacy apps, but transferring files elsewhere can be difficult, which is why cloud-based options are better.
Business email: Every business needs an email to connect with their customers, partners, and employees. While you could go with a free ‘@gmail.com’ option, it’s better to have your domain name in your email so it looks more professional.

That said, both suites offer a ton of features that allow you to run your business efficiently and grow. Let’s take a look at those features and see how Office 365 and Google Workspace stack up.

Feel free to jump forward to any section that you’re most interested in:

Google Workspace vs. Office 365 Pricing
Professional Business Email
Cloud File Storage and Sharing
Productivity Apps
Collaboration Tools
Security Measures
Customer Support
Google Workspace vs Office 365 – Which One Is Better?

Google Workspace vs. Office 365 Pricing

Every business has a lot of expenses, including software tools, which is why pricing is an important factor to consider. You want to choose a solution that fits your budget.

Let’s compare the pricing of Google Workspace and Office 365 to find out which one offers the most value for your money.

Google Workspace Pricing

Google Workspace comes with three simple pricing plans.

Business Starter – $6 per user per month for 30 GB cloud storage per user.
Business Standard – $12 per user per month for 2 TB cloud storage per user.
Business Plus – $18 per user per month for 5 TB cloud storage per user.

That said, all users get a free trial for their first 14 days.

Once you reach the Business Plus plan, you get access to enhanced security and management tools. For example, Google Vault lets you easily search, manage, and export an organization’s email, chats, and other data. Beyond that, there’s advanced threat protection to protect sensitive data from malicious attacks and malware.

Office 365 Pricing

Office 365 comes with three different pricing plans for medium and small businesses.

Microsoft 365 Business Basic – $6 per month per user
Microsoft 365 Business Standard – $12.50 per month per user
Business 365 Business Premium – $22 per month per user
Microsoft 365 Apps for business – $8.25 per use per month

All Microsoft 365 plans are paid on an annual basis. That said, there is a one-month free trial to see if it’s a good fit.

Microsoft 365 comes with 1 TB of cloud storage on their basic plan, with access to all of the main apps and a custom business email. The Business Standard comes with more advanced programs, such as the ability to run webinars and even new video editing and design tools with Microsoft Clipchamp.

Their Business Premium Plan is where you get advanced cyber threat protection against phishing attacks and viruses.

Winner: Tie. Both Google Workspace and Office 365 are priced competitively. Depending on which apps your business needs, one may tip the scales over the other. For example, Google offers unique apps like Sites, which is a page builder tool, while Office 365 has a video editing software called ClipChamp.

Professional Business Email

Both Google Workspace and Office 365 allow you to create professional business email accounts using your own domain name. Besides a custom domain, professional email offers enhanced security and features to scale your business, like more storage and a number of users.

Google Workspace – Gmail for Business

Google Workspace allows you to register a domain name or use your existing domain name to create email accounts. You can also create up to 30 email aliases for each user.

Gmail is best if you’re looking for collaborative and time-saving features. For example, it’ll automatically send notifications to you when you’re tagged in another Google app, making it easy for teams to work on documents, projects, and presentations.

There are also dynamic emails in Gmail, allowing the recipient to complete an action directly in the email, like responding to a comment or question, replying to an RSVP to an event or meeting, and browsing a catalog.

Overall, the entire interface feels more modern and much easier to navigate, making Gmail easier to use. One of the best features is the AI-driven option that suggests phrases and words as you type and a convenient snooze button so you can delay incoming messages.

If you’re interested in setting one up, read our tutorial on how to set up a professional email address with Gmail and Workspace.

Office 365 – Outlook for Business

Office 365 also allows you to easily create professional email addresses with your own domain name. It offers 400 email aliases for each user.

Outlook is great for people who prefer a desktop email client. Logging online to access your email can be a distraction, which is why having a full-featured desktop version is helpful.

However, Outlook does seem to struggle with search accuracy as well. If, for example, you were looking for a specific email in a chain, Outlook may bring up other emails in that chain as well, making it harder to find.

In addition, the ads are placed to the side of the email app on the Office 365 Business Basic plan.

From an aesthetic standpoint, it’s more distracting for users to deal with, which can slightly hurt the user experience. You’ll need to upgrade to the Business Standard plan for an ad-free experience, while Gmail includes no ads on all plans.

Verdict: Google Workspace, since they offer a better user experience. With the tagged collaboration, no ads, and better searchability, Gmail makes handling emails much easier.

One of the main reasons for using a cloud productivity suite is file storage. You can save all your files in the cloud so that you can access them anywhere, using any device, and share them easily.

Both Google Workspace and Office 365 make file storage and sharing easy.

Google Workspace – Google Drive Cloud Storage

Google Workspace gives each user 30 GB of cloud storage with the Starter plan. When you upgrade to the Standard plan, you get 2 TB of storage per user, and with the Plus plan, you get 5 TB of storage per user.

It uses Google Drive to store and manage files. It comes with apps that you can download on your mobile devices, tablets, or desktop. This allows you to easily access files stored in the Drive and even make them available offline.

Google Drive also makes it super easy to share files with your colleagues or anyone else. You can share by email, allow others to just view or edit a file, and even allow others to download them.

Many WordPress backup plugins also allow you to store your website backups on Google Drive. If you have unlimited storage, then you can safely store all your website backups on the cloud.

At WPBeginner, we recommend backing up your entire WordPress site to Google Drive so that you’re prepared for the worst-case scenario.

Office 365 – OneDrive Cloud Storage

Office 365 offers 1 TB of cloud storage for each user with all their plans. This is a lot of storage, but it is not unlimited. Each user also gets 50 GB of email storage, which is separate from your OneDrive storage limit.

It uses OneDrive to store and manage files, and it also comes with desktop, mobile, and web apps. Similar to Google Drive, you can sync files using OneDrive and easily share them.

While Office 365 doesn’t offer unlimited cloud storage like Google Workspace, you probably won’t need that much space. 1TB is a lot for cloud storage for a single user, which many people won’t come anywhere near using, anyway.

Verdict: Google Workspace has more total storage if you upgrade to the Business Standard plan or above. That said, Office 365 offers more storage at a lower price point.

Productivity Apps

Productivity apps are the backbone of most small businesses. It’s where teams collaborate on projects, streamline workflows, and manage data. Both Google Workspace and Office 365 come with the essentials you need, like documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more.

Let’s take a look at the apps offered by both platforms and how they compare to each other.

Apps in Google Workspace

Google Workspace comes with popular Google apps like Gmail, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, Google Calendar, Keep, Hangouts, and a lot more.

Google focuses on simplicity and live collaboration. Collaborating with team members is seamless. They also offer real-time co-authoring so that individuals can work on the same document at the same time. That means you can comment, suggest, review changes, and make notes with ease.

These apps work best in a desktop browser on all operating systems. Google also has mobile apps for both Android and iOS. If you are already using an Android phone, then their mobile versions may come pre-installed with your phone.

Google also has offline versions of some apps that would work in your browser. However, their offline functionality is quite limited, and you will have to individually make a file available for offline editing.

Unlike Microsoft’s productivity suite, which includes both web and desktop versions, Google’s tools are exclusively web-based. That said, Google Workspace has a cleaner interface and is much easier to use.

Apps in Office 365

An Office 365 business subscription gives you access to Microsoft Office apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote. For desktop computers, these apps are still the most feature-rich and complete office application suite on the market.

All Word applications have a lot more pre-built templates than their Google counterparts.

Word alone has 300 different business templates, compared to Google Docs, which only has 55 templates, including business, personal, and educational ones. Plus, Word has more chart types for embedding into documents.

This extends to other apps as well. Excel offers over 80 different templates for different types of budgets, while Google Sheets has 19 templates in total.

Some apps have more advanced functionality than Google as well. For instance, PowerPoint has a QuickStarter feature, which helps you quickly build a beautiful presentation in minutes. Just type in a topic, and it sources facts and research findings for you. It will also suggest layouts, themes, and images to use.

All in all, Office 365’s desktop apps set a very high standard that no web or mobile app has been able to compete with.

Verdict: Tie. Google Workspace is better for ease of use and collaboration. However, Office Workspace excels in templates and has more advanced functionality.

Collaboration Tools

With remote work becoming the new norm, collaboration tools are more important than ever. Team members need video conferencing, chat, messaging, and shared spaces to facilitate internal discussions.

There are a lot of tools to unpack, so we’ll cover what each suite offers.

Collaboration tools in Google Workspace

Workspace offers Google Meet, which is made up of Google Chat and Hangouts.

Google Meet excels in guest access. With this feature, team members can invite external guests to collaborate and join conversations without having a Google account. On the flip side, Microsoft Teams requires guests to have a Microsoft account or be part of an organization.

Another advantage is that Google Meet allows more participants to join in a room for the Plus and Enterprise plans. Up to 500 people can be in a single room.

Comparatively, Microsoft Teams only limits you to 300 participants for all plans.

While it’s not a huge deal, the scales do tip in favor of Google Meet.

However, Google Meet’s main advantage is simply its user experience. It easily syncs within Google’s ecosystem of apps. With its call quality adjustments powered by AI, rest assured that your meetings should run smoothly without audio or visual issues.

That said, Google Chat, the messaging platform, isn’t as easy to use for creating specific channels as Microsoft Teams.

In addition, Workspace has Google Voice, a VOIP service provider that allows you to make cloud-based phone calls. Google Voice is more advanced than Microsoft Team Phone because it offers more advanced features. These include AI-driven automatic voicemail transcriptions for better data management.

Collaboration tools in Office 365

Office 365 features Microsoft Teams as its primary collaboration tool. It works similarly to Slack, where you can communicate in different channels or message individuals directly so that all chats are siloed appropriately.

Also, within each channel, you can further segment by topic or department to help organize communication with your company. The messaging app has tabs where you can attach files or connect third-party services.

Beyond that, Microsoft Teams has a built-in calendar and conferencing within their program. That way, you don’t have to go back and forth to Outlook to figure out when your meetings are.

Then, you can click on the event scheduled in the calendar to join a video or audio conference. The conferencing tool comes with all the features you’d expect, such as recording meetings and sharing screens.

What’s great about Microsoft Teams is that you can use the search box to type in topics, names, or commands to find what you’re looking for.

Beyond the chat and conferencing tool, they also have Microsoft Teams Phone, which allows you to make internal calls. That said, you’ll need to pay for a specific domestic calling plan, an international calling plan, or a pay-as-you-go plan.

In comparison, Google Voice offers free calls to the US and Canada.

Verdict: Google Workspace because it’s intuitive and has more AI-driven features in Hangouts.

Security Measures

Security is one of the major concerns for small businesses when using cloud applications. Let’s see how Google Workspace and Office 365 protect the data you store on their cloud platforms.

Google Workspace Security Features

Google Workspace is built on top of Google’s cloud infrastructure and uses the same levels of security as Google itself. This includes automatic detection of suspicious activity, phishing attempts, and other hacking attempts.

As an administrator, Google allows you to set different policies to prevent unauthorized access to your admin console or any of the user accounts. You can use two-factor authentication and enforce it for all your users.

It also comes with a data leak protection feature where you can set keywords to block any outgoing communication. Google Workspace has built-in spam, virus, and malware detection, which scans all documents and attachments.

Office 365 Security Features

Office 365 features Microsoft Defender, a security app for the entire productivity suite.

It allows you to enable multiple-factor authentication for all user passwords. With multi-factor authentication, users need to provide more forms of authentication before accessing their accounts, compared to the two-factor option that Google Workspace offers.

The most common options are prompts via text message, mobile app notification, or authenticator app.

It also uses its own AI tools to learn each user’s work habits, detect suspicious activities, and flag them if something looks out of place. With the business plan, you get access to Microsoft Defender, a premium security solution that keeps your data secure.

Microsoft also offers extended support towards email authentication protocols such as 365 DMARC. This solution specifically protects against inbound phishing emails sent to your business domain. You can specify to email servers how to respond to emails sent from your domain that fail the authentication checks.

It includes a data loss prevention tool to protect against data theft and leaks. Using the device management tool, your organization can also restrict user access to company-issued devices.

Office 365 also uses Microsoft’s spam, virus, and malware detection tools to scan all documents, emails, and attachments.

Verdict: Office 365 because they offer multi-factor authentication protocols and advanced security analytics in higher-tiered plans. It’s suitable for enterprise businesses with strict security needs or those operating within highly regulated industries.

Customer Support

Google Workspace Customer Support

Unfortunately, Google doesn’t have a great reputation for customer support. It’s extremely hard to connect to a real person to resolve or troubleshoot issues you’re having with their products or tools.

Beyond that, Google only offers web-based support through live chat, help center, and their community.

The main problem with web support is that you must have an internet connection to receive help. While you can purchase enhanced support with Google Workspace, it’s only in their Enterprise plan.

Office 365 Customer Support

On the other hand, Office 365 doesn’t withhold support channels from its users regardless of the pricing plan. All plans offer online and 24/7 phone support. In addition, you get access to technical support for troubleshooting and implementation.

Verdict: Office 365 is best because it also offers phone support, even for the lowest tiers of service.

Google Workspace vs Office 365 – Which One Is Better?

Google Workspace is the better option for most people, including small to medium businesses and startups. Even a complete beginner can master apps like Docs, Sheets, Meet, and Calendar. You can set up everything in just a few clicks, and it’s easy to collaborate with team members.

Office 365 is more suitable for enterprise-level businesses where all employees work from an office using a Windows PC. Their desktop apps are top-notch, especially if you are in a Windows ecosystem.

This comparison is similar to Mac vs. PC or Apple vs. Android. Office 365 provides better functionality in many cases, but it’s much harder to use and learn. Google Workspace is easy to understand and much faster to set up.

We hope this article helped you compare Google Workspace vs. Office 365 to find out which one is better. You may also want to see our list of top WordPress plugins and tools for business websites, along with the best free business tools for small businesses.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Google Workspace vs Office 365 Comparison – Which One Is Better? first appeared on WPBeginner.

June 6, 2024

How to Get More Global Visitors (WordPress International SEO Tips)

Wouldn’t it be great if you could attract more visitors from around the world to your website and increase traffic?

As the president of a popular WordPress SEO plugin, I’ve seen a growing trend toward the need for localization (adapting your content to a specific target audience) on websites and in online marketing.

I believe that many businesses can unlock tremendous potential by combining basic localization techniques with SEO best practices.

In this article, I will share proven international SEO tips that have helped me and many others, including entrepreneurs, marketers, and bloggers, to attract a global audience.

Note: This is a guest post by Benjamin Rojas, the president of All in One SEO, the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. This is an expert column that we publish on Thursdays, where we invite a WordPress expert to share their experiences with our readers.

Tips on getting more international visitors

I will break down the article into step-by-step tips that you can use. If you want, you can also jump to a section by clicking the links below:

Why Target Global Audiences With International SEO?
How to Target Users in Different Regions With International SEO
Choose Regions You Want to Target
Translating Websites into Local Languages
Choose URL Structure
Keyword Research
Optimizing Pages for Multi-Regional SEO
Redirecting Users to Regional Content
Let Google Know About Different Versions

Why Target Global Audiences With International SEO?

As the president of one of the biggest WordPress SEO plugins on the market, I have customers from all over the world.

To earn these customers, my team ensures that All in One SEO can be translated easily (50+ languages and counting).

This is just one way to get more global customers, and there are plenty of ways that other businesses can do it.

Here are some of the benefits of targeting global audiences:

More traffic: Anyone from anywhere can visit your website. Why limit yourself? Going international means your audience can explode in size.
Understand broader customer needs: It’s not just about getting hits. It’s about understanding what different people need and want. This can help you tailor your content and marketing to convert more users.
Boost engagement: When you speak someone’s language, literally and culturally, they’re more likely to listen. That means more shares, more sales, and more feedback.
Stay ahead of competitors: Many businesses aren’t making the most of international SEO yet. Start now, and you’ll be steps ahead.

How to Target Users in Different Regions With International SEO

Over the years working in the SEO industry, I have learned that tiny changes in your SEO strategy can often lead to big and meaningful results.

One misconception about offering localized experiences is that it requires too much time and resources.

My experience has been totally different.

International SEO does require some effort, but it is quite easy, and the benefits are worth your time.

1. Choose Regions You Want to Target

Not all businesses and websites target international audiences.

However, for most websites, a huge chunk of visitors are coming from abroad, even when you are not specifically trying to reach any region in particular.

That’s not to say that you have to make your website available in every language. However, you can determine and target which languages and regions are the easiest low-hanging fruit.

The perfect tool for this is Google Analytics. It tracks your website visitors and shows you who they are, where they are coming from, and what they are interested in.

Many users have reported difficulty finding the reports they need in Google Analytics. I recommend that you use MonsterInsights, which is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.

I use MonsterInsights because it makes Google Analytics so easy. You get all your important reports right inside the WordPress dashboard.

For instance, you get this ‘Top 10 Countries’ report showing where your visitors come from.

MonsterInsights showing top 10 countries

In this example screenshot, you can easily see countries where most people speak a language different than your website’s language.

You also see countries where users may speak the same language but have regional differences, such as currencies and cultural and geographical factors.

Reaching those customers by providing them with a more localized experience can bring in more users and revenue from these regions.

For more details, you can read this guide on how to track visitors to your WordPress website.

2. Translating Websites into Local Languages

Once you have found the regions you want to target, translating your website into local languages is the easiest way to offer a better user experience.

Only a decade ago, creating multilingual websites was not easy. However, now you have excellent tools and resources that make it a breeze.

The easiest way to serve multilingual content in WordPress is by using a WordPress translation plugin like WPML.

Is WPML the right multilingual plugin for your WordPress website?

It is one of the best translation plugins for WordPress and allows you to create a multilingual WordPress website easily.

You can translate your website by yourself or outsource translations. It is not too expensive, and the quality of human translations is typically high.

WPML also offers AI-powered automatic translations on a pay-as-you-go basis. It is built using state-of-the-art language models from Microsoft, Google, and DeepL.

Alternatives: MultilingualPress and TranslatePress

What Should You Translate?

The big question that comes next is whether you should translate a select few pages or your entire website.

From an SEO point of view, here is how I see it:

Translating just a handful of pages means you’re missing out on ranking opportunities in other languages. Having a higher number of translated pages creates more chances to climb the search engine ladder.

Remember, internal linking is a major player in SEO. To make it work on a multilingual site, you need enough translated content to create meaningful links between pages.

So, my advice is: Go for a full site translation. This will boost your SEO and enhance the user experience, which search engines love.

3. Choose URL Structure

When offering different versions of a website to different regions, your WordPress translation plugin will ask you to choose a URL structure.

You can use any of the following URL structures:

Subdomain URL structure (Example: https://en-uk.yourwebsite.com). The disadvantage of this method is that search engines consider subdomains to be individual websites. Your root domain will not benefit from this structure.
Subdirectory URL structure (Example: https://yourwebsite.com/en-uk/) This URL structure takes advantage of your root domain’s authority and is good for rankings in many cases.
Country-level domain names (Example: https://yourwebsite.co.uk). For this method, you will need to register domain names for each country you want to target. The advantage is that ranking in a country with a local domain name is easier. The disadvantage is that this will be treated as a standalone website with little benefit to your main domain name.
Language parameter in URL (Example: https://yourwebsite.com/?lang=en-gb). This method is not recommended because it makes it difficult for you to manage URLs and for users to realize they are seeing a geo-targeted page version.

In my opinion, a subdirectory URL structure offers the most SEO benefits for small businesses. It is also easier to manage and set up redirects.

4. Keyword Research

Keyword research is the technique used by SEO experts and marketers to find the search terms their target audience is using.

It applies to international SEO as well.

For example, while your website might rank for “Sneakers” in the United States, in the UK, your customers could be searching for “Trainers,” and in Canada, they might use the term “Runners.”

You can see this in action on the Nike website. It has highly optimized pages for ‘Trainers’ on the Nike U.K. store, ‘Sneakers’ on the Nike U.S. store, and ‘Shoes’ on Nike India.

You can select countries while doing your keyword research to find the search volume.

I recommend using SEOBoost for keyword research. It is an all-in-one tool for on-page SEO and keyword research.

Simply enter your main keyword and then select the region you want to target.

It will generate a comprehensive analysis of search rankings, content analysis, and what you need to outrank the competition.

Alternative Tools: Semrush, LowFruits, WPBeginner Keyword Generator

If you haven’t done keyword research before, then you may find WPBeginner’s keyword research tutorial a solid starting point.

5. Optimizing Pages for Multi-Regional SEO

I have seen many businesses beating the competition with effective on-page optimization.

This becomes even more important if you are offering multilingual content targeting different regions.

This is where your WordPress SEO plugin comes in handy.

You will need an SEO plugin like All in One SEO, which helps you optimize each page with different SEO titles and descriptions.

Aside from the copy on your page, post, or product content, you will need to pay attention to SEO settings.

Depending on which translation plugin you are using, you can edit the SEO settings in the translation editor. For example, here is the WPML translation editor, where the AIOSEO settings are highlighted.

Ensure you optimize each page for the focus keyword you chose for that region.

Basically, you will repeat the steps to optimize your blog posts for SEO but for a different locale and region.

Submit Multilingual Sitemaps

Once you have started translating your content into other languages, you need to tell search engines about the translated content.

The best way to do this is with XML sitemaps. These documents tell search engines about all the content on your website, which makes it easier for them to crawl and rank your posts and pages.

If you are using All in One SEO for WordPress, then you can go to the AIOSEO » Sitemaps page to configure sitemaps.

All in One SEO replaces the default WordPress XML sitemaps with advanced features. It automatically includes all your translated content in your sitemaps and even supports RSS, video, news, and HTML sitemaps.

After that, you can go ahead and submit your sitemap to Google Search Console.

Create Multilingual Landing Pages and Homepages

Unfortunately, many businesses often overlook their landing and home pages when thinking about regional user experience.

Including cultural references and location-specific content on your pages can help with conversions. However, overlooking these elements may cause your landing and home pages for different regions to be less effective in converting traffic into customers.

I recommend creating pages using a page builder like SeedProd. It is a beginner-friendly WordPress page builder with an intuitive drag-and-drop design tool.

What the SeedProd page builder interface looks like

This way, you can easily create duplicate landing pages and translate them. You can also create separate home pages for different regions.

Basically, this approach significantly reduces the amount of work required without compromising on conversions.

6. Redirecting Users to Regional Content

In my experience, a personalized user experience is great for conversions. For that reason, you might be considering automatically sending users to content made for their region and language.

That’s a big NO!

Google and other search engines discourage setting up automatic redirects for translated versions of your website by detecting users’ IP addresses or cookies.

This is because automatic redirects may stop search bots from crawling all versions of your site and prevent users from viewing content they originally found.

Instead, it’s better to set up a language or region switcher for your multilingual and multi-region content. This will inform users that the content is available in their language or region and give them an opportunity to switch.

Note: All top WordPress translation plugins come with language switchers.

What About Manual Redirects?

In some cases, you may need to set up manual redirects. For instance, if you change the URL structure from a subdomain to a directory URL.

These types of redirects may be necessary because the old URL structure would result in 404 errors.

You can use the All in One SEO redirection manager to set those redirects. It lets you set up site redirects and use REGEX to save time.

Alternatively, you can use the free Redirection plugin to set up redirects. For instructions, see how to set up redirects in WordPress.

7. Let Google Know About Different Versions

Google is pretty good at detecting content in different languages and showing it to users in those regions. However, I still recommend explicitly telling search engines about the language or region of your content.

This can be done using the hreflang HTML tag. Most WordPress translation plugins will automatically add that to the header of your site. It is a tiny string that looks like this:

Why Is It Important?

Let’s say you have three versions of a page, all in English, but they show prices in regional currencies.

The content of those pages may appear quite similar to search engines and could be considered duplicate content.

By adding the hreflang tag to the HTML code, you tell search engines about the different versions of the page to avoid duplicate content.

I hope this article helps you attract a more global audience with your international SEO strategy. You may also want to check out whether AI content is bad for SEO or look at these case studies of websites that doubled their traffic in 6 months.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Get More Global Visitors (WordPress International SEO Tips) first appeared on WPBeginner.

May 16, 2024

How to Use the Psychology of Popups to Boost Signups by 250%

I’ve been doing popup marketing for over a decade now, and I’ve found that it is one of the most effective ways to prompt action and get more leads online.

The problem is that popups can be annoying. Studies show that over 80% of website visitors will form a low opinion of your brand if they feel your popups and ads are deceptive, intrusive, or obnoxious.

That’s why it’s important to use psychological principles in your popups to grab attention and influence user behavior. This can help you create popups that offer real value to your visitors instead of annoying them.

Here are some of my favorite tactics and approaches that leverage the psychology of popups to increase signups by around 250%.

Note: This is a guest post by Thomas Griffin, the co-founder of OptinMonster, the #1 WordPress popup builder and lead generation plugin. This is an expert column that we publish every Thursday, where we invite a WordPress expert to share their experiences with our readers.

I will cover a few different topics in this post, and you can use the quick links below to navigate between the different sections:

Optimize the Timing of Popups to Be Less Intrusive
Personalize Your Popups Based on User Behavior
Gain Users' Trust Using Social Proof
Nudge Users Towards Action Using Scarcity and Urgency
Build Anticipation Using the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)
Inspire Action by Using Emotional Appeal
Use Color Psychology to Capture Attention

1. Optimize the Timing of Popups to Be Less Intrusive

Imagine walking into a physical store, and a salesperson immediately approaches you with suggestions about what to buy. They then continue to come back with more recommendations throughout your visit. Although they have good intentions, this may feel pushy and intrusive.

The same thing can happen with popups, but it doesn’t have to. Waiting until your visitors are ready before you display a popup with helpful content can improve the user experience and boost conversions.

This is a psychological principle known as ‘pattern interrupt’. An unexpected popup can disrupt the visitor’s flow and refocus their attention, similar to a salesperson approaching you in a store.

But for the popup to be welcomed, there needs to be a balance between being intrusive and providing helpful information. This makes the timing of popups critical.

Popups should appear only once your users are most receptive and least likely to be disrupted.

A popup that appears immediately upon visiting a website might be perceived as intrusive. By contrast, one that shows up after they spend some time on your site will feel more acceptable.

That’s why the best popup marketing software, including OptinMonster, will allow you to set powerful targeting rules. These rules enable you to show personalized campaigns to users based on a large set of triggers or conditions.

For example, time-based rules can display a popup after the user has spent some time on your WordPress website or on a specific page after they visit a certain number of web pages. Alternatively, a scroll distance rule can display a popup after the visitor has scrolled down the page a set distance.

OptinMonster can also use InactivitySensor to time when a user has been inactive, or Exit-Intent technology to sense the exact moment they are about to leave your website.

Using these strategies has allowed online businesses like Shockbyte to increase their signups by more than double, so it’s worth playing around with different timing rules to see what works for your business.

2. Personalize Your Popups Based on User Behavior

Studies show that 74% of your visitors expect personalized content, and it can boost conversions by 42%.

Personalization is an important psychological principle, and tailoring your popups to users’ interests and behavior patterns will make them more relevant and engaging.

The problem is that if you are using popups to collect leads, you don’t already have any personal information about your target visitors, which makes personalization challenging.

This is where personalized triggers can make a big difference.

For example, OptinMonster’s referral detection feature can easily determine the domain from where each visitor visits your website. This allows you to display a custom popup if the user was referred to your site from another specific website.

Let’s say you’re getting a lot of Pinterest traffic. You could create a targeted popup that offers people a discount when they sign up for your newsletter.

You can also trigger a popup based on the specific page they are currently looking at. That page can give you a clue as to what the visitor is interested in and then show a popup related to the topic being discussed or the product being reviewed.

Another option is to personalize your content based on the visitor’s location. 80% of marketers use location-based personalization and get great results.

Once a user has signed up for your newsletter, you can offer even greater personalization. That’s because many popup software options have access to the personal data you have collected, such as the visitor’s name, gender, age, birthday, and more.

This means you can easily create more personal popups, such as mentioning the customer by name. You simply insert this information on your popup using smart tags.

On top of personalized triggers, I like to learn more about visitor behavior by tracking the user journey using an analytics plugin like MonsterInsights.

For example, you can see which pages a specific user views before filling out your signup form.

This will show you which form or web page inspires the most signups, how much time users spend on your website and how far they scroll down the page before signing up, as well as the amount of engagement your videos are getting.

You can then use this information when deciding where and when to display your popups and optimize your highest-performing pages to boost organic traffic and leads.

When people are unsure what to do, they often follow the crowd. Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people are more likely to take action if they see others doing it first. It’s like a shortcut their brains use to decide if something is good or not.

That’s why people are more likely to follow someone on Twitter who already has lots of followers, watch a movie that has good user reviews, or choose a restaurant with a long line of people waiting to get in rather than one that’s empty.

You can use social proof on website popups by including user testimonials. This can help build trust and credibility in a short amount of time, influencing users towards conversion.

The simplest way to get started with social proof is to display the number of subscribers you already have. This is a quick way to lend credibility to your newsletter.

Another way you can use testimonials for social proof is influencer marketing. Including endorsements from celebrities and experts in your niche who use your products or subscribe to your newsletter can gain your users’ trust and grow your signups.

For example, Be A Better Blogger achieved a 26% conversion rate by featuring a celebrity testimonial in a popup.

You could also display your social media statistics, list the awards and badges you have won, list the number of 5-star ratings you have, and more.

All of these strategies will show your visitors that other people are happy with your product or service, making them more likely to try it themselves.

4. Nudge Users Towards Action Using Scarcity and Urgency

Urgency and scarcity are two closely linked psychological principles that can be used in popups to nudge users toward a quicker decision.

Many of my clients with online stores like to create a sense of urgency with a limited-time discount. You can use the same strategy to boost your signups by offering a discount coupon or giveaway to new subscribers for a limited time.

You can place this information with a countdown timer in a popup to emphasize that time is running out. This is easily done in OptinMonster by adding a Countdown block to a time-sensitive offer popup, as you can see on the Kennedy Blue website.

Typical examples of scarcity include products that are low in stock and limited edition products. To encourage newsletter signups, you could create a sense of scarcity by offering a lead magnet or other incentive to the first 100 or so users to subscribe.

Alternatively, you can offer special deals for new subscribers each month. Crossrope is a fitness company specializing in jump rope workouts, and they used this strategy successfully to explode their email list by 900%.

You can highlight the limited-time deal by using phrases like “Don’t miss out!” or “Last chance!” on your popups.

Remember, the key is to use urgency and scarcity ethically and authentically. Make sure you avoid manipulative tactics that annoy people and may damage user trust. For instance, never display fake countdown timers or mark an item as low stock when you have plenty.

5. Build Anticipation Using the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)

Do you ever feel left out when other people are enjoying something exciting that you’re not? This is a psychological trigger known as FOMO, or the fear of missing out.

You can create a sense of FOMO using the strategies of urgency, scarcity, and social proof that we covered above. But that’s just the start.

Another way is to offer exclusive content that only email subscribers can access. This could be content on your website or downloadable content such as an ebook.

Using OptinMonster to Offer Content Upgrades

Content locking lets you blur or remove content below a set point on the page as you see above. Visitors have to opt in to see the rest of the article. Some of my customers have boosted conversions by 150% using this strategy.

You can also build anticipation by making your visitors aware of something that is not yet available, such as an upcoming product, a new ebook you are working on, or a webinar or training course. Let them know that they can stay updated by signing up for your mailing list.

Marie Forleo builds anticipation on her website by promoting her flagship course, B-School. Although this course runs just once a year, Marie includes a notice on her website that visitors can subscribe to her email list so they stay in the loop and don’t miss out.

6. Inspire Action by Using Emotional Appeal

Popups that bring to mind positive emotions are more likely to resonate with users and have them respond to your call to action. You can appeal to strong emotions such as excitement, curiosity, aspiration, and humor.

Power words are persuasive words you can use in your popups to trigger a psychological or emotional response. They can entice your users to sign up and are one of the easiest ways to increase your conversion rates.

My team put together a helpful list of the best power words to use in your popups that can increase conversions by 12.7%.

Rich Page tested two different headlines in his popup, one that didn’t use power words and the one in the following screenshot that does.

With the optimized popup that appealed to his visitors’ emotions, he increased his signup rate from 12% to 50%.

If you need help coming up with enticing content for your popup, then you can use OptinMonster’s Smart Optimizations feature to improve your existing copy using AI. It takes your text and asks ChatGPT to suggest improvements.

My team programmed the AI using our decades of experience creating successful OptinMonster campaigns so that these suggestions will have a higher chance of converting.

You can select one of the suggestions or ask for more variations.

Another way to appeal to users’ emotions is by using images. Placing a heart-melting photo like this on a popup can increase email signups by 63%.

By strategically using emotional appeal and considering these points, you can create popups that connect with users on a deeper level, influence their decisions, and ultimately increase your conversion rates.

7. Use Color Psychology to Capture Attention

I came across a study that shows it takes just 90 seconds for someone to make a judgment about something they see, and 90% of that opinion is based on color.

Color psychology can be a powerful tool to grab attention and influence user behavior in your website popups, ultimately leading to more signups.

However, when I researched the best colors to use on popups, I found that the specific colors you use don’t have a major impact on conversions. Instead, the key thing is to choose button colors that are high-contrast, on-brand, and consistent.

Speaking of buttons, you can increase your signups by 14.34% just by adding a call to action button to your popup. And you can increase that rate even more by using colors that make it easy for website visitors to find where they’re supposed to click.

Notice the contrasting color that AutoAnything uses on their CTA button. They were able to increase their daily email optins by 250% using this email subscription popup.

I hope this tutorial helped you understand the psychology of popups and boost your signups. You may also want to read my last guest post on why popups continue to stay relevant and the best email marketing services for small business.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Use the Psychology of Popups to Boost Signups by 250% first appeared on WPBeginner.

May 9, 2024

6 Tips to Create More Interactive Forms in WordPress and Increase Conversions

Do you want to make your forms more interactive and boost their conversions?

In my experience, the difference between a website that converts and one that doesn’t often lies in how users interact with elements like forms.

Today, I am going to share six easy-to-implement tips for creating more interactive forms in WordPress. These tips have been tested and proven to increase leads, conversions, and sales.

This is a guest post by Jared Atchison, co-founder of WPForms, the best WordPress form builder plugin. This is an expert column that we publish every Thursday, where we invite a WordPress expert to share their experiences with our readers.

Creating interactive forms to boost conversions

I will cover a few different topics in this post, and you can use the quick links below to jump to the different sections:

Why Make WordPress Forms More Interactive?
Use Conversational Forms
Add Image and Icon Fields
Use Conditional Logic
Add Rich Media Content
Use Lead Forms
Open Forms in Popups
Bonus Resources for WordPress Forms

Why Make WordPress Forms More Interactive?

As a business owner and web developer, I’ve seen firsthand how a well-designed form can boost conversions on a WordPress website.

Think about it. When a form feels like a chat rather than a chore, people are naturally more inclined to stick around and fill it out.

I am not just talking about adding bells and whistles, either. It’s about making the experience smoother and more engaging for your users.

A recent study found that over 66.6% of users who start filling out a form submit it successfully. (Source: Zuko Analytics).

Making your forms easier and more interactive is the key to helping them get started.

Borrowing strategies from expert marketers, I’ve tested this approach in my businesses with incredible success.

Here, I will share these tips so you can replicate them on your WordPress website.

1. Use Conversational Forms

Users generally don’t mind filling out forms as long as it isn’t tedious and doesn’t feel like a chore.

Instead of burdening customers with mundane tasks, I prefer to engage in conversations that build connections.

Forms that flow like a conversation give users the impression that they are interacting with your business directly.

Due to their design, they are aesthetically pleasing, easier to fill out, and give a more personable impression of your business.

Why Do I Recommend Conversational Forms?

They provide a conversational flow, which provides an engaging user experience, leading to more conversions.
The multi-step interactive UI breaks down the form into smaller steps and eliminates the tediousness of traditional forms.
The conversational nature of these forms yields more thoughtful and accurate responses from users.
Most modern form builders let you create a separate URL for the conversational form. This makes it easier to send users to the form page directly from your social media and email marketing campaigns.

I recommend using conversational forms for longer forms (those with more than four fields), online application forms, customer surveys, and feedback forms.

Need help setting this up? WPBeginner has a step-by-step tutorial on creating conversational forms in WordPress.

2. Add Image and Icon Fields

Images and icons are a lot more engaging than plain text. Marketers use them everywhere in articles, emails, social media, and print.

Why not use them in your forms, too?

As the co-founder of a form builder plugin for WordPress, I found image and icon fields to be some of the most requested features by my customers and other marketers.

Adding images and icons to multiple-choice fields instantly transforms your form into an interactive visual experience for users.

Why Do I Recommend Image and Icon Fields?

Increased Conversions – Images and icons can instantly transform your form into an interactive visual experience, leading to more conversions.
Easy to Understand – Images and icons can make your forms easier to understand, even for international users who may speak a different language than the content on your website.
Aesthetically Pleasant – They look better, fit in less space, and are easier to select (particularly on mobile devices).

I highly encourage you to use them for multiple-choice fields whenever possible. They work very well for quizzes, online surveys, and polls.

Most modern WordPress form builders support this feature, including WPForms, Formidable Forms, and more.

For more details, here is a tutorial on adding image choices to WordPress forms.

3. Use Conditional Logic

Your forms don’t need to be static. Using conditional logic, you can change how the form behaves based on user interaction.

In my experience, forms that change with user interaction tend to outperform static forms.

For instance, if you are creating a customer feedback form, then you can ask for a user’s phone number if they choose it as an option to contact them.

Similarly, if you conduct a customer survey, you could show a form field based on the user’s input in an earlier form field.

Why Do I Recommend Using Conditional Logic?

Leaner Forms – You can reduce the number of fields using conditional logic and make your forms easier and quicker to fill out.
Increased Relevance – Your form can adjust itself to a user’s input, making a more personalized experience for users.
Efficient Data Collection – Instead of collecting unnecessary data, you can collect only the data needed. This also makes it easier for you to process that data in more meaningful ways that are relevant to individual users.

It’s a good idea to review your forms and consider using conditional logic to improve them and increase conversions. It’s also worth checking out this collection of the best conditional logic plugins for WordPress to get more ideas.

4. Add Rich Media Content

It’s also a good idea to add rich media around your forms to make them more interactive and helpful.

This rich media could be images, videos, audio, and more. I have personally had great success with videos just before the form fields.

An explainer video just before the form field helps boost conversions. As my friend John puts it in his article on the anatomy of a high-converting landing page:

96% of people report that they watch explainer videos, and studies show that adding a video to a landing page increases conversions by 86% on average.

John Turner – Founder of SeedProd

The same is true for your forms, too.

You can add a Content field to your form. This allows you to insert multimedia content like rich text, headings, logos, images, and videos.

Why Do I Recommend Using Rich Media Content?

Convince Users – Adding multimedia content helps you convince users by explaining the benefits without them leaving the form or the page.
Improved User Experience – You can answer some user questions right away, which improves their experience and leads to more conversions.
Aesthetically Pleasant – Images and text can be used to improve the overall feel of the form. You can use your brand logo, add testimonials and social proof, and photos to show faces of real people behind your business.

If you feel something is missing in your form, then I recommend adding rich media elements to fill that gap.

5. Use Lead Forms

Lead forms are highly optimized and designed for capturing more leads. Similar to conversational forms, these multi-step forms allow users to answer one field at a time, creating a smoother experience.

According to a study by HubSpot, only 40% of marketers use multi-step forms, but their conversion rate is 86% higher. So, it’s well worth using them on your business website.

I have seen excellent results with lead forms, particularly when they are used for content upgrades or similar incentives.

Why Do I Recommend Using Lead Forms?

Optimized for Lead Generation – These conversational style forms are optimized for lead generation and have proven to improve conversions by marketing experts.
Forms That Stand Out – Unlike other lead generation forms, they are not overused. With their conversational flow, they provide users with a new interactive experience that doesn’t feel like an email capture form.
Progress Bar – Users are more likely to complete a form when they see exactly how many steps they are away. Throw in an incentive for them, and they will probably follow through.

You can use a form builder like WPForms to create these forms. You can also make multi-step forms with popular lead generation software like OptinMonster or Thrive Leads.

Since we are talking about generating leads, I also recommend taking a look at the WPBeginner insider tips on growing an email list. It is the actual playbook used by WPBeginner with incredible results.

6. Open Forms in Popups

There is a well-known psychological phenomenon that marketers use, which is called the “endowed progress effect.”

It states that people are more likely to complete a task if they believe they have made some progress towards it or started it.

That’s why forms that appear after users interact with an element (like a button or banner) on your website can be highly effective.

Why Do I Recommend Form Popups?

Require User Interaction – Opening forms in a popup requires users to interact with your website, which means they are already engaged in what you have to offer and more likely to convert.
Reduce Distractions – Your form is neatly tucked away, and you can use the available website area to use other persuasion techniques in your website copy, layout, and design.
Reduce Bounce Rates – Users don’t leave the page they are viewing and can resume browsing after submitting the form.

I know many of you might be wondering, aren’t popups a bit annoying? And you are right. They can be, but only when used incorrectly.

Here are some examples of the world’s biggest brands using popups. Pay attention to how many of these popups are used to display forms (Hint: most of them have forms).

Bonus Resources for WordPress Forms

Here are some additional tips that I found to be highly useful for getting better results from your WordPress forms:

Track Form Conversions – Make sure you track form conversions to find out how your changes have affected their success rates.
A / B Testing – Try A/B split testing to experiment with different types of forms and find the winner with the most conversions.
Track Marketing Data – Each website generates a ton of data based on user interactions on your site. Tracking this data helps you make informed decisions to reduce friction, improve the customer journey, and grow your business.

I hope these tips helped you create more interactive forms in WordPress to increase conversions. You may also want to read about using AI to boost your marketing or using FOMO to increase conversions.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 6 Tips to Create More Interactive Forms in WordPress and Increase Conversions first appeared on WPBeginner.

May 2, 2024

How to Create an Effective Content Plan in WordPress (9 Expert Tips)

Are you hitting a brick wall trying to plan upcoming content for your blog or business website?

A WordPress website is a powerful tool. But so many business owners waste their potential by not being intentional about the content they create.

The right content will attract the right visitors. It will answer their questions and provide the information they are searching for. Plus, it can help you grow a community of people who appreciate the types of products or services you provide.

So, here are my top tips on how to create an effective content plan in WordPress.

Note: This is a guest post by Chris Christoff, the Awesome Motive partner in charge of MonsterInsights, the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. This is an expert column that we publish every Thursday, where we invite a WordPress expert to share their experiences with our readers.

I will cover quite a few topics in this post. Here’s a handy list so you can jump to the section you are most interested in:

What Are Users Searching For?
Which Search Terms Are Bringing Visitors to My Website?
Who Is Visiting My Website?
What Is Working on My Site?
What Is Declining in Traffic on My Site?
What Is Missing From My Site?
What Are My Competitors Doing Well?
Use AI Tools to Discover More Content Ideas
Schedule Your Content Plan on a Content Calendar

1. What Are Users Searching For?

Internet users perform 5.9 million Google searches per minute. Wouldn’t it be great to know what they are looking for so you can provide the answers? That’s what keyword research is all about.

Keywords are the specific words and phrases that users type into Google and other search engines to find the content they are looking for.

You can explore the top keywords related to your blog’s niche using free and paid keyword research tools. Throughout this article, I’ll touch on how to use a number of these tools.

Let’s start with Semrush. This is one of my favorite keyword research tools because it makes it easy to discover keywords related to your WordPress blog.

You simply type in any word or phrase related to your business, and Semrush will give you a list of keyword variations, questions, and related keywords.

A list of related keywords in the Semrush platform

These will reveal topics you should plan to write about. Make sure you include these keywords in a natural way within the content of your blog posts.

Alternative: The WPBeginner Keyword Generator is another great and free option.

Another useful tool is Google Trends, which shows you how the popularity of a keyword varies over time. This can show you whether a specific keyword is becoming more or less popular, or if it is searched for more often at certain times of the year.

This will help you spot topics that are quickly growing in importance and topics that are best written about at certain times of the year.

For example, you will want to schedule some topics for summer or winter or during certain holidays, like Christmas or Thanksgiving.

2. Which Search Terms Are Bringing Visitors to My Website?

Now you have a useful list of the relevant keywords that users are generally searching for, you should spend some time learning about the phrases people are using to find your WordPress site right now. This will be a list of search terms you are already ranking for.

One of the best tools to uncover this information is Google Search Console. It’s a free tool that lets you monitor your site’s presence in Google search results.

However, like many online tools, Google Search Console is quite technical and can be difficult for beginners to use.

That’s the problem MonsterInsights intends to solve. It connects with Google Search Console and Google Analytics to let you view easy-to-understand reports right from your WordPress dashboard.

For example, MonsterInsights offers a Search Console report that lists the top 50 Google search terms that bring visitors to your site.

Viewing Google Search Console Report in MonsterInsights

This data shows you which topics your current visitors are interested in. Since you are already getting traffic on those keywords, you can improve your search performance by creating new content on those topics.

Next, I recommend asking yourself whether your WordPress blog posts are ranking for the right keywords. If you have already written content that targets specific keywords but are not getting much traffic for them, then you will need to concentrate on creating better content.

3. Who Is Visiting My Website?

I always suggest that business owners plan their content around their target audience. This is the group of people you want to reach with your products and services.

They are likely to have similar demographics, needs, and interests, and understanding what they are will help you write more engaging content.

The best tool for understanding your website visitors is Google Analytics. It’s a free tool that collects all sorts of information about your website visitors, including the country they live in, the operating system and browser they use, and even their screen resolution.

You can view this information right from your WordPress dashboard using the MonsterInsights Demographics report. It displays visitor information from Google Analytics in a friendly and helpful way.

You can see your visitors’ ages and genders at a glance. This information will help you plan more compelling content.

For example, you will probably want to write with a different style and voice for young female visitors compared to a website that attracts mainly middle-aged men.

This report also lists your visitors’ interests, revealing the topics your target audience is most interested in. This data is also very helpful when planning content.

For more details, just see this article on how to track website visitors in WordPress.

You may be surprised by this demographic data because you are trying to target a completely different audience. In that case, something has gone wrong with your content, and you should keep these insights in mind when planning new content and updates.

4. What Is Working on My Site?

Another important consideration when creating an effective content plan is looking at the website content that is already working well. These are the posts that are receiving the most traffic and that your visitors spend the most time on.

For example, it’s always a good idea to look for your most important pages and posts.

Once you know which posts are performing the best, you can plan to create more content on similar topics and grow your traffic.

I also recommend checking keyword rankings for your top articles. You may be able to improve their rankings by scheduling updates and optimizations.

You can uncover more detailed insights by installing the MonsterInsights Custom Dimensions addon. This will let you create reports of your most popular authors, top categories, top focus keywords, and most popular post types.

In turn, this information will help you build a data-driven content strategy that works.

For example, if one author’s posts are performing well, then you can train the rest of your team to follow their techniques. Or discovering your top categories will show you popular topics on your website that you should plan more content for.

5. What Is Declining in Traffic on My Site?

Content planning isn’t just about deciding on new articles to write. It’s also about regularly updating existing content to stay relevant and accurate.

Content decay is where your posts decline in traffic and search rankings over time. They will continue to lose traffic unless you update that content.

This can happen when your content becomes old or outdated, or your competitors write better content targeting the same keywords. It may also be that those keywords are no longer being searched for as often, or that Google has changed their algorithm.

In my opinion, content decay is one of the biggest problems faced by website owners and online businesses.

That’s why it’s a good idea to monitor how individual posts are ranking using a WordPress SEO plugin. All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is one of the best options, and it helps you easily optimize your website for search engines.

It has a Content Performance report that displays your best-performing posts and pages and shows whether their search engine rankings are rising or falling.

You can quickly see which posts have lost the most rankings in the ‘Top Losing’ tab.

AIOSEO also offers a more detailed Content Rankings report. This displays the date you last updated all of your website content, the change in ranking, and a helpful graph of how each post has performed over the last year.

Once you identify the posts on your website that are declining, you can schedule updates so they will start to rank well again.

You should update any information that has changed since the post was written and optimize it for SEO. For example, you might update the images, embed a video, or add a table of contents or FAQ section.

6. What Is Missing From My Site?

Your WordPress blog is a work in progress. That means there will be lots of topics that users are searching for that you haven’t written about yet.

One of the best things you can do when planning new content is to perform a content gap analysis. This process involves comparing the keywords your audience is looking for against your website content and planning to write new posts to fill the gaps you haven’t covered yet.

I showed you earlier how Semrush can help you discover important keywords that you should cover in your articles.

It also offers a Keyword Gap report that can automatically show you which keywords are missing from your website or not performing well.

You simply enter the URLs of your top competitors to discover the keywords they are ranking for but you are not.

Then, you can easily filter the list to find keywords that are missing or weak on your blog.

Once you identify which topics are missing, you can plan to create helpful content to fill those gaps and improve your website’s search performance.

Now, I want to show you some other ways you can get content ideas from your competitors.

7. What Are My Competitors Doing Well?

I’ve been working in the content marketing space for a long time, and it’s more competitive than ever. You can only stay ahead of the game if you keep your eye on what others are doing in your industry.

Chances are, some of your competitors’ content is outperforming yours. Performing a competitor analysis lets you study what they are doing well so you can improve your own website and ultimately outrank them on search.

You’ve just seen how the Semrush Keyword Gap report shows you the keywords your competitors outrank you on. You can also use their Domain Overview report to discover a more complete analysis of competing websites.

Once you enter your competitor’s URL, you’ll be able to see its authority score, organic search traffic, paid search traffic, backlinks, and a whole lot more.

You’ll also see the countries that provide the most traffic and a graph of their traffic over time.

Besides that, you can discover their top-performing pages and tons of other useful data that you can use to improve your content strategy.

I appreciate how Semrush lets you dig in and explore each aspect of the report to give you fresh insights into your competitor’s SEO strategies.

Now, you can use that information to set goals for your website and identify areas for improvement.

8. Use AI Tools to Discover More Content Ideas

Marketers who use AI (artificial intelligence) see an average of 70% increase in ROI (return on investment). When brainstorming new content ideas, artificial intelligence tools can help by identifying relevant trends, topics, and keywords.

This can spark new content ideas and help you stay on top of current industry discussions.

It can be as simple as typing the right prompt into ChatGPT.

With practice, you’ll start using longer and more precise prompts to get the exact help you are looking for. Here are a few of my own examples that you can use when creating a content plan.

This prompt simply asks for 10 blog post ideas on certain topics, along with a title for each post:

Create a list of at least 10 blog post ideas on the topics of stress management and mental health. Suggest an SEO-friendly title for each post, and use an emotional and persuasive tone in post titles.

Below, you can see the ideas that ChatGPT gave me in response:

ChatGPT Prompt to Generate Content Ideas

If you are planning to write product reviews, then you can ask the AI for the most popular products used in a particular area, and a brief explanation of how they can help, like this:

Create a list of the most popular equipment needed in a home office, along with the pros and cons of each one.

In the same way, you might ask for a list of problems people typically have when trying to accomplish a particular task:

Create a list of problems people typically experience when performing a content gap analysis. Provide three tips on how to overcome each problem.

Specific questions like this will provide a more helpful list of suggestions than generic prompts.

Once you have generated a list of new content ideas, artificial intelligence can help you write powerful headlines for each post. For example, I recommend starting by using a free headline analyzer tool on websites like WPBeginner and MonsterInsights.

After that, you can use tools such as All in One SEO to optimize your headlines. With the click of your mouse, you will be offered 5 optimized post titles that are designed to capture your audience’s interest using up-to-date best practices.

For more details, just see this tutorial on how to write powerful headlines with AI.

9. Schedule Your Content Plan on a Content Calendar

If you followed all my tips above, then you should now have a very long list of ideas. This will include new blog post topics, optimized titles and keywords, and articles that need to be updated.

It’s now time to make a plan. The problem is that a large list of keywords can overwhelm beginners, so they simply give up.

You can make sure those posts actually get written or updated by scheduling them on your content calendar. This will act like a roadmap, giving you a clear overview of your content strategy and keeping you on track.

You can use popular online task management tools like Asana or Trello. You may already be familiar with these web apps, and they come with powerful features that help you stay on track.

Additionally, if you have a multi-author blog, then solutions like PublishPress Pro can improve your editorial workflow. This WordPress plugin lets you create a content calendar with custom post statuses, editorial comments, and email notifications.

Just make sure that your publishing schedule is consistent and achievable. Your goal is to create a bird’s eye view of your content strategy that keeps you organized and productive.

I hope these practical tips help you create an effective content plan for your WordPress blog. You may also want to see these guides on how to increase your blog traffic and the best analytics solutions for WordPress users.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Create an Effective Content Plan in WordPress (9 Expert Tips) first appeared on WPBeginner.

April 26, 2024

Google Analytics vs. Jetpack Stats: Which One Should You Use?

Are you debating whether to use Google Analytics or Jetpack Stats for your WordPress website?

Both are popular analytics platforms, but you might be wondering which one is the better fit for you. Especially with changes to the Jetpack Stats pricing model, you may be asking yourself whether switching to Google Analytics is worth it.

Here at WPBeginner, we’ve used and recommended a variety of analytics tools to help countless users find the perfect option for their needs.

In this article, we will break down the key differences between Google Analytics and Jetpack Stats so you can make an informed decision and pick the best software for your website.

Why Trust WPBeginner?

The WPBeginner editorial team has over 16 years of experience in WordPress, digital marketing, analytics, and web development. We’ve tried and tested various plugins, themes, and software on our own projects to help users find the best solutions.

You can learn more about our WPBeginner editorial process.

Google Analytics vs. Jetpack Stats: An Overview

Ever wondered where your website visitors come from, what pages they visit, and what they click on? This is where website analytics come in. These tools help you understand your audience and their behavior so that you can make data-driven decisions to improve your website.

Google Analytics is one of the most powerful analytics platforms available. It’s a free tool by Google that allows you to examine your website’s traffic in depth.

On the other hand, Jetpack Stats is an analytics tool that comes bundled with the popular Jetpack plugin from Automattic, the folks behind WordPress.com.

Like Google Analytics, It provides an overview of your website traffic, like how many visitors you have and which pages are most popular.

Both Google Analytics and Jetpack Stats are free to use (though the second has paid plans). This makes them popular choices for website owners looking to track their WordPress site stats without breaking the bank.

Why Are WordPress Users Leaving Jetpack Stats?

Jetpack Stats used to be a popular choice, but some pricing changes have left users frustrated.

Many users are now classified as ‘commercial’ and require paid plans to access features they previously had for free, even if their website is non-profit or they only make a few dollars a month. This can be prohibitively expensive for very small businesses or people who are simply fundraising through their websites.

This pricing change has led many people to explore alternatives, including Google Analytics.

While Google Analytics is powerful, it’s not built specifically for WordPress. Fortunately, to connect it with WordPress, you can use beginner-friendly plugins like MonsterInsights.

Now that you know why users are migrating away from Jetpack Stats, let’s review the key features of both Google Analytics and Jetpack Stats. You can use the quick links below to navigate through this article:

Ease of Use – Google Analytics vs. Jetpack Stats
Web Analytics Features – Google Analytics vs. Jetpack Stats
Data Accuracy – Google Analytics vs. Jetpack Stats
eCommerce Tracking – Google Analytics vs. Jetpack Stats
Support – Google Analytics vs. Jetpack Stats
Pricing – Google Analytics vs. Jetpack Stats
Google Analytics vs. Jetpack Stats: Which Is Best?

Ease of Use – Google Analytics vs. Jetpack Stats

Ease of use refers to how user-friendly a platform is, including how easy it is to set up and navigate. Let’s compare how Google Analytics and Jetpack Stats stack up in terms of user experience for WordPress users.

Jetpack Stats: Simple Yet Easy to Use

Our first impression of Jetpack Stats is it’s a breeze to set up. You can just install the WordPress plugin like any other and connect it to your WordPress.com account to get started.

The interface is simple and uses clear language. Right in the WordPress dashboard, you’ll see your key stats like visitor traffic, views, comments, likes, referrer traffic, and visitor location.

It also displays the percentage change compared to the previous period, making it easy to see trends.

Switching between daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly views is also easy for analyzing your overall performance.

For bloggers, you can switch to the ‘Insights’ tab for specific data like peak traffic times, most popular tags and categories, and top commenters.

Google Analytics: Slightly Higher Learning Curve

Setting up Google Analytics itself is quite straightforward, as you only need to answer a few questions on their website.

However, some users may find it tricky to configure it with WordPress as some code is involved. Thankfully, plugins like MonsterInsights simplify the process. When we tried it, all we needed to do was install the plugin and connect it to an existing Google Analytics account.

While the Google Analytics platform is powerful, its interface can be overwhelming for beginners due to the sheer number of buttons and settings. Fortunately, there’s a built-in tour in the Google Analytics dashboard to help newcomers navigate the platform.

MonsterInsights also helps bridge this gap by displaying essential Google Analytics reports right within your WordPress dashboard.

For example, the Reports tab offers a well-organized layout of your data, showing new vs. returning visitors, device breakdowns, top traffic sources, top-performing posts/pages, and more. You can also customize the date range to get an overall view of your performance.

Viewing Google Analytics data in the WordPress dashboard using MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights also keeps things organized with clear tabs. Each tab focuses on a specific area of your website’s performance, like traffic, eCommerce (if you have an online store), search console data, form submissions, site speed, and more.

This makes it easy to find the data you’re looking for without getting overwhelmed. Plus, the language used in the reports is straightforward and easy to understand, even for beginners.

Publisher overview report in MonsterInsights

Winner: Jetpack Stats

For its straightforward setup and user-friendly interface, Jetpack Stats wins this round for ease of use. It’s ideal for beginners who want to quickly access essential website analytics without getting bogged down by technical details.

While Google Analytics has a steeper learning curve, once you master it, navigating and extracting insights becomes easier. Plus, using a plugin like MonsterInsights simplifies the entire process and lets you see all your data directly in WordPress.

Web Analytics Features – Google Analytics vs. Jetpack Stats

When choosing an analytics platform, it’s very important to consider how much data you will need to understand your website’s performance effectively. The more insights you have, the better you can tailor your content and improve your overall website experience.

Jetpack Stats: More Focused on Blogs

Jetpack Stats’ feature richness depends on the plan you choose. The free version offers real-time visitor data (updated every 30 minutes), basic stats and trends for posts and pages, and GDPR compliance. These features might be enough if you primarily run a blog.

Here’s a breakdown of the metrics you can see in the free version:

Traffic overview – 7-day highlights of visitor traffic, page views, likes, and comments with trend comparisons.
Referrals – Websites sending visitors to your site.
Visitor location – Which countries your users come from.
Engagement – Top-clicked external links and email stats.
SEO insights – Keywords people use on search engines to find your site.
Content performance – Insights into your posting activity, including most popular posting time, yearly activity overview, and top viewed tags and categories.

While the free plan might be suitable for basic blog analysis, we found it lacked the depth needed for website optimization. Upgrading to a paid plan only unlocks early access to features and UTM tracking, which is necessary if you run targeted marketing campaigns.

Google Analytics: A Powerhouse of Site Stats

Google Analytics' traffic acquisition reports

Due to its vast data collection, Google Analytics is a widely used platform across many industries. Similar to Jetpack Stats, it provides data on traffic, users, referrers, countries, and devices.

That said, we found Google Analytics stats to have much more detailed information, such as:

Site traffic sources – You can see traffic acquisition channels between organic search, paid search, referrals, and social media traffic.
Engagement analysis – View the average engagement time for each page to determine visitor interest.
SEO integration – Connect with Google Search Console to analyze clicks, impressions, and organic search landing page performance for specific keywords.
Conversions – Define key events using Google Tag Manager to track user actions like button clicks, contact form submissions, downloads, or purchases.
Audience demographics – Gain deeper insights by analyzing user demographics like age, region, and city.
Actionable insights – Use the ‘Insights & recommendations’ feature for easy-to-understand suggestions on improving your website.
Visual reporting – Use the ‘Explorations’ feature to create visual reports based on your data.

MonsterInsights takes Google Analytics a step further. This plugin allows you to access even more features like user journey visualization, displaying your top posts on your website based on data, and site notes to give context to important data points.

Adding annotations to a MonsterInsights report

Winner: Google Analytics

The sheer scope of Google Analytics data and features make it the clear winner. You can delve deeper into user behavior, track conversions, gain valuable SEO insights, and create customized reports for your website’s performance.

While Google Analytics might appear intimidating, MonsterInsights simplifies the experience with its user-friendly dashboard reports.

Data Accuracy – Google Analytics vs. Jetpack Stats

When your analytics tools provide accurate information, you can make informed decisions about your website’s content, marketing strategies, and overall user experience.

On the other hand, inaccurate data can lead you down the wrong path, causing you to invest time and resources in ineffective approaches.

Jetpack Stats: Generally Accurate, But Limited Filtering

Jetpack Stats gets data by placing a tracking script on your WordPress website. This script monitors visitor activity and sends the information back to Jetpack for processing.

When it comes to bot traffic, we couldn’t find a lot of information on how Jetpack Stats automatically excludes it in your reports. That said, it is possible to manually mark a referrer as spam so that it doesn’t show up in your site stats.

Another thing you should know is that Jetpack Stats has said that the total visitors count and the specific referrer numbers may be missing from their reports because of rising privacy laws.

So, if your site’s traffic stats look like they are coming from direct sources, they may actually be from other referrers. Simply put, the data you see might not be totally accurate.

Jetpack Stats' explanation about referrer discrepancy

Google Analytics: More Powerful Accuracy Measures

Google Analytics uses a more advanced tracking system that collects detailed and accurate data on visitor behavior.

From our research, here are some methods Google uses to ensure data accuracy:

IP filtering – Users can define specific IP addresses or address ranges to be excluded from tracking. This is useful for filtering out internal traffic from your office or development team.
Bot filtering – While not perfect, Google has advanced algorithms to identify and exclude bot traffic from your analytics reports.
Data sampling – For very high-traffic websites, Google Analytics may use data sampling to provide reports with an acceptable level of accuracy while reducing processing time.

Also, Google, as a search engine giant, has access to a vast amount of data on user behavior across the Internet. This data allows them to improve their algorithms and provide more accurate analytics data for website owners.

That said, rising concerns about data privacy have led some website owners to hesitate about using Google Analytics. However, we’ve found a workaround for using Google Analytics while complying with GDPR laws.

With MonsterInsights, you can use the Privacy Guard feature to keep personally identifiable information out of Google Analytics. Plus, there is an EU Compliance addon that can anonymize visitor IP addresses and integrate with cookie compliance plugins.

How to make Google Analytics GDPR compliant

Winner: Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the winner for data accuracy. Their comprehensive tracking system provides a more reliable picture of your website traffic.

While Jetpack Stats offers real-time updates, the lack of clear measures to address bot traffic out of the box can skew your data.

eCommerce Tracking – Google Analytics vs. Jetpack Stats

eCommerce tracking lets you monitor the performance of your online store. By understanding customer behavior within your shop, you can identify areas for improvement and optimize your sales strategy.

Let’s see how Jetpack Stats and Google Analytics stack up in terms of eCommerce tracking.

Jetpack Stats: Limited Insights for WooCommerce Stores

If you have a WooCommerce shop, Jetpack Stats integrates with it to some extent. However, it has limitations.

For one, your shop’s landing page stats get bundled with ‘Home page/Archives’ data since the shop page is technically an archive of your products. This makes it difficult to see the difference between shop-specific traffic and sales from your overall website traffic.

Technically, Jetpack adds a ‘Store’ tab to the dashboard if it sees WooCommerce installed on your website. We were actually excited to check it out, as we expected to see some more data about our demo store.

However, this tab simply redirects you to the WooCommerce plugin’s Analytics Overview tab, which displays data like total sales, net sales, orders, average order value, and product information.

These details are handy, but it’s not true eCommerce tracking provided by Jetpack Stats itself.

Google Analytics: In-Depth Tracking and Insights

As we mentioned earlier, Google Analytics allows you to define key events, including purchases, as conversions. This lets you see in-depth analysis of your eCommerce performance within dedicated reports.

You can see not only purchase data but also track product views, cart additions, and abandoned cart rates, helping you identify areas for improvement in your sales funnel and reduce cart abandonment.

Google Analytics also provides valuable customer insights like customer lifetime value, which helps you understand the total revenue a customer generates over their relationship with your store.

MonsterInsights Pro unlocks even more eCommerce data. When you open the eCommerce report, you can see top conversion sources, add-to-cart rates, product removal rates from carts, and abandoned checkout percentages.

All of this data is helpful for optimizing your website for maximum sales.

Winner: Google Analytics

Google Analytics’ ability to track key events, analyze customer journeys within the sales funnel, and provide valuable customer lifetime value data makes it a powerful tool for online store owners.

While Jetpack Stats offers a basic WooCommerce integration, it doesn’t have as much information as Google Analytics.

Support – Google Analytics vs. Jetpack Stats

You will likely have questions or issues while using your analytics platform. Having access to reliable and timely WordPress support can help you resolve any problems quickly.

Jetpack Stats: Documentation and Paid Priority Support

Jetpack Stats offers two primary support channels: documentation and support request submission. Their documentation is generally well-organized and helpful, with screenshots to guide you in the right direction.

Upgrading to a paid plan grants you priority support. This means your questions are handled before those submitted by free plan users. However, even with paid plans, support remains limited to submitting a request form.

We couldn’t find any direct channels like live chat or phone support.

Google Analytics: Extensive Resources and Community Support

Google Analytics offers a different support approach: comprehensive documentation and a large, active community.

Google Analytics has detailed documentation covering a wide range of topics. However, the sheer volume of information can be overwhelming, and some documentation entries may lack visuals.

The good news is that Google Analytics is a widely used platform, so there’s a vast online community with countless resources. You can go to the Google Analytics Help Community if you have any questions.

Many websites, including WPBeginner, also offer tutorials, guides, and troubleshooting tips specifically for Google Analytics. Overall, finding solutions to the most common issues is easy with a quick Google search.

If you use MonsterInsights, then you gain access to additional support options. MonsterInsights offers support tickets and a friendly AI chatbot to help you with any issues related to the plugin and Google Analytics.

Winner: Google Analytics

While both platforms offer documentation, Google Analytics wins due to their sheer volume of available resources and community support. Additionally, many Google Analytics plugins provide excellent dedicated support.

Pricing – Google Analytics vs. Jetpack Stats

When choosing an analytics tool, you will want to find one that fits your budget while offering the features you need. Let’s explore the pricing structure of Jetpack Stats and Google Analytics.

Jetpack Stats: Freemium with Tiered Pricing

Jetpack Stats offers a freemium model, meaning it has a free tier and paid plans with additional features. The free version is for non-commercial websites, but you can also name a monthly contribution.

It’s important to note that Jetpack defines ‘non-commercial’ strictly. Even non-profit organizations that ask for donations are considered commercial, so you have to read the fine print carefully.

The paid plans start at $8.33 per month, billed yearly (nearly $100 annually), and will increase based on your monthly traffic volume. Here’s a breakdown of their pricing tiers:

10,000 monthly views: $8.33
100,000 monthly views: $16.67
250,000 monthly views: $25
500,000 monthly views: $41.67
1 million: $58.34
2 million: $79.17

The paid plans include priority support, early access to features, and UTM tracking.

Google Analytics: Free with Premium Options

Google Analytics is a completely free tool, though a paid version called Google Analytics 360 is available for large-scale enterprises. For most website owners, the free version offers more than enough features.

When it comes to plugins that connect your website with Google Analytics, some are free, freemium, or paid. Site Kit by Google is a popular free option, though the data you can view from WordPress is a bit basic.

MonsterInsights has a free version but also offers paid plans starting at $99.60 per year for a single website. These subscriptions provide additional features and insights on top of the free Google Analytics data.

Winner: Google Analytics

Considering the free version and the wider range of freemium plugins available, Google Analytics is again the winner in this round.

The free version offers significant value for most website owners, and paid plugin options like MonsterInsights offer more value than Jetpack Stats.

Google Analytics vs. Jetpack Stats: Which Is Best?

Google Analytics is best for professional bloggers, businesses of all sizes, and anyone who wants to gain deep insights into their website traffic. It provides the most comprehensive data collection and analysis features.

Plus, MonsterInsights is a beginner-friendly plugin that lets you see your Google Analytics data through user-friendly dashboards, simplified information, and useful add-ons.

On the other hand, Jetpack Stats may be suitable for bloggers with basic needs. If you primarily run a blog and don’t require complex data analysis, then Jetpack Stats’ traffic updates, basic post and page stats, and SEO insights could be enough.

Also, if you are already using Jetpack for other features like security, the built-in Jetpack Stats might be a convenient option to get basic WordPress blog analytics without needing another tool.

Since both platforms are free, we encourage you to give them a try and see which one is most suitable for your website.

Learn More About WordPress Stats and Analytics

We hope this article helped you compare Google Analytics vs Jetpack Stats. You may also want to check out our guide on how to do A/B split testing in WordPress and our expert pick of the must-have WordPress plugins to grow your website.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Google Analytics vs. Jetpack Stats: Which One Should You Use? first appeared on WPBeginner.

April 18, 2024

How to Make $5000 of Passive Income Every Month in WordPress

Are you looking for a low-maintenance side gig to generate some extra income? Selling digital downloads might be the answer.

I’ve been personally selling digital downloads for over a decade. It’s a painless way to make money because you don’t have all the overhead of selling physical goods, and you can set up an online store with little effort using a free WordPress plugin.

Let me share my experiences with you and tell you how you can make $5000 of passive income per month selling digital downloads on WordPress.

Note: This is a guest post by Chris Klosowski, the president of Easy Digital Downloads, the best digital eCommerce plugin for WordPress. This is an expert column that we publish every Thursday, where we invite a WordPress expert to share their experiences with our readers.

How to Make $5K of Passive Income Every Month in WordPress

Why Digital Downloads Are a Great Way to Make Passive Income

You’ve heard the expression, ‘No pain, no gain.’ This means that achieving something worthwhile normally requires sacrifice and hard work.

But what if I told you that you can make money with your WordPress website while you sleep?

That’s passive income.

Passive income is money that you earn with little to no ongoing effort. Think of earning interest on your savings account or renting out a spare room.

Or selling digital downloads.

Compared with selling physical products, digital downloads are a breeze. There’s no need to keep track of inventory, no running out of stock, no need to hire storage space or workers to manage it, and no shipping and handling.

Like everything, it requires a little setup. You’ll have to create or obtain the files you want to sell. And you’ll need to set up a WordPress website and install an eCommerce plugin.

Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) is one example of a plugin designed specifically for digital downloads. It lets you get started for free, and you can purchase extensions to add the features you need as you grow.

Once your online store is set up, you can continue to sell your digital product over and over again. So, the money you make will require very little ongoing effort.

You can even use automation to save time and effort and make the income truly passive.

How Much Passive Income Can You Earn With Digital Downloads?

The amount of money you can make by selling digital downloads varies a lot, depending on your skills, experience, and the type of digital products you are selling.

When starting out, it’s typical for beginners to make just a few hundred dollars a month in initial sales.

That being said, in time, it’s not uncommon for established sellers with a loyal audience to achieve $5,000 or more per month.

For example, Emily McDermott tells the story of how she made a promising $700 in her first month of selling attractive business documents. After just three months, she was making over $7,000 a month. Plus, she spends just a couple of hours a week working on her online store.

The potential doesn’t stop there. Top earners make tens of thousands of dollars each month. But this is rare and will take more effort.

This extra work may take it out of the ‘passive’ income category. But with that sort of revenue, you’ll probably want to spend more time working on your online store anyway.

A number of our Easy Digital Downloads customers have achieved this. For example, Set Sail Studios has made $236,000+ selling fonts, and Escape Room Geeks has made $390,000+ selling printable escape room kits.

Set Sail Studios Make Money Selling Unique Fonts

Are you interested in making this kind of passive income? Your first step is to decide on a digital product to sell.

The Best Types of Digital Products for Passive Income

The best digital products for creating passive income have a high perceived value but require little ongoing maintenance. They should generate a profit and line up with your business niche.

Potential customers will only buy your digital download if it solves a problem or meets a need. A unique product in a specific niche will help you stand out and attract an engaged audience.

To create passive income, you need to choose digital products that don’t require ongoing effort.

For example, software products like WordPress plugins and themes can be quite profitable, but they often require continuing development and support. That takes an ongoing investment in time, so they are not the best options for a side gig that makes passive income.

On the other hand, a simple software program or web application that solves a common problem may be perfect. The EDD Software Licensing add-on can be used to activate the buyer’s copy of the software without your direct involvement.

eBooks are another profitable option. If your blog contains a lot of useful information, then you can easily repurpose the content as an eBook. You could create multiple books by choosing blog posts on specific topics, such as your most engaging and popular posts in specific categories.

Editing or Duplicating Posts in MPL-Publisher

Alternatively, you may be able to repurpose the content as an online course and sell ongoing subscriptions to access the material. This offers more value than eBooks but also takes more time to set up. I will talk more about subscriptions later.

Perhaps you gained a lot of insights when you set up your business and are passionate about helping others do the same. You could sell an eBook about the key steps to creating a successful business or offer useful business documents and Excel templates.

Just make sure you choose a product you have expertise in. For example, Sam Parrett from Set Sail Studios creates and sells unique brush fonts, and this aligns well with his graphic design website.

Photographers could create a stock photo library, and designers could sell digital art products, printables, or Canva templates.

The types of digital products that can generate passive income are endless. For inspiration, you can read about the pros and cons of many categories in this post on the most popular digital products to sell on the EDD blog.

How to Reduce Your Workload With Automation

When making passive income, you’ll want to be as hands-off as possible. In my experience, the best way to do this is to use automation to work smarter, not harder.

Luckily, you can get your website to perform many routine tasks automatically using automation.

These include email marketing, social media, customer service, admin tasks, and more. It’s simply a matter of choosing the right automation tools and setting them up correctly.

If you are using Easy Digital Downloads, then the software will automatically email purchase receipts and order confirmations to your customers. You can even personalize your automated eCommerce emails, leading to increased customer engagement.

Using some extra tools, you can also automate your email marketing. This means that instead of writing emails manually one by one, you write them just once and set up triggers based on user activity to personalize the emails and send them automatically.

Personalized emails based on user activity are 320% more effective than generic emails.

You can set up the triggers using the FunnelKit Automations plugin for WordPress and send out the emails using a top email marketing service like Constant Contact.

Additionally, you can use automation to reduce cart abandonment. By offering incentives and reminding visitors about their forgotten purchases, you will be able to build customer loyalty and encourage future purchases that contribute to your passive income stream.

For example, OptinMonster‘s exit-intent technology will watch the user’s mouse to determine when they are about to leave your website. It can then automatically display a popup just in time, offering an incentive to complete the visitor’s purchase.

There are plenty of other automated workflows you can use while selling digital downloads. To learn about the best automation tools, see how to use eCommerce automation to save time and money.

Marketing Strategies to Boost Your Passive Income

I mentioned earlier that you can get started selling digital downloads by using the free version of Easy Digital Downloads. Let me introduce you to some paid marketing tools and add-ons that can help you make even more passive income.

In my last guest post, I talked about how order bumps are one of the best ways to encourage customers to spend more money on digital downloads. This is when you offer the buyer extra or upgraded products during checkout.

This is a great strategy when you are selling multiple digital products. You can automatically add order bumps with the EDD cross-sell and upsell add-on to boost your sales.

For example, if you sell music downloads and a customer purchases a song, you can offer them the option of purchasing the entire album while checking out. They may appreciate the suggestion and make the larger purchase.

Upselling Digital Products With an EDD Add-on

Alternatively, if you are selling your digital products through WooCommerce, then you can see this tutorial on how to create an order bump for WooCommerce.

Another strategy is to turn a one-off payment into ongoing income by offering subscriptions or recurring payments.

This is a good strategy when you are selling online training or access to cloud-based software. Subscriptions allow your customers to avoid a large initial bill and bring in ongoing revenue to your business.

Subscriptions are easy to set up with the EDD recurring payments add-on. And because it’s an automated system, you will get fewer late or missing payments.

I hope these tips help you make passive income from your WordPress website. You may also want to see these guides on the right way to create an email newsletter and the best AI chatbots for your website.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Make $5000 of Passive Income Every Month in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

April 17, 2024

Is WordPress Outdated? The Good, Bad, and Ugly (Honest Review)

Have you seen rumors on the internet that WordPress is outdated?

WordPress is the most popular website builder on the market, powering about 43% of the websites. With its large market share, flexibility, and regular updates, it is safe to say that WordPress is not outdated at all.

However, you may have seen some blog posts or threads on the internet convincing you not to build a website on the platform.

In this article, we will discuss if WordPress is outdated and shed some light on the good, bad, and ugly side of the platform.

Is WordPress Outdated? The Good, Bad, and Ugly

Is WordPress Really Outdated?

WordPress is an open-source software that is completely free, flexible, and easy to use.

Note: Please do not confuse WordPress.org with WordPress.com, which is a self-hosted service. For details, you can see our comparison on WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org.

WordPress is also highly popular. It holds over 64% of the CMS market share, and about 36% of the top 10,000 websites are powered by WordPress, showing that it is the best website builder on the market.

Plus, many big-name brands like Sony Music, CNN, and Disney Books have also used WordPress to build their websites.

So, if WordPress was outdated, then why would some of the most popular brands in the world use it to power their websites?

The answer is that WordPress is updated regularly, is secure, and cost-effective, along with plenty of customization options for all kinds of website owners and small businesses.

In short, the blog posts that you may have seen on the internet about WordPress dying are untrue. These rumors are usually promoted by people who use other alternatives and are convinced that those platforms are better than WordPress.

Having said that, let’s look at WordPress’s good, bad, and ugly sides to determine if the platform is outdated. You can use the quick links below to jump to the different parts of our discussion:

The Good
The Bad
The Ugly
What Is the Future of WordPress?
Frequently Asked Questions About WordPress

The Good

First, let’s take a look at some of the advantages of using WordPress as a website builder to prove that it isn’t outdated at all.

1. Regular Updates

WordPress has around 2-3 major releases each year. These updates normally introduce new features and improvements, along with measures to minimize security vulnerabilities.

Additionally, WordPress also gets some minor updates every few weeks that focus on bug issues, boosting performance, and any minor security problems.

Since WordPress is open source, it is maintained by developers all over the world who also fix errors and even add new features that are then released in major updates throughout the year.

Another benefit of WordPress is that it is automatically updated every time there is a minor release, so you won’t have to waste time doing it yourself.

We recommend always using the latest version of WordPress to add new features, improve performance, and stay updated with the latest industry standards.

For more details, you may like to see our tutorial on how to safely update WordPress.

2. Ease of Use and Flexibility

WordPress is super popular due to its ease of use and flexibility. This means you don’t need any coding knowledge to build a website on the platform.

That is why there are almost 4 million WordPress blogs and websites in the USA alone.

The platform has a clean and user-friendly interface with a very straightforward menu on the left side of the screen. This makes it easy for beginners to manage their websites right from the dashboard.

WordPress also offers the block editor, where you can use different blocks from the panel, including image, heading, video, quote, column, or group blocks to create posts and pages.

Additionally, it is flexible and allows you to add all kinds of customizations using WordPress themes and plugins.

Opening the block inserter library in WordPress

For example, you could use a theme like Astra or a theme builder like SeedProd to build an attractive site.

Similarly, you can also add contact forms, build online stores, add social media icons, create lead generation campaigns, and so much more using the 59,000 plugins available in the WordPress.org directory.

For more ideas, you may like to see our expert picks for the must-have WordPress plugins.

Overall, WordPress has a great balance between ease of use and flexibility because it offers an intuitive interface for beginners.

On the other hand, it also has advanced customization options for experienced users through themes, plugins, and open-source code access.

For more information on this topic, you can see our beginner’s guide on why WordPress is hard and how to make it easier.

3. SEO-Friendly

WordPress is SEO-friendly and up-to-date with the latest SEO standards because it uses clean and semantic code, which is easy to understand for search engines like Google.

Plus, it allows you to customize your permalink structure, easily add titles and meta descriptions, and comes with built-in taxonomies in the form of categories and tags.

This makes it easier for users to organize their content and improve their search engine rankings.

All these settings are available in WordPress by default and can easily be configured right from your dashboard. You can also use some plugins and tools to optimize your content further.

To do this, we recommend using All in One SEO for WordPress because it is the best SEO plugin on the market.

It allows you to add titles and meta descriptions and comes with features like a broken link assistant, XML sitemaps, on-page SEO analysis, a robots.txt editor, social media cards, a redirection manager, and more.

Plus, it has schema markup for articles, products, FAQs, and recipes that can boost your rankings and organic click-through rate.

Choose FAQ from the Schema Catalog in AIOSEO

For more details, you can see our ultimate WordPress SEO guide.

4. Security

A lot of users on the internet believe that WordPress is overly vulnerable to hackers, malware, and bugs.

However, that is an over-exaggeration.

WordPress is a secure platform that is monitored by security experts worldwide. Since it is open source, its source code is always available for developers to study and debug security issues.

Ultimate Guide to WordPress Security by WPBeginner

You can even add an extra layer of security to your WordPress site by using popular security plugins like Sucuri. This tool adds a firewall that prevents bad traffic, hackers, and malware from reaching your server.

Plus, Sucuri uses a content delivery network (CDN), which can boost your website’s performance and speed.

Apart from WordPress, all the themes and plugins that you are using are also secure because most premium plugins pay security experts to audit their code. This means that even if malware is found in a theme or plugin, it is patched up pretty quickly.

Plus, plugins submitted to the free WordPress plugin repository must meet certain security and coding standards.

Still, we recommend using security plugins, site backups, strong passwords, and regular updates to make your WordPress site completely secure. For more details, please take a look at our WordPress security guide.

5. Community

WordPress is not outdated because it’s still wildly popular. It boasts a huge community of individuals, including bloggers, developers, and designers, who regularly contribute to the platform.

The WordPress community is known for its inclusivity. It generates a wealth of resources such as forums, blogs, documentation, tutorials, and video guides to help beginners learn and grow their websites.

For example, the WordPress translation community has fully translated the CMS into over 50 languages and partially translated more than 200.

Individuals and teams all over the world also organize WordCamps and meetups each year to promote global collaboration and share their love of WordPress.

The WordPress community also allows you to contribute your skills to different projects, access support, and provide opportunities to learn from other members of the community.

You can even post job listings for writers, developers, or designers on the WordPress.org website.

Overall, the community is an integral part of WordPress and can be a valuable resource for beginners who are just starting with the platform.

6. Scalable

WordPress isn’t an outdated option because it can be used for all sizes of websites and online businesses, meaning that you can grow from within the platform.

WordPress can be highly scalable if you use the right tools on your website. A lot of WordPress sites on the internet have very high traffic volume and perform exceptionally well.

For example, there are plenty of reliable WordPress hosting services that can handle a high level of traffic without hurting your site’s speed.

Additionally, there are lots of WordPress caching plugins, like WP Rocket, that can reduce server load and boost your page load speed.

You can also offload your static files and media to a CDN network to handle higher traffic loads as your website grows.

For details and tips, you may like to see our guide on how much traffic WordPress can handle.

The Bad

While we think WordPress is a great option for all kinds of websites, there are some potential downsides to using the platform. Here are some cons of using WordPress as your website builder.

1. Reliance on WordPress Plugins

The WordPress.org directory offers more than 59,000 free WordPress plugins. This guarantees that you can find pretty much any tool you need to add new functionality to your website.

While that is a huge benefit, it also means that your website could be heavily reliant on different plugins to add features.

WordPress plugins may sometimes conflict with other plugins or WordPress’s latest software version, which can cause unexpected issues. For example, if you use two plugins that offer the same functionality, then that can lead to some errors.

Not all free plugins receive ongoing support, either. You may install a plugin on your website, only for it to be abandoned by the developer later and become outdated. This can introduce security vulnerabilities or cause WordPress errors.

Checking Whether a WordPress Plugin is Outdated

However, it is important to remember that WordPress plugins go through quite a bit of testing before they are added to the plugin directory. Most of them work nicely, and some may even improve site performance. Still, it is important to be mindful of the potential downsides of using outdated plugins.

For more on this topic, you can see our guide on how to choose the best WordPress plugin.

2. WordPress Errors

WordPress is super easy to navigate, but you can sometimes run into some common errors that can sound scary or even prevent you from accessing your site.

For example, you may come across the Internal Server Error when you are trying to visit your website because the server has run into a problem that it cannot recognize.

In that case, it will be up to you to identify and fix the error. To do this, you can try clearing your browser cache, reuploading core files, increasing the PHP memory limit, or deactivating all your WordPress plugins.

For details, you can see our tutorial on how to fix the internal server error in WordPress.

Other than that, you may also see other WordPress errors like the 504 gateway timeout, password reset, RSS feed error, or WordPress not sending email errors. While they might sound scary, you can easily fix them using the resources available on the internet and WordPress community forums.

For more information, please see our beginner’s guide on the most common WordPress errors and how to fix them.

3. Hosting and Domain Name Costs

WordPress.org is completely free because it is an open-source platform.

However, the cost starts adding up when you need to purchase a domain name and web hosting for your website. A domain name is your website’s name on the internet, like www.wpbeginner.com, and can cost up to $14.99/year.

On the other hand, a hosting plan typically starts from $7.99/month. This can be expensive if you have just started and are on a shoestring budget.

Fortunately, you can get around this by choosing a cheap WordPress hosting provider like Bluehost, which is one of the largest hosting companies on the market. Essentially, you can get started for $2.75 per month.

For more information, you can see our beginner’s guide on how much it really costs to build a WordPress website.

4. Performance Issues

Some people claim that WordPress is outdated because some WordPress websites are slow-loading and have performance issues.

Although WordPress is a scalable platform, that doesn’t mean that your website will automatically be fast. It can still suffer from performance issues that can hurt the user experience and search engine rankings.

Some of the common reasons for slow website speed can be a poor hosting plan, large image sizes, excessive plugins, unoptimized code, or database issues.

In that case, we recommend optimizing your site for speed by lazy loading comments, using JPEG and PNG as image file formats, opting for lightweight themes, and resizing your visual content.

Most importantly, you should ensure that you are using a WordPress caching plugin like WP Rocket. This ensures that your website can handle more traffic without slowing down your server.

For more tips and tricks, take a look at our beginner’s guide on how to boost WordPress website speed and performance.

The Ugly

WordPress isn’t perfect, so here are some more serious disadvantages to consider if you start using it for your website.

1. Needs Regular Maintenance

Even though WordPress is a great website builder, you will still have to perform some regular maintenance tasks to keep your site secure and fast.

For example, we recommend always updating your WordPress to the latest version.

Next, you must create regular WordPress backups, optimize your database, and run performance tests. You should also try changing your site password now and then because it is the first defense against hackers trying to access your website.

For more tips, please see our guide on crucial WordPress maintenance tasks to perform regularly.

While these tasks are necessary, they can be frustrating and time-consuming. Plus, not doing them can hurt your site’s performance and expose it to security vulnerabilities.

However, if doing these tasks feels like too much work, then you can opt for Seahawk Media Services instead. They are the best WordPress services provider that can perform regular maintenance tasks for you so that you don’t need to worry about anything.

Other than that, Seahawk Media also offers speed optimization, SEO optimization, site migration, hacked site repair, website rebuilding, content writing, and so many other services.

Alternatively, you could choose a managed WordPress hosting provider like WP Engine. Their plans start at $20 per month and include VIP hosting services like managed updates, advanced WordPress security, daily and on-demand backups, and a built-in activity log.

2. Bloated Code

WordPress is sometimes accused of being outdated and having bloated code because it has a lot of built-in features for a wide range of websites. However, a lot of these settings are optional and may not be needed by all sites.

These features can add extra code to your pages, which can slow down load times. That being said, the easiest way to get rid of bloated code is to disable all the settings that you don’t want to use on your website.

For example, you can disable the pingback feature that notifies other blogs when you link to them. This functionality is not necessary for all kinds of websites and adds unnecessary bloat to your database.

Check the option to notify bloggers when you link to their post in your article

You can also disable emojis, default themes, and unused plugins to make your site faster. However, we recommend carefully considering features before disabling them, especially if you are new to WordPress.

What Is the Future of WordPress?

After looking at the good, bad, and ugly sides of WordPress, we have concluded that WordPress is not outdated at all and its future is bright.

It is a robust platform that performs regular updates and is SEO-friendly, scalable, and secure, making it the perfect choice to build a website.

Plus, its popularity and community are growing, and it’s even a highly popular platform for online stores, with over 5 million websites powered by WooCommerce alone.

We also expect Artificial Intelligence (AI) to become an integral part of WordPress in the future, and we believe the platform will continue to grow and evolve in the coming years.

If you would like some more information, then you can see our guide on the future of WordPress and what to expect.

Frequently Asked Questions About WordPress

Here are some questions that are frequently asked by our readers about WordPress:

Is WordPress still relevant in 2024?

The answer is yes. WordPress is still relevant in 2024, considering that it powers over 43% of all websites globally.

It is open-source, free, user-friendly, and offers a vast library of plugins and themes that extend WordPress’s functionality, making it the preferred choice for building a website for many users.

Are WordPress sites outdated?

WordPress itself is regularly maintained and updated with new features and security patches. This means that all the websites using the latest WordPress version can be quite modern.

However, some websites on the internet may be using an outdated theme or plugins or a very old version of WordPress, which can lead to a hack.

If you keep your core software, themes, and plugins updated, your WordPress site can be just as modern and secure as one built on a different platform.

Is WordPress losing popularity?

WordPress is still a super popular website builder and holds a 64% share of the Content Management System (CMS) market.

It also boasts a huge community that organizes WordCamps worldwide and promotes global inclusivity. Plus, the community offers extensive plugin support, has translated the platform into over 50 languages, and has forums to help you with your WordPress problems.

Is WordPress really that bad?

No, WordPress is actually a very user-friendly platform where you can build a website without any coding knowledge. It is used by some of the top companies in the world and is super scalable.

For details, you can see our beginner’s guide on is WordPress really that bad.

We hope this article helped you learn if WordPress is outdated, with an overview of its good, bad, and ugly sides. You may also want to see our complete WordPress review and our guide on why you should use WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Is WordPress Outdated? The Good, Bad, and Ugly (Honest Review) first appeared on WPBeginner.

April 4, 2024

Is AI Content Bad for WordPress SEO? (Expert Insights & Tips)

AI (artificial intelligence) is quickly becoming an essential tool in marketing and content creation since it helps bloggers and website owners be a lot more productive.

However, with so many people creating content with the help of AI, how will it affect SEO?

As the president of one of the most popular SEO toolkits for WordPress, I’ve been closely observing and analyzing the impact of AI content on search engine rankings.

In this article, I will answer whether AI content is bad for SEO and share some insights and tips on using AI to your advantage.

Note: This is a guest post by Benjamin Rojas, the president of All in One SEO, the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. This is an expert column that we publish every Thursday, where we invite a WordPress expert to share their experiences with our readers.

Expert advice on using AI content and its impact on WordPress SEO

I will cover a few different topics in this post, and you can use the quick links below to jump to the section you want to read:

What Is AI Content?
Is AI-Generated Content Bad for SEO?
How to Create SEO-Friendly AI Content
Using AI to Generate Headlines
Using AI Tools to Adjust Tone and Style
Optimizing Content Using AI
Conclusion: Is AI Content Good for SEO?

What Is AI Content?

AI content means text, images, videos, and other forms of content that are created by using an artificial intelligence tool like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, DALL-E, Microsoft Copilot, and more.

AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini make it super easy to generate entire articles and essays in just minutes.

Similarly, AI image-generation tools like DALL-E, Midjourney, Firefly, and more can generate visual artwork for your website or blog.

All of these AI tools make it very easy for content creators to make new content on almost any topic under the sun much more quickly than they could before.

Now, before I explain how good or bad this content is for SEO, I want to talk about how AIs generate the content.

How Does AI Generate Content?

AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and others are advanced software trained using a technique called ‘Machine Learning’.

This technique involves feeding AI models lots of data from various sources, including websites, books, magazines, and other sources.

Unfortunately, the vast amount of data used for training AIs is not always factually correct, creative, coherent, or even good.

Developers try to address this by providing better quality data and teaching AIs to assign weightage scores to different data sources. However, AIs can still learn from incorrect, incoherent, and low-quality sources of information.

They are also trained in pattern recognition, which can sometimes lead to an AI condition called hallucination, where the AI could make up its own facts.

That’s why I always recommend double-checking any information generated by AI software because it could be inaccurate. And publishing false information on your WordPress website or blog could make your brand look unprofessional and even hurt your SEO.

Is AI-Generated Content Bad for SEO?

In an earlier guest column, I explained Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines for search.

E-E-A-T stands for:

Expertise
Experience
Authoritativeness
Trustworthiness

Essentially, you will need to meet all of these criteria within your content to be ranked high on the search engine results pages (SERPs) in Google.

Content that is entirely generated by AI may not be able to satisfy these ranking signals for several reasons.

First, AI programs are trained on data from various sources. These sources don’t reflect your ‘Experience’ and ‘Expertise’ as the author because they are coming from third-party sites.

That’s why I always advise my customers to include their firsthand experiences within their online content.

Secondly, you need to consider the ‘Trustworthiness’ of information provided by AI. AI-generated content is not always accurate, could reflect bias, and can even make up things.

Lastly, AI cannot show the authoritativeness of a human author who has gained acknowledgment, earned credibility, and has the credentials to be an authority on a subject matter.

Does this mean that AI content is against Google Search guidelines?

The short answer is no, and here is what Google has to say about that:

Appropriate use of AI or automation is not against our guidelines. This means that it is not used to generate content primarily to manipulate search rankings, which is against our spam policies.
Google Search Guidelines on AI Usage

Google will not be punishing websites for using AI content. However, if AI and automation tools are used solely to manipulate search rankings, then that violates their spam policies.

This means that content entirely generated by AI may not be as good for SEO on its own.

It is missing one very important element: the human factor.

How to Create SEO-Friendly AI Content

In my opinion, it would be unwise to avoid using AI in your content creation process. That’s because it offers plenty of benefits, such as:

Reducing the amount of time you would spend on research.
Helping you come up with quick ideas or a solid outline for your content.
Overcoming writer’s block by letting AI give up a few samples to use as a starting point.

But to make this content actually good for SEO, you will need to use AI as an assistant rather than a content generator.

This allows you to add your experience and authority to the content while still using AI to do the same work but more quickly and efficiently.

I recommend using AI in your content creation process in the following ways:

Generate article ideas.
Create article outlines and let AI help you fill the content gaps.
Proofreading, paraphrasing, adjusting style and tone of content.
Let AI work on portions of content to extend, summarize, or optimize your work.

To summarize, adding your human experience and expertise can make AI content good for SEO.

With this in mind, I will now provide some practical examples of using AI tools to achieve this.

1. Using AI to Generate Headlines

Did you know that 4 out of 5 people will not click on your website even when it appears on the first page of search results?

Headlines or SEO titles help your article gain more clicks in search results. This is what your users will first see when they are looking for content in Google.

However, for your content to stand out, it will need to have an eye-catching and descriptive title.

There is a character limit for SEO titles, plus your competitors may already be using the most obvious headlines. This makes it difficult to write a powerful headline that entices users to click on it.

Luckily, this is where AI can help.

Because AI programs are remarkably good at recognizing and generating patterns, they can help you generate several excellent ideas at once.

For instance, you can use All in One SEO, which includes a built-in AI title generator. It uses OpenAI’s ChatGPT to generate highly engaging headlines.

Note: You will need the premium version of OpenAI and integrate it with the AIOSEO plugin to use this feature.

Simply click on the bot icon next to the ‘Post Title’, and it will generate up to five ideas. They all automatically use the most up-to-date best practices for writing effective headlines.

You can then pick one of the titles that would work best for your article or generate new titles until you find one that you like.

Similarly, you can use the same feature to write an SEO meta description as well.

Alternative tools: Headline Analyzer | Semrush AI Text Generator

2. Using AI Tools to Adjust Tone and Style

One of the biggest mistakes that website owners and bloggers make is not fully understanding their intended audience when creating content.

AI tools can help you get this right.

These tools have spent countless hours and have learned from millions of gigabytes of data. They are incredibly talented in understanding language patterns.

For example, you could use Grammarly to adjust your content for your target audience. It comes with an AI-powered writing assistant, which allows you to choose the tone and style of your content.

Simply click on the Grammarly icon on the screen, then write a prompt like ‘I want you to make suggestions to make the content sound more persuasive’.

Grammarly learns from your tone and style as you continue to use it. Then, it will identify your brand ‘voice’ and show you the results.

You can also instruct Grammarly to rewrite any text in your voice by simply selecting the text and typing the prompt ‘Rewrite in my voice.’

Alternatively, you could also use ChatGPT or Gemini to do something similar. Here is a quick prompt you can try:

I need you to act as a professional proofreader and experienced copywriter. First, you will ask me to provide you with the text that I want to optimize. Once you have received the text, instead of answering, you will then ask me to describe the tone and style I would prefer for the text. After I provide you with tone and style input, you will then analyze the text and make changes to it so that it matches the desired tone and style. You will highlight the changes you have made. Show a summary at the end describing what kind of tone and style the original text had and what changes you made to make it match the style and tone I asked for.

I also find this handy list of useful ChatGPT prompts quite helpful. It has some great prompt writing examples for bloggers, writers, and marketers.

3. Optimizing Content Using AI

In most industries, your content will be competing with other top articles, blog posts, and pages for search rankings.

Search engines look for the most helpful content for a user’s search intent and rank it accordingly.

But how do you know if your content addresses the user intent while being the absolutely best resource for that keyword?

This is another area where AI can help. Its powerful capability to quickly analyze patterns can help you find the missing pieces in your content.

AI platforms like ChatGPT or Gemini can help you compare your draft and make suggestions for inclusion.

For example, here is a prompt that I find works well with ChatGPT 4 and Gemini:

Ask me to provide you with the text of an article I am working on. After receiving the text, ask me to provide you with a search term I am trying to target. After receiving the search term, compare my text to the top 10 search results for the search term I provided. Now, I need you to make suggestions to fill in the content gaps in the text to make it better than the current top 10 search results.

For more specific tools, you could try Clearscope.

It is an AI-powered content optimization software that helps you optimize your content to the next level.

Clearscope uses AI to help you fill content gaps

It uses AI to compare other top-ranking content for a keyword. It can generate an outline, find the questions people are looking for, and more.

You can also paste your content, and it will show you a score and missing keywords and phrases you can add to improve it.

In fact, my own team often uses it to optimize our blog content for search engines.

Conclusion: Is AI Content Good for SEO?

Overall, AI content is not bad for SEO, as long as you are providing your human input. That’s because any content generated entirely with AI does not reflect your unique perspective, experiences, and expertise, so it could harm your website’s SEO.

In my experience working daily with SEO best practices, I have seen firsthand the ever-evolving landscape of search engine optimization and the rising importance of AI.

That’s why I recommend using AI as an assistant tool in your workflow to help you create better content more quickly. However, it should not be a complete replacement for your own voice and content.

I hope this article answered some of your questions about whether AI content is bad for SEO. You may also want to look at these tools for using AI in WordPress SEO or check out expert tips on using AI in marketing.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Is AI Content Bad for WordPress SEO? (Expert Insights & Tips) first appeared on WPBeginner.

March 28, 2024

7 Call to Action (CTA) Best Practices for Guaranteed Landing Page Conversions

Did you know that up to 70% of businesses fail to include an effective CTA (call to action) in their marketing?

Unfortunately, when it comes to landing pages, most visitors won’t take action without a clear nudge in the right direction.

I’ve spent years helping businesses create landing pages that convert, and I’ve learned that a well-written CTA can make the biggest difference in turning someone from a casual visitor into a paying customer.

Since effective CTAs drive conversions on your WordPress website or online store, they need to be laser-focused and inspire immediate action.

In this article, I will list the CTA best practices to follow for guaranteed landing page conversions.

Note: This is a guest post by John Turner, the co-founder of SeedProd, the best landing page builder plugin. We publish an expert column on WPBeginner every Thursday. This is an invite-only column, meaning we don’t accept unsolicited guest post offers.

Call to Action (CTA) Best Practices for Guaranteed Landing Page Conversions

I will cover quite a few topics in this post. Here’s a handy list so you can jump to the section you are most interested in:

Add a Single CTA Per Page to Show the User a Clear Path Forward
Use Strong and Compelling Language to Drive Action
Use Benefit-Driven Language to Incentivize the User
Place Your CTA on a Button for More Clicks
Create Highly Visible CTA Buttons That Get Noticed
Support Your CTA With Extra Landing Page Copy
Use A/B Testing and Analytics to Improve Your CTA

1. Add a Single CTA Per Page to Show the User a Clear Path Forward

Let’s start with the most important CTA best practice. Typically, you should only have only one call to action on a page.

If you want to move your WordPress website visitors to take action, then you need to be crystal clear on what that action is and state it clearly.

Avoid the temptation to add multiple calls to action to a landing page. This can confuse your readers, and they may have difficulty deciding between the options.

This is known as choice paralysis. When faced with multiple choices, a person may hesitate because they are not sure which option is best. The best way to move forward isn’t clear.

In my experience, only having one CTA per page will have more impact on increasing conversions than anything else. In fact, limiting your landing page to a single CTA can increase clicks by over 371% and grow sales by a huge 1,617%.

So, make sure you include a single, clear call to action. This presents a straightforward path for the user to move forward, resulting in more conversions. Or, if you have a long page and want to include multiple calls to action, then make sure that they have the same CTA message.

2. Use Strong and Compelling Language to Drive Action

If you want your visitors to act on your CTA, then you need to use actionable language that clearly tells them what they need to do next.

That means using strong action verbs, such as ‘get’, ‘start’, ‘shop’, ‘download’, and ‘subscribe’.

I find that action verbs convey a sense of confidence and authority. They tell users what you want them to do in a clear and assertive way.

Here are a few good examples of action-packed CTAs:

Get Exclusive Access
Start Saving Today
Shop New Arrivals
Download Your Free Guide
Subscribe for Free Updates

Make sure you keep your CTAs short and sweet so they are easy to scan and digest. ‘Get a free reader’ is a great example of a short, action-oriented CTA from Square.

Example of a CTA That Uses Action Language

Wherever possible, you should also use urgency or scarcity language. This offers a powerful incentive for the user to take action now:

Claim Your Discount Before It’s Gone
Hurry, Limited Time Offer!
Don’t Miss Out on This Deal!
Reserve Your Spot Now (limited availability)

Always be creative and customize your call to action to the specific campaign. Compared with vague, generic CTAs, customized CTAs convert 42% more visitors.

3. Use Benefit-Driven Language to Incentivize the User

Using benefit-driven CTAs with emotional language can create a desire that motivates the user to actually act.

When crafting your call to action, you will want to make sure you briefly highlight the benefits you are offering and explain what the users will gain by taking action. If they can see what’s in it for them, then they will be more motivated to click.

To do this well, you need to understand what motivates your target audience and you may want to use benefit-driven verbs like ‘unlock’, ‘discover’, ‘boost’, and ‘save’.

Let’s say that your current CTA simply says ‘Download Now’. This lets your users know what to do but doesn’t offer any motivation.

A better call to action would be ‘Download Your Free Guide Today’. This highlights the benefit and adds urgency.

Another example is Aura’s landing page. They use the benefit-driven CTA ‘Get Protection Now’.

Notice the words just above the call to action. They support the CTA by mentioning another benefit of saving 70% and the word ‘today’ adds urgency. I will show you how you can strengthen your CTA with supporting copy later in this article.

Here are some more examples of benefit-driven CTAs you can use as inspiration:

Unlock Exclusive Discounts
Boost Your Productivity
Save Big Today
Build Your Skills

When you incorporate benefit-driven language like this, you speak directly to the user’s needs and desires. This transforms your CTA from an instruction into a compelling invitation.

4. Place Your CTA on a Button for More Clicks

Placing your CTA on a button is a simple way to boost conversions. A button is highly noticeable, easy to customize, and clearly wants to be clicked.

Studies show that this works well. In fact, a company called Copyblogger reported a significant 45% increase in clicks when they switched to CTAs in the shape of a button.

You can easily add a call to action button to your landing pages using the WordPress block editor or a page builder plugin.

For example, SeedProd templates let you create landing pages easily and already contain a call to action button. It’s also super easy to customize its color, text, and appearance to match your campaign.

Before we move to my next point, I want to share my favorite tip about making your CTA buttons more effective. Studies show that buttons with an arrow icon at the end can increase conversions by a further 26%.

You can see in the screenshot below that we do this on our own website. We also add a sense of urgency by using the word ‘Now’.

Notice that we made the button more visible by using a contrasting color and placing it in multiple locations. That brings us to our next point.

5. Create Highly Visible CTA Buttons That Get Noticed

It goes without saying that no one will click a button they don’t see. Luckily, there are lots of ways to make your call to action unmissable.

The best way to make your CTA button stand out is to use a bright color that contrasts with the color scheme of your landing page. Make sure the button text is large and readable.

You will find simple settings to do this in the block editor and landing page plugins like SeedProd.

Try different sizes and positions to see what looks best. Plus, make sure you place the button high enough on the page that your visitors don’t have to scroll before they see it.

If you created a long-form landing page, then it’s important to place your call to action at intervals throughout the page. This will make sure that your readers can always see the call to action as they scroll down the page and you will also reinforce its message.

I also like to get the maximum clicks from my CTA buttons by making them accessibility-friendly. You can add alt text to the CTA button to make it visible to people using screen readers. That’s 7 million users in the United States alone.

6. Support Your CTA With Extra Landing Page Copy

Because the copy of a good CTA button is short and focused, you will need to reinforce the value it offers with some extra text on the landing page.

This shouldn’t be too long and should appear near the call to action. Here’s a great example from the OptinMonster website.

Notice their supporting copy ‘Watch the video’ appears right under the CTA button. Video content works well on landing pages because it provides helpful information without complicating the page with too much extra written content.

You will need to make sure that any supporting copy is consistent with the CTA. This will create a seamless user experience that reinforces the message of your call to action.

For example, let’s say you decided on this benefit-focused CTA button:

Get 15% Off

Then the supporting text could say ‘Claim your limited-time discount of 15% off’, and the page title might say ‘Black Friday Week 15% Off Everything’.

By keeping your landing page copy short and simple, you can keep the focus on your call to action and maximize conversions.

7. Use A/B Testing and Analytics to Improve Your CTA

Finally, I recommend testing different calls to action to discover the best variation for your website. You can try changing up the wording, using different colors and shapes, and experimenting with button placement.

To measure which CTA version works best, you will need to perform A/B split testing. This is where you create different versions of your call to action and other landing page elements to test how they affect user behavior.

Just remember to test only two versions of your CTA at a time to make sure the measurements are accurate and helpful. This will let you see clearly if one button style works better than the other or which CTA copy gets the most attention.

For example, a company called Unbounce did split testing on two very similar calls to action. The first said ‘Start your free 30-day trial’ and the second ‘Start my free 30-day trial’. They were surprised to learn there was a 90% increase in click-through rate with such a small change in the second version.

You can try similar experiments with different CTAs on your website. You may not see a 90% improvement, but you can test CTA variations to see which one works better.

I also like to use an analytics solution or heatmap tool to monitor the on-page behavior of my website visitors. This shows me what my users do before they click the CTA and gives me ideas on optimizing my landing page and call to action button.

I hope these insights help you understand some CTA best practices so you can grow your landing page conversions. You may also want to see these WPBeginner guides on how to create a WooCommerce popup to increase sales or the best social proof plugins for WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 7 Call to Action (CTA) Best Practices for Guaranteed Landing Page Conversions first appeared on WPBeginner.

March 7, 2024

14 Ways to Increase Average Order Value With WordPress

Are you looking for ways to encourage customers to spend more money in your online store? You should immediately start tracking the average order value (AOV) metric.

Focusing on AOV is an effective way to grow a business, especially if you are running an eCommerce store. While working closely with numerous online stores over the last decade, I have tested a ton of strategies to see what increases AOV and what doesn’t.

From this experience, I can show you 14 ways that are sure to increase average order value with WordPress to improve your bottom line.

Note: This is a guest post by Chris Klosowski, the president of Easy Digital Downloads, the best digital eCommerce plugin for WordPress. This is an expert column that we publish every other Thursday, where we invite a WordPress expert to share their experiences with our readers.

Ways to Increase Average Order Value With WordPress

What Is Average Order Value (AOV)?

Running an online store is all about meeting the needs of your customers while covering your costs and making a profit. Luckily, there are quite a few ways you can increase your bottom line.

For example, you can try to increase the amount of traffic coming to your website or encourage more of your visitors to make a purchase. This will increase the number of conversions or transactions in your store, leading to more revenue.

A different approach is to try to increase the amount of money you make from each individual transaction. This is known as ‘average order value’ or AOV and is the topic of this article.

AOV is all about how much your customers are spending per order. You can calculate it by dividing your total revenue by the number of orders you received.

Here’s the formula for calculating AOV:

AOV = Total Revenue / Number of Orders

For example, let’s say your online store generated a total revenue of $10,000 from 200 orders in a month. Your AOV would be:

AOV = $10,000 / 200 orders = $50 per order

Understanding and analyzing your AOV can help you gain valuable insights into your eCommerce business. You can then use these insights to make data-driven decisions that improve your profitability and overall success.

Overall, if you sell multiple digital products, then focusing on increasing your average order value can be an easy way to grow your business.

With that being said, to increase your store’s average order value, you simply need to give your customers a reason to spend more.

Let’s take a look at 14 ways you can increase average order value with WordPress.

1. Track the Average Order Value (AOV) Metric on Your Online Store

Your first step is to start tracking AOV on your WordPress website. You can use this data to learn which strategies are working and which aren’t.

My team makes this simple in Easy Digital Downloads by offering built-in reporting so that you don’t have to set up separate tracking software and analytics solutions. All you have to do is go to Downloads » Reports in your WordPress dashboard.

WooCommerce also lets you easily find AOV within their dashboard.

For eCommerce tracking, I highly recommend setting up eCommerce tracking using Google Analytics on your WordPress site.

2. Get Your Pricing Structure Right

Finding the right pricing structure for your products is crucial. It needs to cover your costs and let you make a profit while also offering fair prices that encourage customers to make a purchase.

There’s a lot to consider here. So, my team created a detailed guide on the Easy Digital Downloads blog that will help you structure your digital product pricing for success.

Optimizing your pricing structure may involve some experimentation. Sometimes, you might find that lowering your price raises your AOV because it makes it easier for your customers to purchase more products.

But you won’t know what is working if you don’t measure it. Tracking your store’s AOV metric is a great way to discover what is working and what isn’t.

3. Offer Product Bundles

When considering the pricing structure of your store, don’t limit your thinking to individual products. Bundling different combinations of products can help your customers feel they are getting extra value.

In my last expert column, I mentioned that product bundling makes it easier for customers to make a purchasing decision. Better still, it can encourage them to purchase more, increasing your average order value.

For example, one of our customers, SmashBalloon successfully uses bundling to encourage their customers to try their products in a bundle for a heavily discounted price.

Bundles offer your customers a bulk discount that typically costs 60-80% of the total value of those products. The right combinations of products will cater to the user’s tastes, needs, and budget.

For instance, you could bundle products that are often purchased together. A gaming store might bundle a console together with a game and controller, or you could bundle an eBook with its audiobook version.

Bundles can also encourage customers to purchase more products than they were planning. Someone who just wants to purchase a few stock photos of home offices may be tempted by an affordable ‘Home Office Bundle’.

4. Offer Payment Plans

Sometimes, your customers can only make a small purchase simply because they don’t have enough money to buy more right now.

’Buy Now Pay Later’ payment plans allow users to make the purchase now and pay for it over time. At the same time, your store will receive the full amount right away.

Currently, 35% of consumers use pay-later plans for most of their purchases.

Because they make it easier for your customers to make a purchase, these plans help improve conversions and your store’s AOV.

If you’re selling digital downloads, you can use payment options like Klarna and Afterpay to set up Buy Now Pay Later with Easy Digital Downloads. Alternatively, you could use the WP Simple Pay plugin to offer a pay-later payment option with other eCommerce solutions.

5. Make It Easy to Check Out

A lengthy or confusing checkout process can overwhelm customers, meaning they spend less time and effort on their purchases or even quit before completing the payment. An easy checkout process encourages customers to spend more.

Simplifying the process reduces the cognitive load on customers by reducing the amount of brainpower needed. It lets buyers focus on completing the purchase without feeling overwhelmed, which may lead to them adding more items to their cart.

You can reduce friction by offering multiple payment options in various currencies, allowing your customers to check out as guests without needing to create an account, and including clear instructions.

EDD includes these options on its fast-loading checkout page. You can choose an extension to add the payment methods you wish to use, including Stripe, PayPal, and many others.

The Easy Digital Downloads Checkout Form

You can also customize the checkout page in WooCommerce and other eCommerce plugins to optimize it for conversions and increased AOV.

6. Offer Upsells and Cross-Sells

In my experience, one of the most effective ways to encourage customers to spend more money when making a purchase is using order bumps. This is when you offer the buyer extra products or deals during checkout.

Industry reports estimate that order bumps contribute to 35% of Amazon’s total revenue. They do it well, and it pays off.

Take a look at a screenshot of how a WordPress theme company can upsell a related product.

The main types of order bumps are upsells and cross-sells. Here are some examples to help you see the difference:

In a paint shop, an upsell would be to encourage a customer to buy UV-resistant paint instead of normal paint. It costs more initially, but lasts much longer, offering better value and saving money in the long term.
A cross-sell would be to offer the customer other products they will need while painting their house. These might include paint brushes, rollers, drop sheets, paint trays, and more.

This is simply good customer service. You are making sure the customer purchases the product they actually need, and they have everything they require to do the job. They appreciate it.

It also helps you increase the visibility of products that aren’t purchased frequently. And because the customer spends more money on the order, it increases your AOV.

It’s easy to add order bumps to your online store using the Easy Digital Downloads cross-sell and upsell extension, which is available for paid members.

It lets you add other digital products to your product pages and checkout page. This can generate some impulse purchases, allowing you to boost the average order value.

This is also super easy to set up in WooCommerce stores with a plugin like FunnelKit. For more details, just see the WPBeginner guide on how to create an order bump for WooCommerce.

7. Promote Products With High Margins

While you are recommending products to your customers, it helps to showcase and promote items with higher profit margins.

Compared to your other products, high-margin products will generate more profit per unit sold.

By promoting them strategically, you can increase your overall profit even if the sales volume remains the same or even decreases slightly. This can lead to a higher AOV without requiring an increase in the number of orders.

If you have a digital product store, then you can use the EDD Recommended Products extension to prominently display your high-margin products on your downloads and checkout pages.

Amazon does something like this on its product pages by displaying ‘People who viewed this also viewed’ and ‘People who bought this also bought’ recommendations. These can encourage customers to purchase additional products they are interested in.

Amazon Recommends Products on Its Product Pages

Another approach is to bundle high-margin products with related lower-margin ones. This can incentivize customers to purchase the bundle and potentially increase their overall spending.

8. Offer Smart Coupons

Smart coupons are a great way to get more sales, keep your customers happy, and encourage brand loyalty. They can motivate your customers to add more items to their cart so that they qualify for a discount.

For example, you could encourage customers to spend more by offering a free gift or free shipping when their cart total reaches a certain amount.

Or you can create ‘buy one get one’ (BOGO) coupons to convince shoppers to add more items to their cart. Or when they buy a certain item, you can offer them a second item at a discounted price instead of free.

Offer Additional Products at a Reduced Rate to Encourage Buying

The EDD Discounts Pro extension lets you create advanced discounts that are automatically applied to the checkout screen based on specific conditions.

Alternatively, if you have a WooCommerce store, then you can create smart coupons with the Advanced Coupons plugin. It lets you create all kinds of coupons, rewards, and discounts to get more sales and grow your business.

9. Optimize the User Journey

I have already touched on improving the checkout experience in your online store, but there are plenty of other ways you can optimize the user journey to improve customer experience.

A smooth and positive customer journey fosters a sense of trust and satisfaction. This can encourage customers to spend more and return for future purchases.

FunnelKit, formerly WooFunnels, is a WordPress sales funnel builder that lets you optimize the path users take on your website to become customers. It lets you improve your checkout, offer one-click upsells, use beautiful page layouts, and much more.

Customers have a positive experience on a website that’s easy to navigate and find the products they need. This helps them feel more confident about their purchases and complete larger orders.

10. Use of the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) to Create Urgency

Creating a sense of urgency and excitement can encourage customers to purchase immediately to avoid missing out on a valuable opportunity. This is known as FOMO, or the fear of missing out, and is a well-known sales tactic.

When using FOMO strategies, you need to be genuine and transparent. If your customers sense that you are trying to manipulate them by creating a false sense of urgency, then you may lose their trust.

Urgency is typically created by running a limited-time holiday sale, such as on Black Friday. The customer needs to make a purchase before the sale is over to get the discount.

When running a limited-time discount, I recommend displaying a countdown timer to make sure customers act before the offer expires.

Scarcity is another way to create a sense of urgency. For example, you can inform customers when stock is low or offer exclusive limited edition products.

11. Use Social Proof to Earn Trust

New customers may be reluctant to spend much money in your online store. They simply don’t have a reason to trust you yet.

In fact, 92% of consumers are hesitant to make a purchase when there are no customer reviews available.

This is the power of social proof, where potential customers can be strongly influenced by the experiences of people who already made a purchase and had a good experience with your store.

This means that you can earn the trust of new customers by displaying product reviews and testimonials on your website from genuine customers. Once you gain the trust of new visitors, they will be much more confident about adding items to their carts.

EDD users can do this using the Reviews extension. This lets you enable customer reviews with star ratings on the products you choose.

Alternatively, you can use other leading WordPress social proof plugins like Smash Balloon Reviews Feed Pro and TrustPulse.

12. Create Loyalty Programs

Many of my customers successfully use loyalty programs to encourage shoppers to spend more. When you award extra points for orders over a certain amount, you can increase the average order value just as effectively as cross-selling and upselling.

Think of a Starbucks Rewards card. Every time you buy a drink, you are closer to a free coffee.

EDD offers several extensions that can help you create a loyalty program, such as the Purchase Rewards extension.

This lets you reward customers with a discount code after making a purchase. You can set a minimum purchase amount that will encourage them to add more to their cart.

On the other hand, WooCommerce users can easily create a loyalty program with the Advanced Coupons Loyalty Program plugin.

13. Recover Abandoned Carts

Most online stores have huge numbers of users leaving their sites from the checkout page. On average, a massive 69% of shoppers are abandoning their carts. Why not try to get some of them back and recover those lost sales?

These customers showed genuine interest in your products, which makes them valuable leads. Remind them of their abandoned cart and offer some incentives to complete the purchase. You might successfully convert them into paying customers, and this can contribute to your AOV.

You may be able to catch them just before they leave your site. OptinMonster’s exit-intent technology studies mouse movements to know when someone is about to leave your site, and shows a popup at that exact moment.

If an abandoning visitor has already left your site, then you can send them a push notification using PushEngage. Or you can send an automated email using EDD’s Recapture extension to regain their attention.

You can offer the customers an incentive to complete the purchase and present them with relevant upsell or cross-sell options, such as adding complementary products to their cart or offering a bundle discount. This is particularly effective if you use a personalized approach.

These targeted suggestions can encourage them to spend more, potentially increasing the overall order value.

For more details, you can see these guides on how to reduce cart abandonment in WordPress and how to send abandoned cart emails.

14. Test Multiple Strategies

Now that you’ve seen my list of ways to increase your store’s AOV, you can get to work and start testing multiple strategies.

But don’t try them all at once.

It’s better to make one change at a time and measure the effect it has on the value of your orders. This will let you see which approaches work and which don’t so that you can make data-driven decisions for your business.

Remember, increasing AOV is an ongoing process. By using a combination of these strategies and continuously monitoring and analyzing the results, you can effectively raise your average order value and boost the overall revenue in your online store.

I hope these tips help you grow your online business by increasing the average order value (AOV) in your store. You may also want to see these guides on how to create a landing page with WordPress or the best WordPress giveaway and contest plugins.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 14 Ways to Increase Average Order Value With WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

February 29, 2024

How We Use a Video Membership Site to Grow Our Email List

Our WPBeginner video site is a membership community where we offer free WordPress courses to our readers.

Many of you have asked how we benefit from offering these free resources.

Our main goal is to help users learn WordPress and bridge the knowledge gap. Our secondary goal is to promote our business by growing our email list.

In this article, we will show you how we use a video membership site to grow our email list, which helps us reach more customers and grow our business.

Growing email list with a video membership website

Note: This article is part of our WPBeginner Insider series, where we talk about the products we use to grow our business. WPBeginner Insider is published every other Thursday.

Here is a list of topics we will cover in this article:

Why Make a Video Membership Website?
How Does Our Video Membership Site Work?
Build Authority With a Video Membership Website
Build an Email List With a Loyal Following
Convert Visitors Into Leads With a High-Converting Signup Page
Craft Unique Sign-Up and Login Forms for Enhanced User Interaction
Use Bonus Tools to Generate More Leads on a Membership Website

Why Make a Video Membership Website?

Videos are the most engaging form of content, and building a membership community around videos helps us leverage that user engagement.

In fact, users are more likely to follow a video course online than other interactive training and educational materials.

The motivation behind offering free WordPress video courses on WPBeginner is to bridge the knowledge gap and help beginners learn WordPress for free.

Here is how Syed Balkhi, Founder and CEO of WPBeginner, puts it:

I am tired of self-proclaimed “blogging experts” charging hundreds of dollars to teach how to use WordPress. I believe basic education like this should be FREE. I created WPBeginner to offer users what I wish I had when starting out.
Syed Balkhi – Founder & CEO of WPBeginner

The following are some of the benefits of running a membership website.

Building authority in your niche – A membership community helps you establish your brand as an authority in the industry.
Make money online – We don’t monetize WPBeginner videos because we believe basic education like this should be free. However, you can replicate our strategy and monetize your membership site to generate recurring revenue for your business.
Build an Email List – A membership community can be used to build an email list and capture leads to grow your business.

Online membership subscriptions are a multi-billion dollar industry expected to be worth $1.5 trillion by 2025.

Plus, more than 48% of people do not mind paying a subscription fee to access exclusive content. (Source: Creator Economy Statistics)

You can use our video membership site marketing playbook to build a successful membership website and generate recurring revenue for your business.

How Does Our Video Membership Site Work?

As we explained earlier, we believe basic WordPress education should be free. That’s our main motivation behind WPBeginner’s video membership site.

Users simply visit the WPBeginner Videos website. From here, they can browse individual videos from our YouTube channel or sign up for our free WordPress courses.

After creating their free account, they will get access to all our WordPress courses. In return, we add users to our email list, where they get subscribed to our weekly WPBeginner newsletter.

These courses are designed to be comprehensive and well-structured. Users can follow them at their own pace. And they can move on to a different course at any time.

That said, let’s take a detailed look at how we use our membership site to grow our email list.

1. Build Authority With a Video Membership Website

We use MemberPress for our video membership website. It is the best WordPress membership plugin on the market that makes it very easy to build a subscription-based membership community online.

It also has a built-in LMS (learning management system), which allows you to easily create and sell courses online.

Why Do We Use MemberPress?

It is incredibly easy to use and set up. This is important because we didn’t want to spend too much time managing software instead of creating content.
It comes with MemberPress Courses, which allows us to easily add and manage courses.
Courses are presented to the users in an easy-to-follow layout. This was important for us because our users are mostly beginners.
It integrates with other tools and services like email marketing services, contact form plugins, top WordPress page builders, and more.

Adding Courses in MemberPress

Adding courses in MemberPress is quite easy. You can create a curriculum with sections and lessons, add quizzes to your courses, and more.

Another feature that many course creators may find useful is the ability to drip content instead of just giving it all at once.

Access Control for Subscribers Only

As a membership plugin, MemberPress lets us restrict courses behind a free membership plan (you can add paid subscriptions, too).

Users are required to sign up and then log in to access these courses. Users are then added to our mailing list to receive weekly WPBeginner updates.

Free but premium subscriber-only content helps us build a loyal following of users. It also establishes the WPBeginner brand as a go-to resource for all things WordPress.

2. Build an Email List With a Loyal Following

At WPBeginner, we use Drip for email marketing.

One of the top reasons we switched from Mailchimp to Drip was its automation features and integrations with other WordPress plugins and tools.

Why Do We Use Drip?

Drip offers powerful automation features that help marketers create workflows for better user engagement.
You can personalize emails based on user data and activity on your site. When this personalization is combined with automation, emails become more relevant, meaningful, and beneficial for customers.
User segmentation allows you to target users based on the data they share and their activity on your site.

Adding Video Membership Subscribers to Drip

MemberPress comes with integrations for all top email marketing companies, including Drip.

This allows you to automatically add users to your Drip email list when they sign up.

Optionally, you can use tags to segment video membership site users. This helps you target those users with personalized messages and on-boarding emails.

MemberPress does a fantastic job of displaying courses. However, we still needed to create landing pages for our video membership website.

We have an in-house design team and developers, so we can afford a custom theme that matches our brand’s design and style.

If you’d rather design the page by yourself, we recommend using a WordPress page builder plugin like SeedProd.

Why Do We Recommend SeedProd?

SeedProd comes with an intuitive page builder, which makes it incredibly easy to create custom, on-demand landing pages.
It also includes many landing page designs optimized for conversion and sales. Just replace it with your text and images, and you are good to go.
You can easily add registration, user login, and sign-up forms. Plus, it works with major email marketing platforms, helping you easily add users to your email list.
SeedProd works regardless of which WordPress theme you are using. It can even be used to create custom WordPress themes without writing any code.

Transform Your Pages into a Lead-Generating Machine

We use landing pages for different sections of the video membership website.

For example, on the default landing page, we showcase videos from our YouTube channel.

WPBeginner video membership site homepage

These videos are always publicly available on the WPBeginner YouTube channel.

However, showcasing them here provides users with free content immediately. Users can watch the videos without leaving the page.

There are also calls to action on the landing page to join WPBeginner Academy (our course subscription).

WPBeginner video membership call to action

Clicking on the sign-up button takes users to our sign-up page. Now, if you have run an eCommerce business, then you might already be familiar with abandoned carts.

Many users leave at this point before signing up. To convince them to join our video membership site, this page showcases testimonials and course features, along with a sign-up form.

This allows us to further explain the benefits of our online videos and convince people to sign up for these free resources.

For more information, you can see our guide to the anatomy of a high-converting landing page.

As a website administrator, you will need to provide a seamless and coherent user experience throughout your website.

WordPress themes don’t come with sign-up or login forms by default. This can hurt the user experience as forms across your website will not be consistent.

We use WPForms to create custom sign-up and login forms for our video membership site. It is the best WordPress form builder on the market and allows you to create all types of forms for your site, including login and sign-up forms.

Why Do We Use WPForms?

It is easy and creates beautiful forms that look great on all devices.
It lets us create custom login and registration forms, which we use on our video membership sign-up landing page and the login screen.
It supports the biggest email services, allowing us to easily add emails to Drip (the email marketing platform we use).

How We Use WPForms?

We use a custom sign-up form made with WPForms on our sign-up landing page.

For details on how to do this, you can see our tutorial on how to create a custom user registration form in WordPress.

We also use a custom login form on the login page for our video membership site.

We created this page using block editor and WPForms. However, you can also create custom login pages with SeedProd.

5. Use Bonus Tools to Generate More Leads on a Membership Website

Apart from the technology stack we mentioned above, you can use the following tools to boost new sign-ups further.

1. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is the best lead generation software on the market. It allows you to nudge users into signing up with beautiful marketing campaigns like lightbox popups, slide-in popups, countdown timers, sticky header/footer, and more.

Related: See our case study for more methods we use to grow our email list.

2. PushEngage

PushEngage is a push notification software that allows you to send custom messages to user browsers regardless of which device they are using.

It has powerful personalization and targeting rules, allowing you to create personalized messages that are more effective. This enables you to target users once they have left your website and prompt them to return.

Case Study: In an earlier WPBeginner Insider article, we shared how we use push notifications to grow return traffic.

3. Smash Balloon

A video membership website helps you build a loyal following, which you can then send to your social media accounts to boost your followers.

Smash Balloon helps you bring your socials to your WordPress site. We use it on our community tab to showcase our X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube posts. It also works with Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.

For more details, you can see our tutorial on how to add your social media feeds to WordPress.

4. All in One SEO for WordPress

All in One SEO for WordPress is the best WordPress SEO plugin with the most comprehensive SEO toolkit for WordPress websites.

Apart from the usual SEO tools, it has advanced XML sitemaps, a redirect manager, comprehensive schema markup support, Link Assistant, search stats, and more. (See more AIOSEO features).

We use it across our entire website, including our video membership website, to improve our SEO and get more traffic from search engines.

Related: How to double your SEO traffic in 6 months (with case studies).

5. MonsterInsights

All your marketing efforts need to be properly tracked to monitor their success and make data-driven decisions. Otherwise, you won’t know if your strategies are actually helping you get more signups to your membership site.

We use MonsterInsights for that. It is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress and helps you track site visitors. It helps you track conversions, which lets you measure the success of your video membership site, email forms, landing pages, and more.

MonsterInsights even allows you to track the customer journey on membership websites if you are using MemberPress. This lets you see the steps that users take to sign up on your video membership site and use that information to get more signups.

We hope this article helped you learn about using membership websites to grow your email list and your business. You may also want to see these proven tips to grow your business online and our ultimate guide on how to make a membership site.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How We Use a Video Membership Site to Grow Our Email List first appeared on WPBeginner.

February 27, 2024

Will WordPress Replace Web Developers? (Expert Insights)

As WordPress grows in popularity and usage, we are often asked by our readers: will WordPress eventually replace web developers?

WordPress has become the go-to solution to make websites without needing to write code or learn web development. This may give the impression that WordPress is going to replace web developers altogether.

This article will debunk the myth that WordPress will replace web developers. We will also explain the role of web developers in the WordPress ecosystem.

Debunking the myth that WordPress will replace web developers

We will cover a few different topics in this article, and you can use the quick links below to jump to the section you want to read:

The Rise of WordPress
The Role of Web Developers
The Popularity of Web Development
Importance of Coding Skills in WordPress
DIY WordPress Users vs. Professional Web Developers
Conclusion: Is WordPress Going to Replace Web Developers?
Frequently Asked Questions About WordPress and Web Development.

The Rise of WordPress

WordPress is the world’s most popular website builder, powering more than 43% of all websites on the internet.

Its incredible success is due to the balance between ease of use and the flexibility to customize.

It started as a simple blogging tool in 2003 and soon became a robust content management system.

WordPress introduced plugins, which are like apps for your WordPress website. These plugins allow users to add more features to their websites. Currently, there are over 59,000+ free plugins in the WordPress.org’s plugin directory alone.

WordPress also lets you customize the appearance of your site using themes. A typical WordPress theme contains web design templates that allow you to have a professional-looking website within minutes.

Then came the WordPress page builders. These are powerful drag-and-drop design tools that enable you to create your own custom layouts, choose colors, use background images, and more.

WordPress, then introduced the block editor and full site editing features, giving users more tools to create beautiful websites without learning web development.

All these tools make it easy for users to make websites without hiring a developer. This ultimately leads some users to believe that WordPress will eventually replace web developers altogether.

Learn more: Complete history of WordPress

The Role of Web Developers

Web developers are like the builders of the internet. They play a very important role in creating and maintaining websites, ensuring they work smoothly and look great.

Here’s a simple breakdown of what web developers do:

1. Design

Designing a website requires more work than just adding colors and making it look pretty. Web developers design websites to serve the purpose of a specific business.

This involves wireframing and designing in advanced tools such as Figma or creating graphics and logos using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. Designers decide where the buttons go, which colors to use, and how the information is displayed to reach the goals that the website is trying to achieve.

2. Coding

Developers write code to make a website function. This code may not be available as a built-in feature in WordPress, or the design may require additional coding.

To achieve this may choose a WordPress theme framework and create a custom WordPress theme on top of it.

They give websites superpowers to perform additional tasks, display things dynamically, store custom data, and enhance the usability and user experience of a website.

3. Maintenance

One of the crucial tasks of a web developer is website maintenance for an existing site. This includes:

Ensuring that the code doesn’t become outdated or cause conflicts with WordPress or other installed plugins and themes.
Creating backups and restore points in case of an emergency or disaster.
Ensuring that security best practices are followed. This might include deploying a website application firewall and securing website and user data.
Installing updates and maintaining the software stack up-to-date.

The Popularity of Web Development

In the earlier days of the internet, businesses needed to hire web developers even to create smaller websites. These were professional technicians who were fluent in writing code to make websites.

Due to high demand, many people joined the profession, and the industry grew exponentially.

Then came WordPress and the era of blogs. This made it easier for hobbyists to make their own personal sites without hiring developers.

This trend grew, and even small businesses and eCommerce stores became easier for non-developers to create and maintain.

However, as WordPress and other no-code solutions changed the web, web developers also broadened their skills. This includes everything from simple HTML / CSS page developers to multi-stack programmers and engineers.

And then, over time, the things that worked with WordPress began spilling into mainstream web development and vice versa. This includes the use of JavaScript and libraries like React that gave overlap between WordPress and other development, as well as page builders becoming the norm on non-WP platforms like Squarespace and Weebly.

That’s why when you are browsing freelancer websites like Upwork, you will commonly see tens of thousands of jobs listed for web developers.

Web developer jobs on freelancing websites

Even big-name brands using WordPress are employing developers to design, develop, and maintain their websites.

In fact, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 16% growth in web developer jobs from 2022-2032. This is especially impressive when you consider that the average projected growth for most professions is 3%.

Importance of Coding Skills in WordPress

While WordPress does not require coding skills or any programming knowledge, having these skills gives you incredible powers.

Understanding code allows web developers to add unique features to a site. They can customize the existing code to do different things or write fresh code to facilitate that.

Coding skills also give users enhanced WordPress troubleshooting skills. Developers are likely to know where a problem may occur and will be able to find efficient solutions to fix that.

It can be argued that a non-developer or a DIY user with no coding skills can also troubleshoot issues, fix common WordPress errors, and add new features using plugins.

However, to do this efficiently and without breaking your website requires some understanding of the code behind it.

For example, DIY users can install a plugin to add a new feature, while a web developer can do the same thing with a smaller code snippet or custom CSS.

DIY WordPress Users vs. Professional Web Developers

The core WordPress mission is to democratize publishing, and it has been incredibly successful in this mission by making WordPress so easy that even non-developer users can create websites.

DIY WordPress users are bloggers, publishers, small business owners, and online stores. These users can build their websites without hiring a web developer to write custom code for them.

But does that mean they don’t need to hire professional web developers?

They actually do. Most of the code they use is written by professional web developers and made available to them as WordPress core or WordPress themes and plugins.

As their businesses grow, many DIY users want to hire developers to design a custom WordPress theme or to outsource development for smaller features their business needs.

On the other hand, WordPress provides more jobs to independent web developers than any other website builder on the market.

WordPress web development jobs on Upwork

Due to its immense popularity, there are always plenty of jobs posted on freelancing websites for WordPress web developers.

Apart from these jobs, most top WordPress companies like Awesome Motive are always looking for talented web developers as full-time employees with excellent perks and competitive salaries.

A ton of web development agencies from all over the world work specifically on WordPress and offer many job opportunities for developers.

Plus, many DIY WordPress users often develop enough skills that they start exploring WordPress career options for their full-time livelihood.

Conclusion: Is WordPress Going to Replace Web Developers?

No. WordPress is not going to replace web developers. Instead, WordPress is creating more jobs and business opportunities for web developers than any other platform.

Even DIY WordPress users rely on free and paid solutions created by independent web developers. Many WordPress development jobs are also available, both as freelancers and full-time employees.

In fact, interest in WordPress developer searches has steadily grown during the last ten years, showing no signs of decline. That’s why we think that both WordPress and web developer jobs will continue to be very popular in the future.

Google Trends interest over time for WordPress developer keyword

Frequently Asked Questions About WordPress and Web Development.

You may still have some questions about whether WordPress will replace web developers. We will answer them here.

1. Will WordPress kill web development?

No. WordPress is not going to replace web development. Instead, WordPress offers web developers another platform they can develop for.

2. Is knowing WordPress enough to be a web developer?

Learning to use WordPress to make websites is not the same as being a web developer. Web developers can plan, design, extend, maintain, and secure a website. This involves knowledge and expertise in several programming languages, web servers, design tools, and more.

3. Do real web developers use WordPress?

Yes. All the time. As the world’s most popular website builder, WordPress provides an excellent platform to use as a solid code base upon which to build. This cuts web development time for developers, which they can use to implement their projects more efficiently.

4. Are WordPress developers still in demand?

Yes. More than ever, WordPress developers are in demand. They are needed for everything from small gigs like fixing bugs on a website to big projects like creating entire websites for medium to large businesses. Countless web development agencies, software companies, and businesses are hiring WordPress developers full-time.

We hope this article helped debunk the myth that WordPress is going to replace web developers. You may also want to see our article on how to learn WordPress basics for free or look at our pick of the best WordPress training courses.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Will WordPress Replace Web Developers? (Expert Insights) first appeared on WPBeginner.

February 22, 2024

What Is Google E-E-A-T? A Detailed Guide to WordPress Websites

Perhaps you have heard about Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines and are wondering what they mean for your WordPress website.

Google’s search algorithm and guidelines are constantly changing and evolving to make sure that search engine results pages (SERPs) prioritize quality content that’s helpful and accurate. Although E-E-A-T is not a direct ranking factor, Google wants to serve results with strong E-E-A-T.

In this article, I’ll explain what E-E-A-T is all about and how you can implement it on your website.

Note: This is a guest post by Benjamin Rojas, the president of All in One SEO, the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. This is an expert column that we publish every other Thursday, where we invite a WordPress expert to share their experiences with our readers.

What Is E-E-A-T?

E-E-A-T stands for Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

These are four overlapping factors they look for when looking for reliable and trustworthy sources of information to rank near the top of search engine results pages.

The ‘Experience’ factor in E-E-A-T was introduced in a Google update in 2022. Before that, it was simply known as E-A-T.

Here’s how each factor contributes:

Expertise lets a writer demonstrate a deep understanding of a topic, such as when they have training or qualifications in the field.
Experience allows an author to write content based on first-hand experience, allowing them to provide more accurate and helpful information.
Authoritativeness is when a writer is respected by recognized experts in the field or writes for a website that has a strong reputation for reliability.
Trustworthiness comes from unbiased and objective content found on a website that is transparent about its sources and funding and concerned about the safety and security of its readers.

To satisfy the E-E-A-T principle, you need to add these factors to your WordPress website.

Note that E-E-A-T is not the only consideration. To ensure your website ranks well, you need to develop a comprehensive SEO strategy.

How Does Google E-E-A-T Affect SEO?

It’s easy to spread misinformation written by people who don’t have any expertise or experience with the topics they are writing about, which makes content you discover on the web less-trust worthy.

That’s why Google has implemented E-E-A-T guidelines. Google doesn’t want to promote misinformation to its users. So they use the E-E-A-T principle to assess whether a webpage can be considered a reliable and trustworthy source of information.

This is particularly important when misinformation can affect the reader’s health, safety, happiness, or financial security. This is what Google calls YMYL.

What Is YMYL?

YMYL stands for ‘Your Money or Your Life.’ This is Google’s term for describing the types of topics where misinformation has the most serious consequences, such as finance and health.

This includes topics such as:

Health and wellness, such as medical and health sites that offer health advice, medical information, content about drugs, fitness routines, and more.
Finance and money, including finance sites that offer advice, investment information, advice on tax law, and similar.
News and current events sites that report on news and international events, science and politics, natural disasters and emergency preparedness, and more.
Government and law websites that inform people about legal issues, official rulings, voting, social services, and related topics.
Shopping and e-commerce sites that offer product reviews and comparisons and offer products for sale.

If your website covers topics like these, then you need to minimize the risk of harm your content presents so users can trust the information you provide.

Also, be aware that Google will be even more careful to make sure that your content is accurate and reliable, so it is essential that you demonstrate E-E-A-T on websites that fall into the YMYL category.

How Does E-E-A-T Help SEO?

E-E-A-T isn’t an official ranking factor. That means that it doesn’t impact your site’s SEO directly.

Instead, it is part of Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. This is a 168-page PDF manual for Quality Raters. This is a worldwide team of people who evaluate the quality of search results and give Google feedback so they can improve their algorithms.

These factors, including E-E-A-T, can help boost your SEO indirectly.

So strong E-E-A-T signals can contribute to your website being ranked higher in queries. This is especially true for high-competition keywords that are about YMYL topics.

Levels of E-E-A-T

Unfortunately, there is no way to measure the E-E-A-T score for your website.

However, Google’s guidelines give a clear idea of what websites with different levels of E-E-A-T look like:

Websites with very high E-E-A-T contain high-quality articles that show evidence of topic knowledge and expertise. These authors and websites are the most trusted sources on the internet for a particular topic.
Websites with a high level of E-E-A-T offer content that displays first-hand experience and expertise on a topic. These pages are considered trustworthy or very trustworthy.
Web pages that lack appropriate E-E-A-T may have a good reputation in other ways, but lack experience in the topic they are about. This could be a reputable cooking website with an article on tax, or someone reviewing a restaurant they had never visited.
Websites with the lowest E-E-A-T will look and feel spammy and offer a poor user experience. The main content may be obstructed and it may contain malicious downloads.

You should aim to have a high level of E-E-A-T on your website, and this will take time.

With that being said, here are some tips on how you can meet Google’s E-E-A-T content guidelines to give your WordPress site’s SEO a big boost:

Create High-Quality Content That Is Helpful and Informative
Continue to Write Fresh Website Content
Address Knowledge Gaps in Your Content
Keep Your Content Up to Date
Talk About First-Hand Experiences in Your Content
Manage Your Website’s Online Reputation
7. Showcase the Experience & Expertise of Your Business and Team
8. Showcase the Experience & Expertise of Individual Authors
Boost Author SEO Using All in One SEO
Claim Your Google Knowledge Panel
Earn Recognition From Other Experts
Have Experts Review Your Website Content
Build Trust by Building Authoritative Backlinks
Look After Your Site’s Technical SEO

1. Create High-Quality Content That Is Helpful and Informative

Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines are there to encourage web content that is helpful, accurate, and relevant. Your starting point is to create that type of information.

That means that the original content you write should aim to help people rather than influence search engines. It should answer their questions, provide useful advice, and satisfy their needs.

You can achieve that by ensuring your content is accurate, well-researched, and written by experts or individuals with proven knowledge.

It should be well-structured and follow best practices for writing blog posts.

For example, you should introduce the topic in a clear way, break up your content with headings, and add images and videos to engage with your users.

Make sure you write comprehensive, in-depth articles on topics that are central to your industry or niche. This cornerstone content can help you establish your authority on those topics and build your reputation in the industry.

2. Continue to Write Fresh Website Content

Experts don’t run out of things to say. Instead, they continue to have fresh experiences where they glean insights they can write about.

By adding new content to your website, you demonstrate to Google that your website is alive and well-maintained. It also shows that you are continuing to learn, grow in expertise, and gain new experiences.

It’s a good idea to brainstorm new content ideas on a regular basis and plan your editorial calendar ahead of time. You can get new content ideas using online blog post idea generators and checking out your competition’s websites.

Also, when you perform a Google search, other relevant topics that you can write about will be suggested. You may also see a ‘People also ask’ section on the search results page that shows related questions that people want answers to.

People Also Ask Section on Search Results Page

3. Address Knowledge Gaps in Your Content

One important aspect of planning new content for your website is identifying knowledge gaps. These are topics that your audience is looking for, but you (and perhaps your competitors) haven’t covered them yet.

Filling a knowledge gap and bringing something new to the table is an effective way to demonstrate E-E-A-T. It could be new information that hasn’t been covered or a new perspective based on your own unique experience.

To do this, you will need to perform a content gap analysis.

For example, you can use Semrush’s Keyword Gap tool to discover keywords that your competitors are ranking for but you are not. This will provide a list of seed keywords you can use to create content ideas.

Next, you will need to optimize your existing blog posts to fill those gaps or add new articles that cover those topics to your content calendar.

4. Keep Your Content Up to Date

Things change. Content that was accurate and helpful in the past won’t always stay that way. Over time, these articles will become less relevant and attract less traffic. This is known as content decay.

You should regularly review your articles and update any information that is out of date and no longer accurate. It’s a good idea to check and update each article on a regular schedule, such as every 6 months.

You can find decayed content that needs to be updated using SEO tools such as All in One SEO. You need to identify posts with a significant drop in traffic.

For example, the Content Performance report in All in One SEO can identify the top losing posts in terms of content performance.

Find Decaying Content Using AIOSEO's Content Performance Report

You can now use AIOSEO’s built-in SEO recommendations to optimize your decaying content to boost your rankings again.

5. Talk About First-Hand Experiences in Your Content

You should demonstrate that the content comes from personal experience rather than internet research. This means talking about your unique, first-person experiences in your posts.

For example, if you are reviewing a restaurant, you should talk about your visit, describe the service you received, and let your readers know how the meal tasted.

Google will pick up on phrases like these as signals that you have personal experience:

In my experience…
In our tests…
When we tried…
We found that…

If you tested a product, you should include the measurements and statistics of your tests. You can also talk about subjective assessments based on your use of the product, such as what it felt like to use, whether you enjoyed it, and specific ways you found it helpful.

Also, make sure you use first-person pronouns like ‘I’ or ‘we’ rather than ‘she’ or ‘they’ to demonstrate that you are talking about your own experience and expertise, not someone else’s.

Finally, it is best to use original screenshots and images in your posts, such as a photo of the equipment you are using, or the end result of a tutorial you are writing. Google tends to reward originality, and it’s another way to demonstrate your personal experience

6. Manage Your Website’s Online Reputation

A brand with a negative reputation lacks credibility.

Building a positive brand begins with creating a quality website that you own and control. It allows you to build trust, market yourself, and manage your online reputation.

You can make sure your visitors remember your brand by creating a logo that is clear, relevant, and displayed in the header. You can also choose a matching color scheme to boost your website’s appeal.

However, managing your reputation goes beyond your own site to social networks and review platforms. You need to monitor social platforms for negative mentions or reviews and respond in a prompt and professional way.

You can also display positive reviews and testimonials on your website. Tools like Smash Balloon Reviews Feed Pro will find and filter testimonials from multiple review platforms and automatically display them on your site.

7. Showcase the Experience & Expertise of Your Business and Team

There’s no better way to demonstrate your experience and expertise than to state it clearly. Be specific and accurate as you highlight your qualifications, experience, and achievements in your industry or field, and don’t misrepresent yourself.

Many websites do this on an About page or Team page.

An About page tells visitors about the purpose of your website and business, as well as its mission and values. It lets them know what they can expect on your site, and being transparent about who you are will build trust.

If you have a multi-author website, then you could use a Team page instead. Here you can list the names of your writers along with their qualifications and experience. Make sure you include photos of each team member, or perhaps a single photo of the entire team.

You should include a contact form on this page or a separate Contact page, along with icons that link to your social media profiles. Visitors will be able to trust you more easily if they can see it is easy to contact you to ask questions or verify the information on your site.

Make sure that you include these pages in your site’s navigation menu so they are easy to find.

8. Showcase the Experience & Expertise of Individual Authors

You can also improve E-E-A-T on your website by showcasing the experience and expertise your authors have in their profiles. Introducing your readers to the people who wrote each post can help build credibility.

You can add E-E-A-T signals such as education, job title, employer, categories of expertise, and more. This will make it easier for Google and other search engines to identify your credentials.

This information can be automatically displayed on the posts they write using an author info box. Your visitors can then see their qualifications without needing to visit your About page.

There are plenty of author bio box plugins that can be used to enhance the profiles of your team members, and many of them are free.

9. Boost Author SEO Using All in One SEO

The quickest way to start demonstrating the experience and expertise of your authors is by using All in One SEO’s powerful Author SEO addon.

This is specifically designed to improve E-E-A-T by adding important signals such as education, employer, and job title to your author bios.

You can also add areas of expertise, which lets search engines and readers know that you’re knowledgeable about the topics you write about.

All of this author information is added as schema markup that makes it easy for search engines to find and understand when ranking your content.

You can also display the information to your website visitors using its built-in author blocks.

10. Claim Your Google Knowledge Panel

When looking at search results, you will sometimes see a panel on the right of the screen displaying information about a company, person, or product. This is a Google knowledge panel.

Here’s an example of a Google knowledge panel for the tech company Apple. It shows the company’s logo and website, information taken from Wikipedia, a list of related products, and much more.

Knowledge panels may also display author and business information from your website if you added it using schema markup, such as when using All in One SEO’s Author SEO addon mentioned earlier.

Knowledge panels stand out in search results and bring more traffic to your site. They are also good for brand visibility and show users that Google finds your website credible and trustworthy.

If you are signed in to a Google account related to your business, then Google will display a button that lets you claim your business’s knowledge panel and verify that it belongs to you. This lets you choose a featured image for the panel and suggest edits to Google.

11. Earn Recognition From Other Experts

E-E-A-T signals don’t just come from the experience and qualifications of your team members. You can also earn recognition from other experts from outside of your team.

The easiest way to do that is to add citations from recognized industry experts to your content. You can link to official studies, research papers, and even tweets and blog posts by experts.

This is especially helpful for validating the accuracy of your content when you touch on topics outside of your team’s expertise. It demonstrates to Google and your readers that you place genuine value on accuracy and care enough to check your facts.

Another strategy is to invite an expert to write a guest post on your blog or ask if you can interview them and publish the interview on your blog.

12. Have Experts Review Your Website Content

Another way to establish credibility and ensure accuracy is to have experts review your content. This strengthens your E-E-A-T signals by showing that your content has been fact-checked.

You can use All in One SEO’s Author SEO addon to add a reviewer to your articles.

Boost E-E-A-T by Having an Expert Review Your Posts

This is an important way to boost E-E-A-T for YMYL articles where you need to demonstrate that your content is accurate and up-to-date.

13. Build Trust by Building Authoritative Backlinks

Backlinks are an essential element in creating E-E-A-T content because they demonstrate that others find your content valuable and helpful.

These are links from other websites back to your own. When a website with high authority links to your content, it is seen as a vote of confidence that you are an expert in your field.

The more backlinks to one of your posts, the more authoritative it becomes.

You can grow the number of backlinks to your site by writing quality content that people want to share with their friends and clients, and by building relationships with influencers and other website owners in your industry.

14. Look After Your Site’s Technical SEO

Google won’t find your website trustworthy if your technical SEO isn’t on point. These are technical areas of your website that ensure it is safe for your visitors and customers and provide a positive user experience.

For example, if you accept payments on your website, then you need to install an SSL certificate to ensure that these transactions are secure. An insecure connection is a bad E-E-A-T signal.

The same is true of other technical issues that lead to bad user experience, such as 404 errors and failing to add alt text to your images.

To make sure that issues like this don’t affect your site’s ranking, you should conduct regular technical SEO audits.

You can find actionable steps that need to be taken using All in One SEO’s SEO audit checklist and reports in Google Search Console.

Hopefully this post helped you learn how to use Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines to improve your website’s ranking. You may also want to see our guide on how to speed up WordPress performance, or our expert pick on the best analytics solutions for WordPress users.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post What Is Google E-E-A-T? A Detailed Guide to WordPress Websites first appeared on WPBeginner.

February 15, 2024May 23, 2024

How to Drive 10,000 Extra Site Visitors a Month (Case Study)

Looking to drive tons of traffic to your site?

What if I told you that you can EASILY drive hundreds if not thousands of additional repeat visitors to your site… every month?

It might sound too good to be true, especially when ‘reliable’ traffic sources like SEO traffic are increasingly getting volatile… but it’s not!

A big problem with most traffic sources, like search engines and social media, is that you have no control over how their algorithms work.

If you want to drive loads of visitors to your site consistently, you’ll need to have full control over that traffic source.

Note: This article is part of our WPBeginner Insider series, where we talk about the methods we use to grow our business.

drive-10000-extra-site-visitors-a-month-in-post-

Get Full Control Over a Traffic Source (& Drive Tons of Traffic)

There are a few different ways to build a reliable traffic source for your site that you have full control over. Here are a few of them:

Build an email list
Build a mobile app
Build a subscriber list (such as push notifications)

Let’s examine the pros and cons of each strategy. We’ll explain why push notifications are the easiest method to drive traffic and how we use them on WPBeginner to drive around 10k additional website visitors a month.

1. Build an email list

Building an email list is probably the most common strategy for driving repeat visitors to your site. While some email marketing services, like Constant Contact, offer a 60-day free trial, eventually, you’ll have to pay at least $12 a month.

While we highly recommend building an email list, it may not be the best bet if you don’t have the budget or don’t prefer spending time on writing and sending emails every once in a while.

2. Build a mobile app

Unless you’re a juggernaut like Amazon or Facebook, chances are your website visitors won’t even use your app, let alone keep them on their phones for repeat visits.

Plus, building and managing a mobile app can take time and resources.

In case you need, here are 4 WordPress plugins that help you convert your site into an app.

3. Build a subscriber list (such as push notifications)

This is the easiest and the most cost-effective method to drive repeat traffic to your website.

Unlike building an email list, it’s cheap, and you don’t even have to worry about writing lengthy messages such as emails to your subscribers.

The winner: Push notifications are the easiest yet cost-effective solution for driving repeat traffic to your site. Since you have full control over your ‘list,’ there is no need to worry about traffic volatility.

What Are Push Notifications?

Push notifications are custom messages with links that you can send as notifications to users’ web browsers. Users can opt-in to receive these push notifications from a website.

For example, when your visitor lands on your site, you can ask them to subscribe to your push notifications with a modal popup. Once they subscribe, you can send them a short message with a link to your site as a push notification.

If you’ve ever used a smartphone, you know what push notification looks like.

Push notification preview on mobile devices

It’s a tiny message on your screen prompting users to visit a website or an app. These notifications can be customized and personalized, which makes them highly effective in driving traffic.

To send these push notifications, you can sign up with a push notification service provider.

These platforms make it easy to manage subscriptions, send messages, and use automation and segmentation to personalize messages for your users.

Why Use Push Notifications to Grow Traffic?

Today, it is harder than ever for marketers to get their messages across. There is simply too much content out there competing for your audience’s attention.

Push notifications help you get the edge over the competition. They work across all platforms and devices. That’s why these targeted custom messages can be highly effective in bringing users back to your website.

Here are some of the main reasons to use push notifications on your WordPress website:

Grow Subscribers Without Collecting Personal Info – Unlike email or SMS marketing, no personal info is collected when opting in to push notifications. This can help with addressing growing privacy concerns among internet users.
Grow Your Subscribers Faster – With an average opt-in rate above 6%, push notifications boast a significantly higher engagement rate than other methods. This is especially true when you consider that the opt-in rate for email marketing sits at around 3%.
Drive Repeat Traffic to Your Site – Because up to 95% of first-time visitors aren’t ready to purchase immediately, push notifications can nudge them towards repeat visits and closer to a purchasing decision.
Higher Click-Through Rate Than Emails – Push notifications have an average click rate of 28%, which is much higher than the 1-2% for emails. This is a more effective way to capture user attention and get people back to your website.
Get an Instant Reaction – Users usually don’t respond to emails for at least 6.5 hours. By contrast, push notifications often get an immediate response, capturing the user’s attention on the spot.
Easy to Setup and Manage – Simplicity is key with push notifications, making them an accessible tool for marketers without advanced technical know-how.
The Most Affordable Marketing Method – Offering a cost-effective alternative to traditional methods, push notifications are an economical choice for businesses of all sizes.

That being said, let’s look at how we use push notifications on WPBeginner.

How We Use Push Notifications on WPBeginner

We use PushEngage. It is the best push notification software on the market that allows us to easily engage and retain website visitors even after they have left our website.

Here are some of the reasons for using PushEngage:

It is straightforward to use and has an intuitive interface for creating and scheduling campaigns. That makes it suitable for both experts and beginners alike.
It offers powerful segmentation and personalization options. We can send the right message to the right user at the right time, making our push notification campaigns extremely effective.
PushEngage offers multiple campaign types, autoresponders, effective retargeting, and more. These tools make push notifications more engaging for the users.

Want to add it to your website? We have a step-by-step tutorial that you can follow to add push notifications to your WordPress website.

At WPBeginner, user experience is as important for us as getting more traffic. We also want our push notifications to reach more users.

To summarize, we want our notifications to be less intrusive and more efficient to ensure that we get better engagement and ROI (return on investment) while providing helpful information to our readers.

Here are the types of push notifications we use to achieve this.

Two-Step Optin Notifications

There are two kinds of optin boxes you can add for your notifications. First, there is the usual single-step optin, which is a good start but easily dismissed by many users.

Visitors see this so often from different sites that they become blind to it.

Major browsers like Safari and Chrome only show two options: Allow or Block. If users click Block, then you cannot show them the optin popup again unless they reset their site settings. Users rarely, if ever, do this.

Also, you cannot customize the browser-based optins, which makes them practically unusable.

The second type is the two-step optin. These optins require an additional step for users to opt in, but they are highly customizable.

We use a custom optin through PushEngage to get users’ attention and provide a better experience for them.

This kind of optin popup is much less intrusive. It allows users to decline politely and allows us to ask them again after some time.

It also enables users to choose segments they are interested in, making the notifications more beneficial. They can choose to receive notifications about WordPress SEO, eCommerce, or email marketing, for example, but not plugins and themes.

Once the user has chosen the kinds of notifications they want, they will be shown the traditional Allow or Block popup. Only then, they can choose to allow the notifications instead of blindly clicking the block button by default.

Drip Autoresponders for New Users

We also set up autoresponders to welcome new users with an onboarding series of drip notifications.

Unlike regular autoresponders, a drip setup lets you set up a sequence of notifications that will be automatically sent to users at pre-defined intervals.

We use this feature to send a series of onboarding notifications designed to point new subscribers to the right resources on our website.

Segmenting users during the opt-in process allows us to send more targeted personalized messages tailored to the user’s needs, making them more relevant and engaging.

These automated drip notifications help users uncover resources one message at a time. Sending them in intervals makes the information easier to consume.

We have a tutorial on how to set up automated drip notifications, where you can learn the whole process step-by-step.

Broadcast Notifications

To drive traffic, we send broadcast notifications every other day about the latest blog posts published on WPBeginner.

Broadcast notifications are manual notifications you can set up to share news from your website. We schedule them to match our editorial calendar for the week.

These notifications allow users to be notified about a new article that they would otherwise miss.

These notifications have a high CTR and consistently bring a significant number of return visitors to our website. They also make sure that our readers don’t miss out on the latest news and helpful information from our website.

Broadcast push notifications allow us to customize the messages we send users about new articles. They are not too frequent and are highly relevant to our users, making them both practical and beneficial for our audience.

Alternative Methods for Push Notifications

Not all websites are the same, so your site may have different goals and needs than WPBeginner.

Here are some other types of push notifications that we have used on our other sites.

RSS Auto-Push Campaigns

If setting up manual broadcasts sounds like too much extra work, then you can automate your push notifications with RSS Auto Push.

It allows you to send automatic notifications for new articles as soon as they are published by sourcing data from your RSS feed.

Users who opt to receive notifications are already interested in what you publish next. Getting updates from your site will help readers stay up to date. Otherwise, these users may have to check your site manually, which is a bit inconvenient.

Simply log in to your PushEngage account dashboard, go to the Campaign » RSS Auto Push page, and click the ‘Create New Campaign’ button.

Next, you need to enter your blog’s RSS feed address and choose the time and interval when you want to send the message.

You can choose either ‘At Fixed Interval’ or ‘Specify Day and Time’.

Optionally, you can choose how many latest items from your feed to send and their intervals. Under the advanced options, you are able to customize the notification settings like character limit, image, large image, or more.

By using powerful headlines and engaging content, you can improve the click-through rate of these push messages.

Once finished, don’t forget to activate your Auto Push campaign.

Triggered Automated Push Notifications

Apart from drip and RSS feed, you also get access to a bunch of automation options with PushEngage.

These can be used to send automated but personalized custom messages based on the user activity on your website. This personalization makes them more relevant and engaging for your readers, leading to a more effective campaign.

You can find these automation options in your PushEngage dashboard by going to Campaign » Triggered Campaigns.

For instance, if you run an online store, then you likely struggle with the issue of abandoned carts. According to our research, the average cart abandonment rate last year was a whopping 70.19%.

Luckily, you can use push notifications to get abandoning users back to your store to complete their purchases.

You just need to click ‘Create’ under the Cart Abandonment campaign. PushEngage will then automatically fill in important information like the product name, URL, image, and large image, using dynamic tags.

You can then customize the notification message, choose when to send the notification, and more.

Related: Learn more ways to recover abandoned cart sales.

Push Notifications vs. Email Marketing – Which Do We Recommend?

At WPBeginner, we use both email marketing and push notifications to grow traffic and bring back users to our website.

In fact, in a previous WPBeginner Insider column, we showed all the methods we use to grow our email list.

As a marketer, both these tools provide different ways to reach your audience. Instead of just choosing one, we recommend using both of them together.

While email marketing works well for transactional content, push notifications outperform emails when it comes to easy subscriptions, urgency, higher click-through rates, and personalization options.

For a detailed discussion on this topic, you can see our comparison of push notifications vs. email with pros and cons and use-case scenarios for both platforms.

We hope this article helped you learn about the push notification techniques we use at WPBeginner. You may also want to see our tutorial on how to use email marketing automation or learn about creating automated workflows in WordPress for everyday website admin tasks.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Drive 10,000 Extra Site Visitors a Month (Case Study) first appeared on WPBeginner.

February 8, 2024

The Anatomy of a High Converting Landing Page (Expert Insights)

Do you wish you were getting more conversions from your landing page?

A landing page is a standalone web page created with one focused objective. It leads visitors towards a single action, such as making a purchase or subscribing to a newsletter. This is the page’s CTA or call to action.

According to a study, the average landing page conversion rate is 26% and only less than 10% accomplish conversion levels of over 70%.

So, what makes less than 10% of high-converting landing pages different, which lead them to over 70% conversions?

In this article, I am going to reveal the anatomy of a high converting landing page, so you can skyrocket your conversion rate.

I’ve spent years analyzing and designing the most successful landing pages. So, let’s get started.

Note: This is a guest post by John Turner, the co-founder of SeedProd, the best landing page builder plugin. We publish an expert column on WPBeginner every other Thursday. This is an invite-only column, meaning we don’t accept unsolicited guest post offers.

The Anatomy of a High Converting Landing Page

I will cover quite a few topics in this post. Here’s a handy list so you can jump to the section you are most interested in:

Don’t Distract Visitors
Make It Easy to Convert
High Converting Landing Pages Use Compelling Copy
Foster Trust Among Your Audience
Have a Compelling & Prominent CTA
High Converting Landing Pages Turn Abandoning Users Into Customers

1. Don’t Distract Visitors

A landing page should have a single purpose: conversion. So when designing your page, you should only include elements that will entice users to convert. Eliminate the rest.

That’s why the highest-converting landing pages get rid of distractions like the navigation bar, header, and footer that you see on general-purpose websites.

These elements distract users from your call to action by inviting them to go elsewhere.

Currently, only 16% of landing pages don’t have a navigation bar. This is one reason why so many landing pages have poor conversion rates.

For similar reasons, you should also include only the most essential links on your landing page. Reducing distractions like this can increase conversions by at least 10%.

It’s easy to reduce distractions using a landing page plugin like SeedProd. It lets you quickly build a distraction-free landing page without the extra elements that are included in your WordPress website’s theme and built-in layouts.

One of our customers, OptinMonster, quickly built a distraction-free landing page for an ad campaign they run, which helped them increase conversions by 340%.

OptinMonster's Distraction-Free Landing Page

For more details, check out how to create a landing page with WordPress.

2. Make It Easy to Convert

On some landing pages, users give up because it’s unclear what they actually need to do, or it takes too much work. High-converting landing pages make conversion easy.

Aim to offer a frictionless and efficient user journey by focusing on a clear message and ease of conversion. Here are a few things you can do to optimize your landing page for usability.

Minimize the Number of Clicks Required

Make your landing page easier for users by minimizing the number of clicks required to convert. Every extra click can reduce your conversion rate by 10%.

I tell my customers to track how many clicks it takes for users to sign up or make a purchase and then work out ways to reduce that number.

Depending on the purpose of your landing page, this could look like having a one-click checkout or anything else that streamlines the conversion process.

Minimize Unnecessary Form Fields

Next, I recommend thinking about the lead capture form on your landing page. The harder it is to complete, the less conversions you will ultimately have.

Now, the average number of form fields on a landing page is 5, and many experts recommend using just 3 or 4. But in my experience, reducing the number of fields is not always the best approach.

For example, even less motivated visitors who are not very interested in your product might be willing to fill out a very short form. This will result in more conversions, but you may get better quality leads by using a longer and more detailed form.

Also, fewer form fields will provide you with less information, robbing you of valuable insights about your users.

So aim to design a form that balances ease of conversion with the quality of information.

Capture Partial Entries

No matter how straightforward your landing page is, you will always have users who start to fill in a form and then give up. Normally you’d simply lose the information they entered.

The average form abandonment rate is 68%, so you are missing out on a lot of information.

The best WordPress form plugins offer smart tools to combat form abandonment, such as WPForms’ Form Abandonment addon, which lets you capture partial entries.

This means that the plugin will collect all of the information entered into a form as a user types, even if they don’t end up submitting the form.

Capturing Abandoned Form Entries in WPForms

You can use the partial information you captured to follow up on these potential customers, such as by setting up automated emails to recapture their attention.

For more details, you can learn how to track and reduce form abandonment in WordPress.

3. High Converting Landing Pages Use Compelling Copy

A landing page needs to grab your visitors’ attention, tell a story that compels them to keep reading, and ultimately drive them to take the desired action (convert).

Here are a few things you can do to make your landing page copy more compelling.

Understand Your Audience

To write compelling copy, you will first need to understand your target audience. This is the group of people who are interested in your products, services, or content.

They are likely to have similar interests, needs, demographics, or other characteristics that draw them to your products and services.

Discovering these factors using tools like Google Analytics will let you create better content that resonates with your users, leading to more conversions and sales.

Start With an Attention-Grabbing Headline

Only 20% of visitors will read the full text of your landing page, but 80% will read the full title. Make sure it grabs their attention.

You can optimize your headline using online tools like WPBeginner’s free headline analyzer.

This tool will give your headline a score, and suggest ways you can improve it to get a higher score. Just repeat this a few times to create the perfect headline for your landing page.

Include the Right Keywords

Chances are that most of your landing page visitors will come from Google, whether from organic search or your pay-per-click ads.

To maximize your traffic, you need to discover the keywords that will bring customers to your landing page and write great copy based on those keywords.

Include Your Unique Selling Proposition

Some beginners make the mistake of just listing the features and benefits of their products and services on their landing pages. In my experience, this isn’t very convincing when you want someone to convert into a subscriber or customer.

If you want to get more conversions on your landing page, then you will need to focus on your unique selling proposition (USP). Essentially, this is the thing that makes your product/service different and better than anything that’s already available.

For example, here’s a small coffee business with a USP focused on the strength of their coffee and innovation.

Make sure that your unique selling proposition is clear and reflected throughout your copy. This is the best way to convince someone to pick your product over the competition.

Add Images and Video

Use eye-catching images to grab attention, break up your text, and illustrate your offering. Content combined with pictures has an 80% greater chance of being read.

Videos also improve conversions. 96% of people report that they watch explainer videos, and studies show that adding a video to a landing page increases conversions by 86% on average.

Increase the Perceived Value

Increasing the perceived value on a landing page is very important for convincing visitors to convert, whether it’s subscribing, buying a product, or taking another desired action.

It’s best to quantify the benefits with a number, such as the percentage saved. The WPBeginner team did this by showing a dollar value for a video course they offer for free.

Increasing Perceived Value on a Landing Page

Offering lead magnets such as eBooks is another way to incentivize users and increase perceived value. Studies show that 55% of landing page submissions come from lead magnets.

4. Foster Trust Among Your Audience

Building trust on your landing page is very important because it reduces perceived risk. Visitors who don’t trust you won’t risk spending their money or sharing their personal information.

Social proof builds trust with new users by demonstrating that your previous customers found your product or service valuable. 9 out of 10 customers trust reviews and testimonials, and social proof can increase landing page conversions by 5%.

Your users have probably already left genuine testimonials and reviews on Facebook, Yelp, Google, TrustPilot, and other platforms. Tracking these reviews down and including up-to-date testimonials on your landing page can be a lot of work.

That’s why I recommend using Smash Balloon Review Feeds Pro. It will automatically find testimonials and reviews from multiple platforms and showcase them on your page using stunning layouts.

Using Smash Balloon Review Feeds Pro to Display Customer Reviews

This will save you time and keep your landing page looking fresh. Best of all, these genuine testimonials will build trust with your audience and improve your landing page conversions.

5. Have a Compelling & Prominent CTA

Now that your landing page has an attention-grabbing headline and compelling content, and you are building trust using social proof, you will want to make sure your users click your CTA button or fill in your lead capture form.

Don’t leave this to chance! You can use directional cues to guide your visitor’s attention and nudge them towards taking the desired action.

These cues can be quite obvious, such as an arrow pointing at your CTA button or using a contrasting background color that’s hard to miss.

They can also be quite subtle. For example, you might use an image with people who are looking in the direction of your call to action or a mouse hover effect to highlight your CTA button.

Notice the visual cues on the landing page below. It features a photo of a man looking toward the form that needs to be filled in, and that form is placed in a box. Also, the ‘Step 1’ and ‘Step 2’ labels guide the user to what needs to be done next.

A Landing Page Example That Uses Visual Cues

6. Turn Abandoning Users Into Customers

Even the most effective landing page will have visitors who decide to leave without taking action. Research shows that as many as 9 out of 10 visitors abandon landing pages.

A super effective landing page will grab the user’s attention before they leave and redirect their attention back to your offer. This is where opt-ins can come in handy.

OptinMonster is the best conversion optimization toolkit for WordPress. It has Exit-Intent technology that lets you track when users are about to leave your landing page so you can pop up a tailored message just in time.

Using OptinMonster's Exit-Intent Technology

In my experience, you can expect to see a 2-4% increase in conversions simply by using Exit-Intent. In some cases, this can be significantly more.

For instance, the lead SEO consultant at Fastrack used an OptinMonster Exit-Intent popup to recover 53% of abandoning visitors.

You can use the popup to offer incentives such as custom coupons, time-limited offers, a BOGO (Buy One Get One) offer, and other promotional tools to convert those visitors into customers.

I hope these insights help you understand the anatomy of a great landing page and how you can grow conversions. You may also want to see these WPBeginner guides on the difference between a landing page and a website or the best WordPress landing page plugins.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post The Anatomy of a High Converting Landing Page (Expert Insights) first appeared on WPBeginner.

February 6, 2024

WordPress vs Google Sites – Which One Is Better?

Are you looking for a comparison of WordPress vs. Google Sites to help you decide which platform to use for your new website?

WordPress and Google Sites both offer easy ways to create a website. However, they each have pros and cons, so it might be unclear which one best fits your needs.

In this article, we will compare WordPress and Google Sites with their strengths and weaknesses so you can decide which is the better platform for you.

WordPress vs Google Sites - Which One Is Better?

Since we want to create the most detailed WordPress vs. Google Sites comparison, we have broken down the article into multiple in-depth sections. In each section, we will show which platform offers the most benefits to a beginner:

Overview of WordPress and Google Sites
WordPress vs. Google Sites: Hosted vs. Self-Hosted
WordPress vs. Google Sites: Features & Plugins
WordPress vs. Google Sites: Design & Layout
WordPress vs. Google Sites: SEO
WordPress vs. Google Sites: Support
WordPress vs. Google Sites: Monetization
WordPress vs. Google Sites: Cost
WordPress vs. Google Sites: Which Is Better?
Frequently Asked Questions About WordPress vs. Google Sites

Overview of WordPress and Google Sites

Let’s start with an overview of what WordPress and Google Sites offer when creating a new website, along with their pros and cons.

What Does WordPress Offer?

WordPress was launched over 20 years ago and has been continually improved. It now powers over 43% of sites on the internet.

That makes it the most popular website builder and content management system (CMS) in the world. Many of the most successful blogs and websites use WordPress, including a lot of big-name brands.

It can be used to create anything from simple blogs to complex business websites, online stores, membership sites, and much more. You can easily add features to your WordPress website using plugins and customize its appearance using themes.

To create a WordPress website, you will need to purchase a domain name and web hosting. Luckily, the best WordPress hosting companies make it easy to set up your website with a 1-click WordPress installation.

Here are some of the pros and cons of using WordPress that we will discover as we compare the two platforms side by side in this article.

Pros:

The WordPress software is free, open-source, and super easy to use.
You can host WordPress on your own website, so you are in full control of your content.
The WordPress block editor is beginner-friendly and allows you to add rich content by inserting blocks into your posts.
You can add more features to your WordPress website using plugins.
You can customize the look and feel of your WordPress website by installing a theme.
There are many ways to make money using a WordPress blog, such as running ads, making affiliate income, and selling products and services.
You can get detailed analytics about your website using tools like Google Analytics.
Powerful SEO plugins can help you increase traffic to your WordPress website.

Cons:

WordPress requires more setup than Google Sites, including purchasing web hosting. However, this can be quite inexpensive.
You will need to install the WordPress software, but many hosting providers do this for you automatically.
You will also need to update and back up the WordPress software. However, this is straightforward, and there are plenty of easy-to-use backup plugins to choose from.

Note: In this article, we are talking about WordPress.org and not the WordPress.com hosting service. For more details, please see our guide on the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com.

What Does Google Sites Offer?

Google Sites is a free platform for creating websites that was launched in 2008 after Google acquired the JotSpot website-building technology. It was completely rebuilt in 2016 with a simpler and more streamlined design.

While Google’s Blogger product helps you create a blog, Google Sites allows you to create other types of websites, such as a team, event, project, or help center site.

Designed for simplicity and ease of use, Google Sites integrates seamlessly with other Google services like Docs, Sheets, and Slides, making content management easy.

This makes it a convenient platform for Google users to create a basic website and is especially suitable for internal sites for teams that are using Google Workspace. These sites can be viewed by just your team or the general public, depending on your sharing settings.

However, Sites has not been widely adopted and is used by only 0.1% of all websites.

Here are some of the pros and cons of using Google Sites that we will discover as we compare the two platforms side by side in this article.

Pros:

You don’t need to install or update software to use Google Sites. It is available to anyone with a Google ID or Google Workspace.
The Google Sites editor is easy to use. However, it only offers basic features.
Google Sites integrates easily with other Google products, such as Google Docs.
You can also use Google Analytics to track your website visitors.
Google Sites is free to use, though you will need to pay for Google Workspace and a domain name.

Cons:

Google Sites has limited features, and you can’t add more using plugins.
Google Sites offers fewer themes and customization options than WordPress.
Google Sites does not offer built-in monetization tools.

Now that you have a general idea of the pros and cons of WordPress and Google Sites, we can jump into our full review.

WordPress vs. Google Sites: Hosted vs. Self-Hosted

One of the biggest benefits of using WordPress is that you can install it on your own web hosting account. This means that you own 100% of all your content and have full control over how you promote your brand.

That means you will need to organize web hosting where you can install the WordPress software. Luckily, installing WordPress is normally very easy, and the best hosting companies offer 1-click WordPress install.

On the other hand, Google Sites is a hosted service. The software is automatically available to all Google users, and your website content is stored on Google’s servers. You need to follow their terms of service, and they can change the software and pricing plans at any time.

Plus, Google has been known to unexpectedly discontinue its products in the past, leaving the future of your website in doubt.

Winner: WordPress

WordPress vs. Google Sites: Features & Plugins

WordPress is designed to be flexible and can be used to create just about any type of website. You can easily add the features you need to create a blog, small business site, online store, portfolio, and more.

That’s because you can add new features to WordPress using plugins. These are apps you can install to add new features to your website, such as image galleries, contact forms, backups, and much more.

You can choose from around 60,000 free plugins in the official WordPress plugin directory or countless premium plugins available from third-party websites.

Google Sites isn’t like this. It is designed to make it easy to create basic websites without coding or design skills. It lets you easily add content from other Google services, but there is no way to add new features.

It is easy for Google users to get started creating a simple website. But as your needs grow over time, you may quickly outgrow the features that Google Sites offers.

Winner: WordPress

WordPress vs. Google Sites: Design & Layout

WordPress themes allow you to easily customize the look and feel of your WordPress website. They determine how your site will look and let you personalize it and add unique features.

You can customize your theme using the built-in theme customizer or full site editor, or a page builder plugin that offers a beginner-friendly drag-and-drop interface.

For example, SeedProd is a powerful page builder plugin that makes it easy to create attractive landing pages and even completely custom themes.

SeedProd provides professionally designed themes and page templates that get you up and going with just a few clicks of a mouse. They also offer ready-made site template kits that can create a full website for your niche, including dummy content that is easy to customize.

Google Sites also provides templates to help you get started quickly. However, only 4 basic templates are offered.

You can also customize the appearance of your website using themes. While only 6 themes are offered, there are color and font options for each theme.

You can also create your own theme and import third-party themes. However, the customization you can achieve in Google Sites does not come close to that of WordPress.

Winner: WordPress

WordPress vs. Google Sites: SEO

Most websites get a lot of traffic from search engine results pages (SERPs). SEO stands for ‘search engine optimization’ and is all about making your content appear higher in searches so that users will find it easily.

The best way to rank higher in searches is to choose a search engine-friendly platform when building your website.

WordPress is built with SEO best practices in mind, such as permalink settings that create SEO-friendly URLs, categories that organize your content, and much more.

You can improve your SEO using WordPress SEO plugins and tools. For example, All in One SEO lets you add SEO titles and meta descriptions and choose a focus keyword. It also offers recommendations on how to optimize your blog posts.

Google Sites doesn’t offer these SEO benefits. However, if you are just using Google Sites to create resources for your Google Workspace-based team, then SEO will not be important.

But if you are creating public websites and you care about SEO, then Google Sites is not the best platform to use. Google acknowledges that ‘if SEO is your primary consideration, it might be worthwhile to explore other options.’

In any case, you might find our checklist on how to optimize blog posts for SEO helpful, whether you are using Google Sites or WordPress.

Winner: WordPress

WordPress vs. Google Sites: Support

There is great support available for WordPress, and you will often find an answer to any WordPress-related questions with a simple Google search.

You will find official documentation and support forums on WordPress.org. And because WordPress is so popular, you will find lots of useful third-party resources available online.

If you need technical support for a WordPress plugin, then you can visit the dedicated support forum on WordPress.org or the plugin’s own website. You can learn more in our guide on how to properly ask for WordPress support and get it.

And as you know, you will find a large range of free resources at WPBeginner. You can also ask for help on social media platforms, such as our WPBeginner Engage Facebook group, and view video tutorials on our YouTube Channel.

Google Sites also offers a lot of support options to its users.

You can find information on a variety of topics in the Google Sites Help Center and ask specific questions in the Google Sites Community Forum. If you are looking for training materials, then you should visit the Google Sites Training Center.

Besides these resources, Google offers several paid support options for Google Sites. Users can pay for Google Sites Support Premium, which can help you with a variety of tasks, including troubleshooting, configuration, and customization.

You can also pay for Google Sites Developer Support.

Winner: Tie

WordPress vs. Google Sites: Monetization

WordPress gives you complete control over your website, including the ability to monetize it any way you like without restrictions.

Here are just a few ways you can make money online with your WordPress website:

It is more difficult to make money from a website on Google Sites. That’s because it doesn’t include built-in monetization features like advertising integrations, and it is not a suitable platform for creating an online store.

That’s not to say you can’t make any money on Google Sites, just that there are fewer options that will require more effort.

For example, you can manually embed the code needed for Google AdSense or affiliate marketing into your site’s HTML. You could also offer exclusive content to subscribers and include payment buttons using third-party tools like PayPal or Google Forms.

Before deciding on a way to monetize your Google Site, make sure you check Google’s policies and guidelines to make sure you are not breaking any rules.

Winner: WordPress

WordPress vs. Google Sites: Cost

Cost is an important consideration when deciding which website platform to choose. Let’s take a look at how much it will cost to create a website on WordPress vs. Google Sites.

The Cost of a WordPress Website

The WordPress software is free of charge, but you will need to pay for a domain name and web hosting to create a new website. You may be concerned about how much this will cost.

Typically, you will pay $14.99 per year for a domain name and $7.99 per month for a hosting plan. This can add up if you are just starting out.

Luckily, it doesn’t have to cost that much. You can save money when you choose Bluehost, a web hosting company recommended by WordPress. They have agreed to give our readers a huge discount on hosting and include the domain name for free.

Besides that, they also include a free SSL certificate that protects your users’ privacy and allows you to accept online payments.

With that in mind, you can get started for as low as $1.99 per month.

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

And that’s all you will need to pay if you are happy to get started with free WordPress plugins and themes. As your needs grow, you can invest in premium themes or plugins as needed.

You can find a detailed breakdown in our guide to the cost of building a WordPress site.

The Cost of Google Sites

Google Sites is a free service. Anyone with a Google ID can use it, and it is part of Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), which offers productivity and collaboration tools for businesses.

Google Workspace itself costs between $6 and $18 per user per month when paid annually. You also need to pay for a domain name, which is typically $14.99 per year.

This is normally all you will need. Some users may need to pay for third-party tools they wish to integrate with their website or hire a developer to help set up their website.

To compare typical costs for the first year, WordPress may cost you around $33, and Google Sites around $87. Keep in mind that Google Workspace includes more than just Google Sites, but also that you will need to pay extra for each user who accesses it.

Winner: WordPress

WordPress vs. Google Sites: Which Is Better?

Now that we’ve compared WordPress vs. Google Sites, you can see that, in most cases, WordPress is a much better option for starting a new website.

WordPress offers more design options and a much wider variety of themes. It is also easy to add new features to WordPress using plugins. And it offers all of this at a low monthly price.

If you would like to get started with WordPress, then you can see our complete step-by-step guide on how to create a WordPress website.

Is there any time that Google Sites would be a better option? Yes.

If you are already using Google Workspace and need to build a basic site where you can share information and resources with your team, then you can do this quickly and easily using Google Sites.

Frequently Asked Questions About WordPress vs. Google Sites

Do you still have questions about WordPress vs. Google Sites? Here are answers to some of the questions we are asked most often by our readers.

Can I save money using Google Sites instead of WordPress?

In general no, most businesses will find WordPress more affordable than Google Sites. You just need an affordable hosting plan that includes a free domain, such as one offered by Bluehost or Hostinger.

However, if your business is already using Google Workspace with a custom domain, then there is no additional charge for using Google Sites.

Can I use my own domain name with Google Sites?

Yes, it is possible to connect up to 5 custom domains with a single Google Sites website. You can add these in Google Sites settings, and you will be prompted to follow some steps to verify that you own the domain or domains you wish to use.

Which is easier to use, WordPress or Google Sites?

Both WordPress and Google Sites are quite easy to use. Google Sites is designed to be beginner-friendly, so it has a simpler interface but also more limited functionality.

WordPress offers more features and customization. While it is easy to use, beginners may find it more complex. However, it is the platform that will continue to meet your needs as they grow in the future.

Can I easily migrate my content from Google Sites to WordPress?

No, there is no automatic way to move your content over from Google Sites to WordPress. You will need to carefully copy and paste the contents of each page individually.

That means that if you think you may want to change to WordPress in the future, it is best to start with a WordPress website.

We hope this tutorial helped you compare WordPress vs. Google Sites. You may also want to see our guide on important reasons why you should use WordPress for your website or our expert picks for the best WordPress hosting.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post WordPress vs Google Sites – Which One Is Better? first appeared on WPBeginner.

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