GoDaddy launched its Go WordPress theme last week. It has been publicly available through its GitHub repository for several months, but the theme review team finally approved and set it live in the theme directory. Thus far, the theme has garnered 7,000 active installs and is likely to hit the popular list, given GoDaddy’s history of releasing popular themes. It also provides translations in 27 languages out of the box.
Go is simple. After working with the theme through GoDaddy’s managed hosting onboarding process in October last year, I was admittedly a little disappointed this time around. The onboarding process made things almost too easy. I had a predesigned site without thinking about it. After installing and activating Go in my test environment, I couldn’t help but feel like it would take 100 times more work to recreate the magic I once basked in. I knew the power of the theme because I had been presented an ideal set of options that were preconfigured for me in the past. Without the configuration, the theme seemed a little less impressive.
That’s the beauty of great marketing and onboarding. GoDaddy had already reeled me in.
While the Go theme is simple, it is also powerful. A lot of that power is in its block styles. Instead of focusing on theme-specific features, the team behind the project poured their work into creating an experience that allows theme users to piece their sites together with the block editor. The theme is ideal for users who want to utilize the block editor as a page builder.
The theme has a handful of customizer options that provide additional flexibility, but the main selling point is that it gets out of the way and lets the user do the designing. I suspect we will see many similar themes in the next year as theme authors come to grips with building themes in a block world. A large part of the market will want themes that are essentially open canvases for site owners to manipulate the output of their site via blocks.
Go is also designed to work with WooCommerce, which is a large part of the company’s eCommerce hosting service. This integration should make it a nice option for small business owners.
CoBlocks Companion Recommended
Features block from the CoBlocks plugin.
The magic of Go is not in the theme itself. It’s in GoDaddy’s companion plugin CoBlocks, which the company acquired last year in a deal with ThemeBeans. The plugin has soared from a mere 3,000 active installs to over 100,000 since.
CoBlocks offers everything from accordions to maps, from logos to pricing tables, and a lot more in between. It covers a lot of ground that the core WordPress editor blocks do not cover.
The Go theme is designed to go hand-in-hand with CoBlocks (can we get GoDaddy to just go ahead and rename the plugin to GoBlocks?). The theme is meant to offer a page-building experience. Because GoDaddy owns both products, it makes sense they would offer one of the nicer integrations between the plugin and a theme.
Not Ideal for Blogging
A lot of whitespace between text and other blocks in posts.
The theme makes generous use of whitespace, but its overuse can often break the reading flow for blog posts. The flow from paragraph to paragraph is fine. However, the moment you drop an image, gallery, pull-quote, or one of many other blocks into the content, the theme adds an extra 140 pixels of whitespace above and below the block. It completely throws off the vertical rhythm of the post.
Go also displays the full posts on the blog posts page instead of excerpts. There are few things I dislike more when it comes to blogs. Providing an option for users to choose between a full and summary view would be ideal.
The theme does not claim to be well-suited to blogging. None of the demos for the theme show off a blog. If you’re looking for a theme to handle blogging with media mixed in the content, you will find better offerings elsewhere, such as the Blocksy theme
Limited Yet Useful Theme Options
Design style and color scheme options in the customizer.
The theme adds five sections to the customizer:
Site Design
Header
Footer
Social
Site Settings
Within each section, Go provides a few basic options, most of which are related to colors and layout. The most useful options reside under the “Site Design” section. The theme presents a design style option that changes the theme’s fonts and colors. Currently, there are five design styles: traditional, modern, trendy, welcoming, and playful. Once a design style is selected, users can choose from four color schemes for that style. The design of this system is brilliant. It gives users choices without forcing them to become designers and handpick the perfect hex code for each color.
Users who prefer to manage individual colors are not left out. The theme also provides options for overriding any of the colors from the chosen color scheme.
I was disappointed that Go opted for creating individual options for various social networks instead of using a navigation menu. Using WordPress’ built-in nav menu system for social links has become the de facto standard in the last several years, which allows users to carry their social links from one theme to the next. Unfortunately, users are required to retype all of their links with this theme.
The theme keeps does not go overboard with options but provides enough customizability to make the theme unique to the user.
How Does the Code Stack Up?
The theme offers a solid and well-documented codebase. There is not much PHP or JavaScript code, so there are few areas where it can go wrong. The theme’s strength is in its CSS.
The theme templates were primarily HTML with PHP sprinkled in. For DIY users who like to hack away at theme templates, you should not find any surprises.
Final Thoughts
Users who want to customize every page of their site will likely enjoy this theme. It is well-suited for small business owners and others with small sites. It could work well for artists and others with portfolios as well.
It does not fit with my personal taste because it does not cater to my blogging style, which is my primary interest in themes. However, I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone who wants a ton of control over their site’s inner page design.
The following is a list of the available demos. There is a lot that can be done in combination with the CoBlocks plugin, which you will want to use in combination with Go.
Photo Courtesy of Pixabay More and more people are choosing to dedicate their energy to make their own dreams come true as small business owners and entrepreneurs. With the explosion of technology, it...
Are you looking for the best WordPress themes of 2022?
With thousands of free and premium WordPress themes available, it’s hard for beginners to choose the right WordPress theme for their site.
In this article, we will share our expert picks of all the best and most popular WordPress themes of 2022.
The Most Common Traits of All Popular and Best WordPress Themes
WordPress themes are either niche-based or multipurpose in terms of features and options.
You can use a niche-based theme that’s designed especially for your industry, such as a restaurant theme.
Alternatively, you can choose a multipurpose theme that’s highly flexible and can work for any kind of website.
Regardless of the type, all the best WordPress themes have the following features and traits:
Mobile-responsive design: The theme designs are responsive and retina-ready, so your WordPress website looks great on all screen sizes and mobile devices.
SEO optimization: The theme follows the best SEO (search engine optimization) practices, so your website can rank higher in search results.
Page builder support: The theme is compatible with popular WordPress drag and drop page builders. This helps you create custom landing pages whenever you need them.
Speed and performance: Your theme plays an important role in the speed and performance of your website. You should look for themes that are well-designed to keep your site fast.
Customer support: The best themes include documentation and instructions that are easy to follow, are updated often, and are backed by a great support team to help you out if you get stuck.
These are the essential features that you should look for in a theme before selecting it for your website. Every theme in our list comes with many other useful features aside from the main ones that we mentioned above. You can read about these features in their descriptions.
Now that we have discussed the common traits of all popular themes, let’s take a look at our expert pick of the best themes of 2022.
Divi is one of the most popular WordPress themes and is owned by Elegant Themes. It includes an ultimate page builder. It has multiple visual elements and modules that help you create a beautiful website.
The theme comes with hundreds of free ready-made layouts for multiple industries and niches. The 1-click demo importer lets you import professionally designed pages and blog layouts to get started quickly. You can then replace the content with your own using the frontend editor.
With the built-in drag and drop page builder, you can move elements, save and manage custom designs, and use global styles on all your website pages. You can easily add testimonials, too.
Divi gives you complete control of the layout design, inline text editing, and custom CSS on your site. It’s highly flexible and easy to use. Plus, it’s SEO friendly to help your site rank well in Google and other search engines.
Elegant Themes offers great customer support if you have any problems with the theme.
Astra is a modern WordPress theme designed to create any website. It works with all the popular drag and drop page builders seamlessly.
The theme comes with several starter sites that you can use to launch your website quickly. These ready-made websites are perfect for small businesses, startups, blogs, and WooCommerce stores.
Astra has tons of amazing features, including page headers, mega menu, multiple layout choices, Google Fonts, unlimited color customization options, separate blog page layouts, and custom widgets.
Plus, Astra offers powerful integration with the WooCommerce plugin to create an online store. Their WooCommerce theme includes infinite scrolling, quick product view, shop page, product gallery, and cart options.
It also integrates with popular learning management systems like LearnDash. Astra has built-in SEO optimization to help your website rank well in Google and other search engines.
SeedProd is the best WordPress website builder on the market. It lets you design your custom theme layout with a visual drag and drop builder, without writing code.
SeedProd comes with several professionally-designed theme templates. These templates include all the page layouts that you need for your website, as well as high-converting landing pages. They can be used as-is, or completely customized to suit your needs.
You can use the SeedProd page builder to customize the layout and design of all of your theme pages. It shows a real-time preview of all the changes, so you can see how your website will appear to users before it’s even published.
Besides the theme builder, it also offers coming soon and maintenance mode templates. When you’re making your website, you can enable the coming soon page to engage your users and grow your email list.
SeedProd’s visual builder is powerful yet beginner-friendly. Whether you want to design a custom landing page or a complete website, it’s easy to set up with the drag and drop option.
Ultra is a powerful multipurpose WordPress theme built to help you easily make a website. It comes with dozens of ready-made sites for niches such as lifestyle, magazines, restaurants, photography, fashion, and more.
It also includes the Themify page builder that you can use for customization. Ultra has several builder addons to add advanced elements like progress bars, counters, pricing tables, an audio player, and more.
Other notable features include smart layout options, color choices, crisp typography, section-based scrolling, image filters, and portfolio options.
Ultra is also a perfect theme to start an online store as it has full WooCommerce compatibility. It’s easy to set up and customize your site with the live WordPress theme customizer.
OceanWP is a free responsive WordPress theme. It comes with a 1-click demo content importer and hundreds of ready-made sites to launch a website instantly.
The theme has multiple extensions to add features to your website like a login popup, an Instagram feed, a sticky footer, a featured posts slider, and more. It’s translation ready to create a multilingual website.
The OceanWP theme supports WooCommerce out of the box. It has built-in SEO features to help improve your website rankings.
The theme is ideal for any business website. It comes with 9 custom widgets, 3 layout options, landing page templates, and a custom header. It works with the WordPress block editor (Gutenberg editor) to customize posts and pages smoothly.
StudioPress is now part of WP Engine, the most popular managed WordPress hosting company. You can get this theme and all 35+ other StudioPress themes when you sign up for WP Engine hosting to build your website.
Hestia Pro is a modern multipurpose WordPress theme that’s optimized for speed. It has both one-page and multi-page layouts to make any type of website.
With a slick design, Hestia Pro lets you showcase your business and services professionally. It integrates with popular page builders like Beaver Builder, Elementor, Visual Composer, and more.
Hestia Pro is fully compatible with WooCommerce, and it allows you to create beautiful products and shop pages easily. It also ships with multiple starter sites for eCommerce stores and other business niches.
Nozama is a WordPress WooCommerce theme built to start an online store quickly. It’s highly customizable to display your featured products on the homepage.
It comes with a built-in storefront to create product filters, custom product layouts, and more. Other features include social media integrations, color customization, and header visibility.
Eclipse is an advanced WordPress photography and personal blog theme. It’s well-suited for photographers, bloggers, and authors.
The theme comes with a featured slideshow, widgetized columns, Instagram image carousel, ad placement spaces, and more. It’s beginner-friendly and easy to set up.
Sydney Pro is a fantastic WordPress multipurpose theme. It uses the custom Elementor blocks for a carousel slider, pricing tables, and a timeline.
Other notable features include page templates, header choices, customizer options, and a video header. The theme is translation ready and allows you to create a multilingual website easily.
Storefront is a high-quality and popular WordPress WooCommerce theme. It comes with an intuitive and flexible layout to create an online store.
It works with all WooCommerce extensions seamlessly. The theme is fully customizable for background, colors, and font using the WordPress customizer that shows your changes in real-time.
Inspiro is a stylish WordPress theme. It comes with a fullscreen video background slideshow that supports YouTube, Vimeo, and custom videos.
The theme is perfect for a portfolio, small business, or eCommerce website. It ships with a gallery module to display your images, videos, and work portfolio beautifully.
Neve is a modern WordPress multipurpose theme designed to create all kinds of websites easily. It’s highly flexible and easy to use.
This theme is compatible with popular page builders, including the Divi website builder, Beaver Builder, and more. Neve also supports the WordPress block editor to customize your pages and posts.
Authority Pro is a powerful WordPress theme. It’s built with a multipurpose approach to let you create any professional business website or online store.
The theme is highly scalable and works equally well for small to large business websites. It supports the WPForms plugin to create a contact form or any other form quickly.
News Portal is a free WordPress magazine theme. It has a widgetized layout and multiple ready-made magazine templates to launch your online magazine instantly.
It comes with multiple color schemes, category color options, background colors, and more. The theme is easy to set up and manage with the WordPress live customizer. Plus, you can easily add widgets and shortcodes to the widget areas.
News Portal is also retina ready and uses responsive design, meaning your site will look great on all devices.
Shoptimizer is a fast WordPress WooCommerce ready theme. It comes with multiple features to set up and grow your eCommerce store quickly.
The theme has a beautiful layout, custom header, featured content section, cart options, a wishlist, and more. It’s optimized for SEO and speed performance. Plus, it’s designed to boost conversions.
Gema is a beautiful WordPress theme designed specifically for photographers, personal bloggers, authors, lifestyle, and fashion websites.
It comes with a custom logo, a classic navigation menu, buttons, post layouts, and a style manager. The Gema theme is beginner-friendly and easy to set up.
Tusant is a unique WordPress podcast theme well-suited for musicians, bands, podcasters, vlogs, and any audio or video streaming website.
It allows you to embed videos and audios from multiple sources. The theme has several layout choices, crisp typography, and custom background color. You can also use the drag and drop page builders for customization.
Saved is a WordPress church theme ideally built for non-profits, churches, and fundraising websites. It comes with a built-in homepage builder to set up your website’s homepage quickly.
It comes with a Church Content plugin that lets you add sermons, staff profiles, events, and locations. Other useful functionality includes custom page templates, sticky menu, font choices, color schemes, and more.
Didi is a WordPress theme designed specifically for fashion, lifestyle, and wellness blogs. It comes with a white background that makes your content stand out.
It offers multiple layout choices, custom page templates, sidebar layouts, and video support. The Didi theme is compatible with WPML to create a multilingual website.
Travel Way is a modern WordPress theme ideally built for travelers, travel bloggers, and travel photographers.
It features a fullscreen custom header background with call-to-action buttons, social icons, logo, navigation menu, and other details. The theme has multiple sections to display your favorite locations beautifully.
Fitness is an elegant WordPress theme beautifully crafted for personal trainers, gyms, yoga instructors, and any health-related business.
It allows you to create custom pages for trainers and fitness classes, such as online yoga classes. With the 1-click demo content importer, you can import a ready-made website and get started quickly.
Foodica is a modern WordPress theme for food bloggers, food critics, chefs, and food recipe websites. It comes with a minimalist layout and 10 color schemes.
On the homepage, Foodica has a beautiful featured slider, featured recipes section, multiple ad placement spaces, and more. The theme integrates with WooCommerce to start an online food delivery service quickly.
Kale Pro is a premium WordPress food blog theme. It has a beautiful layout that you can also use to create a lifestyle blog, a fashion website, or an online magazine.
It features recipe index templates to showcase your recipes stylishly. Other features include a sticky navigation menu, an image slider, custom fonts, color schemes, and a background image.
Kea is a WordPress hotel theme designed for hotels, resorts, BnBs, and accommodation businesses. It offers a fullscreen image background on the homepage.
Kea allows you to integrate a reservation and booking service to manage your online bookings easily. The theme supports a fullscreen video or carousel slideshow to display your hotel rooms, lobby, and services.
Elite is a creative WordPress fullscreen theme packed with tons of features that you can use to launch a powerful eCommerce store. It allows you to showcase your products in beautiful image galleries and increase your sales.
It comes with image and video galleries, a custom logo option, Google Fonts, page layouts, and more. The Elite theme is easy to set up using the WordPress customizer with a live preview.
Essence Pro is a beautiful WordPress theme designed specifically for health, wellness, and lifestyle niches. It features an eye-catching fullwidth custom header image to create a powerful first impression.
The theme is built on top of the Genesis Framework, which makes it rock solid and robust. It ships with the Atomic Blocks and WPForms plugin to help you get started quickly.
Other notable features include 6 layout options, custom widget areas, landing pages, and more. It’s translation ready and supports WooCommerce out of the box.
Panoramic is a free WordPress multipurpose theme to create any website. It has a minimal layout with a simple and clean design that makes a great first impression on your visitors.
The theme integrates seamlessly with popular WordPress plugins like WPForms, SiteOrigin’s page builder, and WooCommerce. It comes with a homepage slider and flexible theme options that you can manage using the WordPress live customizer.
Agama is a free WordPress theme designed specifically for digital agencies, corporate businesses, photographers, freelancers, and portfolio websites.
It has a white background with a beautiful color selection for fonts, links, and buttons. The theme is SEO-ready and compatible with the WPML plugin to translate your website easily.
Silk is a modern WordPress fashion blog theme. It comes with an attractive layout and a featured content slider on the homepage.
With this theme, you get an Instagram feed display, social tools, custom post layouts, an image slider, and a mega menu. It has color choices, animations, fonts, and custom backgrounds.
Blockchain is a crypto business WordPress theme. It’s ideally built for financial traders, investors, advisors, and consultants.
The theme includes cryptocurrency exchange tables, post types, unlimited color schemes, custom widgets, and more. It fully supports drag and drop page builder plugins and the WordPress WooCommerce plugin.
If you are uncertain how to find the best website builder for small business, you might have just landed on the right web page! Going ahead, we have tested a few great website builders that would be particularly useful for small businesses.
WordPress is one of the most popular website builder in the world because it offers powerful features and a secure codebase. However, that does not protect WordPress or any other software from malicious DDoS attacks, which are common on the internet.
DDoS attacks can slow down websites and eventually make them inaccessible to users. These attacks can be targeted towards both small and large websites.
Now, you may be wondering how can a small business website using WordPress prevent such DDoS attacks with limited resources?
In this guide, we will show you how to effectively stop and prevent a DDoS attack on WordPress. Our goal is to help you learn how to manage your website security against a DDoS attack like a total pro.
What is a DDoS Attack?
DDoS attack, short for Distributed Denial of Service attack, is a type of cyber attack that uses compromised computers and devices to send or request data from a WordPress hosting server. The purpose of these requests is to slow down and eventually crash the targeted server.
DDoS attacks are an evolved form of DoS (Denial of Service) attacks. Unlike a DoS attack, they take advantage of multiple compromised machines or servers spread across different regions.
These compromised machines form a network, which is sometimes called a botnet. Each affected machine acts as a bot and launches attacks on the targeted system or server.
This allows them to go unnoticed for a while and cause maximum damage before they are being blocked.
Even the largest internet companies are vulnerable to DDoS attacks.
In 2018, GitHub, a popular code hosting platform, witnessed a massive DDoS attack that sent 1.3 terabytes per second traffic to their servers.
You may also remember the notorious 2016 attack on DYN (a DNS service provider). This attack got worldwide news coverage as it affected many popular websites like Amazon, Netflix, PayPal, Visa, AirBnB, The New York Times, Reddit, and thousands of other websites.
Why DDoS Attacks Happen?
There are several motivations behind DDoS attacks. Below are some common ones:
Technically savvy people who are just bored and find it adventurous
People and groups trying to make a political point
Groups targeting websites and services of a particular country or region
Targeted attacks on a specific business or service provider to cause them monetary harm
To blackmail and collect ransom money
What is the difference between a Brute Force Attack and a DDoS Attack?
Brute Force Attacks are usually trying to break into a system by guessing passwords or trying random combinations to gain unauthorized access to a system.
DDoS attacks are purely used to simply crash the targetted system making it inaccessible or slowing it down.
DDoS attacks can make a website inaccessible or reduce performance. This may cause bad user experience, loss of business, and the costs of mitigating the attack can be in thousands of dollars.
Here is a breakdown of these costs:
Loss of business due to inaccessibility of website
Cost of customer support to answer service disruption related queries
Cost of mitigating attack by hiring security services or support
The biggest cost is the bad user experience and brand reputation
How to Stop and Prevent DDoS Attack on WordPress
DDoS attacks can be cleverly disguised and difficult to deal with. However, with some basic security best practices, you can prevent and easily stop DDoS attacks from affecting your WordPress website.
Here are the steps you need to take to prevent and stop DDoS attacks on your WordPress site.
Remove DDoS / Brute Force Attack Verticals
The best thing about WordPress is that it is highly flexible. WordPress allows third-party plugins and tools to integrate into your website and add new features.
To do that WordPress makes several APIs available to programmers. These APIs are methods in which third-party WordPress plugins and services can interact with WordPress.
However, some of these APIs can also be exploited during a DDoS attack by sending a ton of requests. You can safely disable them to reduce those requests.
Disable XML RPC in WordPress
XML-RPC allows third-party apps to interact with your WordPress website. For example, you need XML-RPC to use the WordPress app on your mobile device.
If you’re like a vast majority of users who don’t use the mobile app, then you can disable XML-RPC by simply adding the following code to your website’s .htaccess file.
# Block WordPress xmlrpc.php requests
<Files xmlrpc.php>
order deny,allow
deny from all
</Files>
The WordPress JSON REST API allow plugins and tools the ability to access WordPress data, update content, and/or even delete it. Here is how you can disable REST API in WordPress.
The plugin works out of the box, and it will simply disable the REST API for all non-logged in users.
Activate WAF (Website Application Firewall)
Disabling attack vectors like REST API and XML-RPC provides limited protection against DDoS attacks. Your website is still vulnerable to normal HTTP requests.
While you can mitigate a small DOS attack by trying to catch the bad machine IPs and blocking them manually, this approach is not very effective when dealing with a large DDoS attack.
A website application firewall acts as a proxy between your website and all incoming traffic. It uses smart algorithm to catch all suspicious requests and block them before they reach your website server.
We recommend using Sucuri because it is the best WordPress security plugin and website firewall. It runs on a DNS level which means they can catch a DDoS attack before it can make a request to your website.
Pricing for Sucuri starts from $20 per month (paid yearly).
We use Sucuri on WPBeginner. See our case study on how they help block hundreds of thousands of attacks on our website.
Alternately, you can also use Cloudflare. However, Cloudflare’s free service only gives limited DDoS protection. You’ll need to signup for at least their business plan for layer 7 DDoS protection which costs around $200 per month.
Note: Website Application Firewalls (WAFs) that run on an application-level are less effective during a DDoS attack. They block the traffic once it has already reached your web server, so it still affects your overall website performance.
Finding Out Whether it’s Brute Force or DDoS Attack
Both brute force and DDoS attacks intensively use server resources, which means their symptoms look quite similar. Your website will get slower and may crash.
You can easily find out whether it is a brute force attack or a DDoS attack by simply looking at Sucuri plugin’s login reports.
Simply, install and activate the free Sucuri plugin and then go to Sucuri Security » Last Logins page.
If you are seeing a large number of random login requests, then this means your wp-admin is under a brute force attack. To mitigate it, you can see our guide on how to block brute force attacks in WordPress.
Things to Do During a DDoS Attack
DDoS attacks can happen even if you have a web application firewall and other protections in place. Companies like CloudFlare and Sucuri deal with these attacks on regular basis, and most of the time you will never hear about it since they can easily mitigate it.
However in some cases, when these attacks are large, it can still impact you. In that case, it’s best to be prepared to mitigate the problems that may arise during and after the DDoS attack.
Following are a few things you can do to minimize the impact of a DDoS attack.
1. Alert your team members
If you have a team, then you need to inform co-workers about the issue. This will help them prepare for customer support queries, look out for possible issues, and help out during or after the attack.
2. Inform customers about the inconvience
A DDoS attack can affect user experience on your website. If you run a WooCommerce store, then your customers may not be able to place an order or login to their account.
You can announce through your social media accounts that your website is having technical difficulties and everything will be back to normal soon.
If the attack is large, then you can also use your email marketing service to communicate with customers and ask them to follow your social media updates.
If you have VIP customers, then you might want to use your business phone service to make individual phone calls and let them know how you’re working to restore the services.
Communication during these tough times make a huge difference in keeping your brand’s reputation strong.
3. Contact Hosting and Security Support
Get in touch with your WordPress hosting provider. The attack you may be witnessing could be part of a larger attack targetting their systems. In that case, they will be able to provide you latest updates about the situation.
Contact your Firewall service and let them know that your website is under a DDoS attack. They may be able to mitigate the situation even faster and can provide you with more information.
In firewall providers like Sucuri, you can also set your settings to be in Paranoid mode which helps block a lot of requests and make your website accessible for normal users.
Keeping Your WordPress Website Secure
WordPress is quite secure out of the box. However, as the world’s most popular website builder it is often targeted by hackers.
Luckily, there are many security best practices that you can apply on your website to make it even more secure.
We have compiled a complete step by step WordPress security guide for beginners. It will walk you through the best WordPress security settings to protect your website, and its data against common threats.
We hope this article helped you learn how to block and prevent a DDoS attack on WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on the most common WordPress errors and how to fix them.
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.
Have you ever wondered how certain companies buy a vanity phone number for their business website?
Vanity phone numbers are business phone numbers that are memorable and easy to promote. For example, 1800-FLOWERS is a vanity toll-free phone number for a popular flower delivery service.
The sequencing or spelling of vanity phone numbers makes it easier to promote in creative ways. Vanity phone numbers are also highly effective in building your brand image.
Many small business owners believe that having a vanity business phone number must have a high cost, need special equipment, or technical skills to manage it.
This used to be the case in the old days, but it is not true anymore. You can get a vanity number without spending a fortune, purchasing special equipment, or acquiring technical skills.
In this article, we’ll show you how to easily buy a vanity phone number for your online business or WordPress website.
What is a Vanity Phone Number?
A vanity phone number is an easy to remember phone number that have a unique sequence. For example, 1-800-TOYSRUS (1-800-869-7787) or 1-800-GoFedEx (1-800-463-3339).
You can also find numbers with unique combinations like 800-333-4444 or 800-000-3333.
These phone numbers are more noticeable and memorable than random phone numbers. this makes vanity phone numbers great for marketing and building a brand image.
You can also get them as a toll-free number or a local number.
Most vanity phone numbers are usually toll-free numbers, which are available on a first-come-first-serve basis. This means that your vanity number is subject to availability regardless of the business phone service you buy it from.
What Do I Need to Get a Vanity Phone Number?
You’ll need a business phone service to buy a vanity phone number.
Unlike traditional landline phones, a business phone service runs on the internet. This is why it is sometimes also known as business VoIP service (Voice over Internet Protocol).
By using the internet for phone calls, companies can offer lower call rates, cheaper international calls, and advanced call management features to business owners.
These call management tools allow you to maximize the potential of your business calls. You can monitor calls, analyze them, set up voicemail greetings, setup call redirect rules, and more.
You only need a device connected to the internet to use a modern business phone service. Basically, a computer, laptop, tablet, or mobile phone would work.
This means you don’t need to buy any special equipment.
You can forward calls to your existing landline or mobile number, share the same number with team members, and set up auto-attendant messaging.
That being said, let’s take a look at some of the best vanity phone number providers that you can use to easily buy a vanity phone number for your business.
RingCentral is one of the top business phone system providers. They offer affordable VoIP service for small businesses with local, toll-free, and vanity phone numbers.
First, you need to sign up for a RingCentral plan. Their pricing starts from $19 per month per user which gives you one local or toll-free number.
You can add a vanity phone number to your plan for $30 (one-time fee).
Once you have signed up, you can get a local and toll-free number directly from your account dashboard right away.
However, if you are looking for a vanity phone number, then you’ll need to apply for it. The process can take up to 10 business days to set it up for your account.
Once approved, you can use a vanity number generator to come up with ideas for your easy to remember business phone number.
Pricing: Starting from $15.99 per month + $30 one-time setup fee.
Nextiva is one of the best professional phone service providers on the market. We use their platform on WPBeginner for our professional business phone number.
By default, Nextiva does not offer vanity phone numbers. Instead, they procure the numbers from their carrier partners which limits their ability to provide vanity numbers as a feature.
However if you already have a vanity phone number, then you can move it to Nextiva and start using it with their superior platform with all the call management features, CRM software integrations, and more.
Each Nextiva plan also comes with a free local number for any area code in the United States, and a toll-free number with all prefix codes except 0800.
Grasshopper is one of the leading providers of virtual phone numbers for businesses. They offer local, toll-free, and vanity phone numbers.
You can easily check the availability of your desired vanity number during the signup process. You can also port your existing local number and set up call forwarding to your newly acquired vanity phone number.
Grasshopper provides all the standard features of a business phone system. You get business texting, call forwarding and routing, extensions, custom greetings, and more.
Pricing: $26 per month with 1 number and 3 extensions.
Phone.com is another popular business phone number provider. They offer local, toll-free, and vanity phone numbers.
However, they do charge a one-time setup fee for a toll-free vanity phone number. This fee starts from $49 and can go higher depending on what number and toll-free code you choose.
Phone.com’s plans come with a monthly limit of call minutes, and you’ll need to purchase extra minutes if you exceed those limits. You also get a generous number of SMS messages with each plan.
Apart from getting your desired phone number, you also get all the standard features to manage business calls. This includes call routing, auto-attendant, custom greetings, voicemail, call logs, business texting, and more.
Pricing: Starting from $12.99 per month
How To Promote a Vanity Phone Number on Your WordPress Website?
Majority of the website traffic these days are coming from mobile devices. This means that your users don’t need to reach to their phone to contact your business since they are already on the phone.
You need to make it easier for them to just tap on your business phone number to make a call.
Adding Click to Call to a WordPress Website
If you are using WordPress which is the best website builder on the market, then you can easily add a click to call button to your website using a plugin.
Upon activation, you need to visit Settings » WP Call Button page to configure plugin settings.
It provides two types of call buttons.
Sticky Call Button – This button remains visible on your website as users scroll down a page.
2. Static Call Button – This button does not move and you can add it anywhere on your website using a shortcode.
After you choose your button type, you will need to enter your phone number and choose the button’s appearance style. Don’t forget to click on the Save button to store your settings.
If you are not using WordPress and want to add a click to call button to your website, then this is how you would do it.
Basically, you can add telephone numbers as links using the specific phone number format.
tel:+15555555555
Depending on which website builder you are using, click on the Add link button and then add your phone number with tel: prefix.
If you are familiar with HTML, then you can also use HTML to add a clickable phone number.
<a href="tel:+15555555555">Click here to call us</a>
Simply replace the phone number with your own and save your changes.
Frequently Asked Questions about Choosing a Vanity Phone Number
Choosing a toll-free or vanity phone number can bring up a lot of questions. We will try to answer some of the most frequently asked questions about vanity phone numbers that we have come across.
1. What is the difference between a vanity phone number vs a toll-free number?
A vanity phone number has a sequence of numbers that spells your business name, product, or service. They can also just have a memorable sequence of numbers.
Your vanity phone number can be a toll-free number or a local number that comes with a memorable number sequence.
On the other hand, toll-free numbers are the numbers with specific dialing codes that can be dialed with no charge to the person making the call. Toll-free dialing codes in the United States are 800, 888, 877, 866, 855, 844 and 833.
Toll-free numbers can be acquired on a first-come-first-serve basis, which is why most vanity phone numbers are usually toll-free numbers as well.
2. Do I need to pay a premium price for a toll-free vanity phone number?
No, you don’t. FCC rules forbid hoarding, trading, and reselling of toll-free numbers. Some phone services may charge you a setup fee for a vanity phone number, but this is not the price of the toll-free number.
3. Can I sell my toll-free vanity phone number?
No, you cannot. FCC rules prohibit selling of toll-free numbers, and anyone trying to sell a toll-free number can get into legal trouble.
4. Can I use my vanity phone number with my local number?
If you are using a business phone service provider, then you can easily forward inbound calls to your existing local number. You can also set up forwarding rules based on time of the day, or set up an IVR to connect with the right person in your team.
When you call a business phone number, you are often greeted with an automated voicemail greeting that helps guide you through the phone directory and next steps.
These voicemail greeting makes your small business look professional, and they can help increase sales as well as boost customer satisfaction.
In this article, we will show you how to set up a voicemail greeting for your online store, business, or blog. We’ll also show you the best voicemail greeting examples that you can use as a template.
Why Voicemail Greeting is Important for Your Business?
More than 88% of local searches on mobile devices end up in a phone call. Mainly thanks to the nifty click to call buttons that appear in Google local search results.
For many small businesses, it may not be possible to answer all the calls immediately. Sometimes customers may call after business hours, and you may be busy or have no staff available at that time.
This is where your voicemail greeting comes in.
For many customers, this will be their first contact with your business. Not setting up a voicemail greeting can cause you to lose a customer to your competitor.
On the other hand, not getting the voicemail greeting right can also have serious consequences. Customers may hang up, not follow through, or simply reach out to your competitors.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to properly set up voicemail greeting for your online business.
The Best Way to Set up a Voicemail Greeting
Normally, small business owners use a landline or mobile phone number to manage calls. While it may get the job done, they do not allow you to properly manage business calls or set up an effective automated voicemail greeting.
The best way to manage business calls is by using a business phone service. A lot of small businesses use a virtual business phone number because it lets them effectively manage business calls without sacrificing their privacy.
Unlike a landline or mobile number, it uses the internet to manage calls. The official term for this technology is called business VoIP phone service (Voice over Internet Protocol).
Using a business phone service gives you the following advantages over the landline and mobile.
You can set your business hours and record different voice greetings to be played based on the time of the day.
You can set up auto attendant, add extensions to route the calls, let users leave a voice message, and more.
It works on your computer, tablet, a desk phone, and even on your mobile phone using apps.
Multiple users can use the same phone number regardless of their location.
You can easily give access to new employees without calling in a technician or buying new equipment.
We recommend using Nextiva because it is the best business phone service provider on the market. They offer a comprehensive set of features with an easy to use web-based admin panel and apps for your phone.
We use Nextiva in our business to manage calls for WPBeginner and other Awesome Motive properties.
If you want a different solution, then take a look at RingCentral. It is another great business phone service. They offer an incredibly feature-rich platform, with lots of tools to manage voice greetings, auto-attendants, voice messages, call transcripts, and more.
Once you have set up a business phone service, you can set up voice greetings using their easy to follow settings.
Voice Greeting Examples for Businesses
There are some basic rules that you must follow to create the most effective voicemail greetings.
Avoid cliches like ‘Your call is important to us’ they are overused and don’t feel sincere anymore.
Make sure that your voicemail recording sounds friendly and personal.
Try not to sound like you are reading from a script.
If you can, then hire a voice artist to help you record voicemail greetings. You can even find someone on Fiverr.
Make sure that your voicemail provides important information like business hours and contact information.
Following are some voicemail greeting templates that you can use for your business.
Off Hours Voicemail Greeting Examples
This voicemail greeting will be played when customers call you after business hours or during weekends. Make sure that this voicemail greeting informs users about office hours, alternative ways to reach customer service, or store location.
“Hi, you’ve reached [business name]. We are available by phone from [9 am] to [6 pm] [PST] Monday to Friday. You can also use the contact form on our website, [www.example.com] to leave us a message and we’ll get back to you via email. If you’d like us to call you back, then please leave your name and number after along with a short message, and our team will get back to you as soon as possible.”
“Hi, you’ve reached [business name]. We are currently unable to answer your call. Our office hours are [business hours] Monday to Friday. Our store at [store location] remains open for customers during weekends. You can also contact us via live chat on our website [www.example.com] [24 hours a day 7 days a week]. If this is not urgent, and you’d like us to callback then please leave your name and number after the beep.”
As you can see both examples deliver important information and offer customers alternate ways to contact via live chat or contact form.
Vacation Voicemail Greeting Examples
These greeting messages can be recorded during the holidays.
“Hello, you’ve reached [business name]. Our team is currently out of the office to spend holidays with friends and family. We’ll be back to work on [day and time]. Please leave us your name and number and we will get back to you ASAP. [Happy Holidays (or suitable greeting for that holiday)]”.
“Happy holidays! Our team at [business name] is away until [date]. If you are an existing customer, you can still open a support ticket on our website, we will try to get back to you within the next 24 hours. You can also contact us via live chat or contact form on our website [www.example.com]. If it is not urgent, then you can leave us your name and number after the beep. We will return your call as soon as possible.”
“Hi, you have reached [company name]. We are closed for (holiday name) and will get back to work on [date and time]. If you need an urgent response you can email us at (email_address) we will try to answer all emails within 24 hours. You can also leave us a message and we will get back to you after the holidays (Happy New Year / Holiday)”.
As you can see these voicemail greetings provide customers as much information as possible. These greetings also ensure that customers know how to get a quicker response using alternate contact methods during the holidays.
Away / Busy Voicemail Greeting Examples
If you are busy, away, or understaffed and cannot answer the customer calls immediately, then you can use these greetings as an example.
“Hi, you have reached [business name], we are unable to take your call right now but we would love to call you back ASAP. Please leave us your name and number after the beep.”
“Hi, we are currently away from the phone. If it isn’t too urgent, then you can email us at (email address). Otherwise please leave your name and number after the beep and we’ll call you back right away.”
If you are the only person answering calls, then you can make it a personal voicemail greeting.
“Hi, you have reached (Your Name). I am currently unable to answer the phone. You can send me an email to (email address) or you can leave your name and number after the beep and I’ll call you back as soon as possible.”
Test and Improve Your Voicemail Greetings
Another great reason to use a professional phone service is that you can track all your calls and view detailed reports about them. For example, this is how Nextiva’s call analytics page looks like.
You would need to track how many users hear each voicemail greeting and how they responded. Voicemail greetings with a higher score of customers leaving a message are working efficiently.
Voicemail messages that are not even heard completely are a failure.
We recommend trying different voicemail greetings to find the perfect balance. Updating your voicemail greeting periodically can also help you fill communication gaps that you didn’t even know existed.
Follow up Your Voicemail Messages
Now that you have set up balanced, informative, and friendly voicemail greeting, the next step is even more crucial.
What happens after a customer leaves you a voice message?
If you are using a professional business phone system, then you’ll be easily able to track and respond to those messages.
Make sure that you and your staff are equally well prepared for a quick followup. A prompt callback goes a long way in strengthening business relationships and closing sales.
Managing business phone calls from your personal phone number can become very annoying, and it takes away your privacy. Not to mention it doesn’t scale as you hire more people.
This is why many new and established business owners use virtual business phone number apps to get a custom phone number for their business.
A virtual business phone number allows you to use the same number on laptops, mobile phone, desktop handsets, and more. You can easily forward calls, record voice messages, and share the same number among employees.
You can quickly and easily setup a virtual business phone number without any technical knowledge. All you have to do is download the app on your phone or computer, and you can get started.
In this article, we’ll share our pick of the best virtual business phone number apps for small businesses (including free and unlimited options).
Most businesses now have an online presence, and customers need multiple ways to reach out.
While communication tools like business email, live chat, or text messages can be useful, nothing beats the personal human connection of hearing an actual human on the other end of the line.
Normally, businesses believe that having a landline number is quite enough. However, they soon realize how ineffective the traditional landlines are when it comes to handling business and customer calls.
And you definitely don’t want to make the mistake of using your personal phone number for business.
This is where a virtual business phone number app can help. It gives you the following benefits over the traditional land and mobile phone numbers.
You can use it on your phone with mobile apps, laptops, desk phone, and other devices
One number can be shared by different employees at the same time
Call routing, waiting, ring tones, vacation responses, business hours can all be managed via the app
Voice messages, text messaging, call to email transcription, and cheaper local/international phone calls are just the cherry on top
That being said, let’s take a look at some of the best virtual business phone apps that you can use.
Nextiva is the top virtual business phone number service provider on the market. They make it super easy to manage your virtual phone number using their app on your desktop / laptop computer, mobile phone, tablets, or a desk phone.
You can even keep your local number and use it with Nextiva to get HD voice calling over VoIP. They also allow you to get virtual business phone numbers for different geographic locations.
Nextiva has a powerful set of features included in each plan like call forwarding/routing, auto attendant, receptionist, voice mail to email, call queuing, unlimited calls, and call analytics.
RingCentral is another powerful virtual phone number app provider for small businesses. They offer virtual phone numbers for any region in the US and Canada, toll-free 800 numbers, voice mail, fax, call forwarding, caller tones, and more.
They have easy to use apps for mobile phones to manage all your business calls on the go. You can also share the number with team members, setup auto call routing, create call flows, and ensure that your customers get all the answers they need.
Apart from virtual phone features, RingCentral also offers video meetings with screen sharing, free call minutes, and integrations with popular CRM software, Dropbox, Microsoft, and Amazon cloud services.
Grasshopper provides an easy virtual phone number service for startups and small businesses. It comes with a mobile app that allows you to manage your business phone system on any device and from any location.
They offer virtual business numbers, vanity numbers, local numbers for different regions, 800 and 833 toll-free numbers to choose from.
You can keep business and personal calls separate with the same device and never miss a call. Grasshopper combines all essential features in one package with call forwarding, voice mail, business texting, business VoIP and WiFi calling, automated greeting, and more.
Pricing: Starting from $26 per month for 1 number and 3 extensions.
Phone.com is another great option to get a virtual business phone system. They offer affordable business phone services for startups, soloprenuers, and small businesses.
They also offer cheaper call rates to some European countries and Canada by counting those as local call minutes. From features perspective, you get mobile apps, call forwarding/routing, virtual assistant, IVR menus, text messaging, fax, and more.
They offer pay per minute plans which allows you to pay less based on your usage. However, it can easily get very expensive as your business needs grow.
Pricing: Pay per minute plans starting from $12.99 per month. Unlimited plans starting from $29.99 / month per extension.
If you are looking for a free virtual business phone app, then Google Voice would be the best option for you. If you are already using G Suite, then you can integrate it with all other Google Apps you are already using for your business.
Individual users and soloprenuers can use the personal plan to get a virtual phone number and call anywhere in the US and Canada for free.
However, the personal plan does not give you access to many of the business phone features included in their business plan such as auto-attendant, desk phone support, etc.
Pricing: Free for personal use. Paid plans start from $10 per user/per month.
eVoice is a popular business phone company offering international coverage, particularly in the United Kingdom. They offer business phone system, virtual numbers, toll-free numbers, and local numbers for different regions.
Their plans include call management tools, virtual receptionist, outbound calling app, conference calling and more. You can get custom phone numbers for UK, EU, Canada, USA, and many other countries.
You can choose from multiple plans each comes with a different number of users you can add, and set of call minutes. Call forwarding rates are different based on your location and the number you are forwarding to.
Pricing: Starting from £7.50 per month for 1 user.
Freshcaller is an easy to use virtual business phone app provider. Suitable for small and growing businesses, they offer reasonably priced plans to fit all budgets including a pay per minute plan with unlimited agents.
You can get international numbers, toll-free numbers, use the existing number, mask local number with a virtual number, or choose a vanity number.
It includes all the usual features you need like call management tools, business hours, mobile apps, shared lines, call waiting, SIP connections, and more. Some plans allow you to keep using your local carrier which is useful if you cannot port your local number or the local carrier offers better call rates.
No matter how small or big your business is, managing its financial side can be frustrating. Thanks to technology, you can bypass that stress and have the best accounting software for small business do all the heavy lifting for you. Once you find your top accounting software among all what’s out there, you will be able to do away with Excel spreadsheets and things similar. In fact, there are a bunch of software options that give you the ability to manage payroll and handle other business-y things in just a few clicks.
This week, Cisco and Facebook have patched their APIs, a detailed report on Solr parameter injection is out, and GitHub continues their fight against API keys and tokens in public repositories.
Cisco has released patches for several critical API security flaws in its Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) software and Small Business 220 Series Smart Switch routers. The patches center around the APIs behind the web-based management interfaces.
Are you looking for the best free WordPress business themes?
WordPress repository has thousands of free themes for all kinds of businesses. However, with so many choices it can become quite overwhelming to find the perfect theme.
For most business websites, you want a theme that looks good, is easy to customize, and helps you grow your business.
In this article, we have handpicked some of the best free WordPress business themes for you to choose from. All these themes are optimized for performance and are mobile-friendly.
There are two kinds of WordPress websites available. WordPress.com, which is a restricted hosting platform and WordPress.org, which is the popular WordPress platform you’ve heard of.
A domain name is your website’s address that your users will type in their browsers to access your site (for example, wpbeginner.com). On the other hand, web hosting is where you will store all your website files.
We recommend using Bluehost because they are one of the largest hosting companies in the world and an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.
Astra is a popular multi-purpose WordPress theme. It comes with dozens of starter sites including multiple demos for business websites.
It is fully customizable and makes it super easy to change its colors, background, fonts, and other options. Astra works great with any of the top page builders which makes it easier to create your own custom layouts when needed.
OceanWP is a free WordPress business theme designed to make any kind of website. It comes with several pre-built demos that you can use to quickly launch your business website.
The theme is eCommerce ready to start an online store in a few clicks. It has the fastest page load time and built-in SEO features to boost your website traffic.
Neve is a lightweight WordPress multi-purpose theme suitable for small business websites and eCommerce stores.
It has a minimalist layout with beautiful colors and advanced typography. It integrates with popular page builders like Beaver Builder for easy customization.
Guten Theme is a Gutenberg ready WordPress theme that you can use to create your business website. It comes with support for extra Gutenberg blocks that you can use to build beautiful layouts for your website.
It also works well with drag and drop page builders to give you even more customization options. It’s highly optimized for speed and performance.
Sydney is a powerful WordPress business theme. It comes with a full-width image slider, custom logo, unlimited color options, and access to all Google Fonts. Other notable features include sticky navigation menu, header image, and parallax scrolling.
Mesmerize is a super-flexible WordPress multi-purpose theme built for business websites. It is beginner-friendly and comes with tons of options that let you make a website without writing any code or CSS. The homepage features a business website design, which includes 5 header styles and over 30 ready-to-use content sections. It also supports video backgrounds, slideshows, header content types, gradient overlays, and more.
Zelle is a one-page WordPress theme designed with a professional layout for business websites. It has parallax scrolling, custom backgrounds, mega menus, and 1-click demo content importer to get started right away. The Zelle theme is also compatible with all popular page builders to help you easily create custom page templates.
Bento is a user-friendly WordPress theme built with several professional layouts, including a template for your business website.
It’s packed with features like multiple page templates, custom widgets, vector icons, unlimited color combinations, and Google Fonts. You can use the WordPress customizer to customize your website with a live preview.
Hestia is a free WordPress theme perfect for business websites. It comes with a companion plugin that adds client testimonials and services section on the homepage.
It is compatible with popular page builder plugins and offers out of the box support for WooCommerce. Hestia is easy to set up using the live theme customizer.
Affluent is a free WordPress theme well-suited for corporate and business websites. With a minimal and professional layout, it features custom post types for homepage slider, content blocks, and testimonial rotator. It integrates with popular WordPress plugins like Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, and WPML to extend the functionality.
If you’re looking for a free WordPress theme for your food-related business, then Foodica would be a perfect choice. It offers a spacious layout with white background that makes your content and images popout.
This theme has multiple navigation menus, image slider, social sharing icons, and featured content section on the homepage. It’s easy to customize with WordPress live customizer.
Avant is a free and modern WordPress business theme to quickly make professional-looking websites. It gives you complete control to select the layouts for your pages and blog.
You can also customize the layout settings to adjust the spacing in the header, footer, and widget areas. It is multilingual ready and supports WooCommere out of the box.
Total is a beautiful and free WordPress theme for business websites. It comes with a flexible homepage layout with different areas to add slider, contact form, progress bar, portfolio, team section, testimonials, and a blog section.
It includes multiple widget-ready areas and full customizer support to change theme settings. It is also WooCommerce ready and can be used to create a multilingual website.
Hueman is a free and multi-purpose WordPress business theme. It is highly customizable and comes with easy to use options panel. It has multiple layout choices, including single, two, or three column layouts. Hueman offers two navigation menu locations and social media menu built right into the theme.
Poseidon is a minimal WordPress theme with a beautiful spacious layout. It can be used as a simple blog theme, a business website, and even as an online magazine. It allows you to build a homepage layout using custom widgets. You can use the WordPress theme customizer to change colors, fonts, and background.
Customizr is one of the most popular and highly customizable WordPress business themes. It is fully responsive and mobile-friendly. It comes with a featured slider, multiple page templates, layout choices, and colors. This theme has an attractive full-width custom background image to leave a stunning first impression.
Make is a page builder friendly WordPress theme with drag and drop functionality that allows you to build your business website quickly. It comes with multiple layout choices and fully responsive design. It also includes full-width banners and image galleries to showcase your business portfolio.
Vantage is a free and flexible WordPress business theme that can be used for almost any kind of website. It is highly customizable by using the page builder plugins. You can use the drag and drop functionality to customize the layout quickly.
It is optimized for performance and can also be used to eCommerce websites.
Colorway is a stylish WordPress business theme with easy to use features and options. It comes with a custom background, multiple layout choices, Google analytics support, and more. You can also import demo content to set up the theme and then replace the text and images to get started right away.
Pinnacle is a bold WordPress theme offering a flat design with fully responsive layout. It features a full-width header background image with custom logo and navigation menu. Pinnacle also supports WooCommerce to extend your business site into an eCommerce store.
Spacious is a free WordPress business theme with a minimalist and refreshing layout. It comes with an image slider, custom widgets, and homepage sections for featured content.
It also includes boxed and wide layout choices, blog page template, and several other page layouts. You can choose between lighter or darker color schemes for the website and use it with any page builder plugin of your choice.
Moesia is a responsive WordPress business theme with full parallax support. It comes with pre-defined blocks that you can use to build your homepage. Each block can have its own parallax background, which creates a beautiful experience for your users.
Engrave Lite is a powerful WordPress business theme. It showcases a full-width image slider and custom sections on the homepage.
It has multiple navigation menus, widget-ready areas, support for eCommerce plugins, and easy customization options. It is quick to set up without struggling with too many options.
As the name suggests, Full Frame is a full-width WordPress theme for business websites. It comes with a built-in featured content slider, call to action button, custom widgets, and multiple page layouts.
The theme supports WooCommerce to convert your business website into an online store.
Minamaze is a minimal WordPress business theme. It has a beautiful combination of black and white colors for the background, fonts, and borders. The theme has a full-width slider, 2 navigation menus, and a custom logo. It is highly optimized for SEO to grow your website traffic.
We hope this article helped you find the best free WordPress business theme for your website. You may also want to check out our expert pick of the best email marketing services and best business phone 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.
Do you want to add a click-to-call button in WordPress? As more people visit your website using their smart phones, adding a tap-to-call button makes it easy for them to contact you. In this article, we will show you how to easily add a click-to-call button in your WordPress website.
Why Add Click-to-Call Button in WordPress
Many small business websites rely on customers to contact them for quotes, pre-sale information, or support.
However, depending on the industry some users may want to speak with a person right away.
As mobile web traffic increases around the world, often users find it more convenient to just tap-to-call and get the information they need.
If you’re just starting a business, then we recommend looking into a professional business phone service, so you can do call forwarding, share numbers with employees, and answer calls using your cell phones from anywhere (instead of a landline).
That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily add a click-to-call button in WordPress.
Method 1. Adding a Click-to-Call Now Button in WordPress Using Plugin
This method is easier and recommended for all users. It allows you to easily create a click to call button in Gutenberg, Classic editor, WordPress sidebar widget, and even a sticky floating call button.
Upon activation, you need to visit Settings » WP Call Button page to configure plugin settings.
The first settings page is for the most commonly requested feature, Sticky Call Button, which scrolls with the user as they browse your website.
This highly conversion optimized feature helps you get more calls and close more deals faster.
You need to start by entering your business phone number that you want people to call. WP Call Button plugin uses the smart phone field which means you can simply select your country, and it will automatically add the country code in the proper format.
Note: If you don’t have a business phone number, then you can get one from Nextiva. This is the company we use for our business VoIP phone.
Next, you have the option to add the call button text, select the positioning, and choose the button color.
By default the plugin will add a click to call button all pages and all devices. However you do have the option to show it only on certain pages or show only mobile devices.
Once you’re done, click on the activate toggle at the top and then click on the save changes button to store your settings.
After that, you can visit your website to see the call button in action.
If you want to add a static call button in your WordPress contact page, about page, or any other post / page, then you have two options.
If you’re using the new WordPress block editor, then simply create or edit an existing page. Next, you need to add the WP Call Button block by clicking the “+” icon.
WordPress Call Button block comes many customization options such as the ability to customize button color, button text, font size, and the ability to show or hide the phone icon.
Once you add the button, it will allow users to click and call your phone number that you specified in the WP Call Button settings page.
Now, if you’re using the WordPress classic editor, then you need to use the Static Call Button generator to get a shortcode.
Simply go to Settings » WP Call Button and click on the Static Call Button menu on the top.
Next, you can customize the call button text, color, and choose whether you want to show or hide the phone icon. After that simply copy the shortcode below and paste it inside the post or page where you want to add it.
WP Call Button plugin also allows you to add the call button in your website sidebar using the sidebar widget.
To do this, you need to go Appearance » Widgets and drag the WP Call Button widget to your widget-ready area.
This widget lets you add the Widget title and description. You can click on the Advanced Settings link to customize call button text and call button text.
After reading this, you can probably see why WP Call button is by far the easiest and most comprehensive WordPress click to call button plugin the market.
The best part is that it’s 100% free, and it has a seamless integration with Google Analytics.
All you need to do is use the MonsterInsights plugin, and it will automatically track how many people click on your call button and which pages are getting you the most leads, so you can focus on what’s working to grow your business, faster!
Method 2. Manually Add Click to Call Button in WordPress
This method allows you to manually add click to call buttons and links anywhere on your WordPress website.
The easiest way to add a clickable phone number to your website is by adding them like this:
<!--This link will work on Android and iPhone. It will be visible to desktop users but will result in an error when clicked -->
<a href="tel:+15555551212">+1 (555) 555-1212</a>
<a href="tel:15555551212">Call Me</a>
These links will open the phone app on mobile devices. On desktop computers, Mac users will see an option to open the link in Facetime, whereas Windows 10 users will see the option to open it in Skype.
You can also use HTML to add an image or an icon next to the click-to-call text link.
Let’s take a look at how to do this.
First, you need to visit the Media » Add New page and upload the image you want to use. After uploading the image, you need to click on the ‘Edit’ link to proceed.
This will bring you to edit media screen where you need to copy the file URL. You will need it in the next step.
You can now edit the post, page, or custom HTML widget where you want to display the click-to-call phone icon. In the edit area, you can now add the phone icon image wrapped inside the tel: link.
Simply go to Appearance » Menus page and click on the custom links tab from the right column. Now you can add the phone number in the link field in the following format:
tel:+155555555
After that, add the text you want to display and then click on ‘Add to menu’ button.
Next, visit your website to see your click to call link in action.
There are numerous complaints about project management software since the inception of the IT industry. Some of the complaints elicit the counter-productivity factor of task management tools. I know that being an Agile project manager at nTask sounds like a bit of cliché’, but at the same time, I cannot help but think otherwise.
Sometimes, Project Management Tools are Overrated
Yep, they are not only overrated, but there is a very real possibility that you don’t have to rely on project management software to get by with your business activities. Why so? Consider a small business brick n’ mortar environment with old-school work aesthetics. They are running their business fine.
It allows you to customize every aspect of your website. Elementor comes with over 80 design elements to add text, images, icons, maps, posts, testimonials, and more with live preview. It also includes separate modules for online stores, which help you instantly create beautiful sales pages.
Elementor page builder integrates third-party WordPress services for analytics, email marketing, and performance optimization of your website. It’s compatible with most of the WordPress themes and offers premium templates with the page builder for your ease.
On the other hand, a template is a layout for a specific page or part of a website. You can use the template to design custom web and landing pages easily.
Best Elementor Themes and Templates
Many premium and free WordPress themes are made specifically to work well with the Elementor. There are also several templates that you can use with your existing WordPress theme.
Let’s take a look at some of the best Elementor themes and templates that you can use.
OceanWP is a popular WordPress theme that works great with Elementor builder. It comes with many page templates and 1-click demo content installer for easier setup.
Using the premium extensions, you can extend the features and functionality of your website. It has the fastest page load time and supports WooCommerce out of the box.
Astra Theme is a powerful WordPress theme designed to create any kind of website. It fully integrates with Elementor page builder and allows you to customize every aspect of your website.
It is packed with dozens of ready-made demos and starter sites. Astra Theme is highly optimized for performance and speed.
Atmosphere Pro is a beautiful WordPress theme powered by the Genesis Framework. It’s fully compatible with Elementor drag and drop builder to customize your website. It has a widgetized homepage to add your content and images quickly.
Other noticeable features include a customizable header, theme options panel, and custom page templates. This theme supports WooCommerce to start an online store.
Hestia Pro is a stylish one-page WordPress theme build for page builders like Elementor. It comes with a modern design with a front-page template divided into customizable sections.
GeneratePress is a page builder friendly WordPress theme. It comes with a beautiful and highly customizable layout.
You can change any page on your website using Elementor to create custom layouts of your own. You can customize the colors, typography, background, and other options. It is optimized for SEO to help you get more visitors from search engines.
As the name suggests, Page Builder Framework is a modern WordPress theme designed for Elementor builder. It has a transparent header layout with a sticky navigation menu, image slider, and background.
It is highly flexible with dozens of customization options in the WordPress live customizer. This theme also supports WooCommerce and WPML plugins out of the box.
Essence Pro is a beautiful WordPress theme for wellness and lifestyle websites. It is built on top of the Genesis theme framework which gives it rock-solid performance.
It has custom widgets, page templates, custom header, and multiple sidebars. You can fully customize Essence Pro using the Elementor page builder and WordPress live customizer.
If you are looking for custom Elementor templates for your theme, then simply install Sizzify on the WordPress website. It works great with all the free and premium WordPress themes.
Sizzify ships with custom WooCommerce widgets, web page templates, and powerful add-ons. It is beginner-friendly and fully integrates the Elementor builder.
Potenza is a single page WordPress theme built for the drag and drop page builders like Elementor. It comes with multiple column layout and a widgetized homepage to create any type of website easily.
It comes with nifty features like custom background, animations, parallax scrolling, and image slider. It is beginner friendly and requires very little time to set up.
Customify is a free WordPress multi-purpose theme that works great with popular drag and drop page builders including Elementor. It can be used to create a website for any business niche.
You can customize theme colors, fonts, background, and navigation menus using customizer. It is tested with all essential WordPress plugins can be used to create eCommerce websites.
Zelle is a stylish and modern WordPress theme with a one-page layout. It works well with Elementor, which allows you to easily customize each design element.
It has all the usual settings you’d expect from a flexible WordPress theme including eCommerce support. It can be easily translated and can also be used to create multilingual websites.
Button Interactive is a simple WordPress Elementor template. It has bold and bright colors with crisp typography. You can use this template to create landing pages and custom layouts.
It offers sections below the header area to add image galleries, testimonials, team members, and footer. The template is easy to customize and can be extended using Elementor modules.
Neve is a flexible and beginner friendly WordPress theme. It works beautifully with Elementor and makes it easier to create custom layouts for your website.
It also comes with multiple built-in layouts and templates that you can edit with Elementor. It is translation ready with support for RTL languages and multilingual WordPress plugins.
Phlox is a free and multi-purpose WordPress theme with support for Elementor. It comes with dozens of layouts and templates to create a website for any business niche. It also includes 1-click demo content installer to help you get started quickly.
Other noticeable features include touch-friendly slider, sticky header, mega menu, video background, advanced portfolio templates, and beautifully animated sections.
Alec is a simple WordPress Elementor template crafted beautifully to create custom landing pages for your music and band website. It comes with a fullscreen background image that you can customize using Elementor drag and drop page builder.
In the sections below, you can add your content, image gallery, and upcoming events. You can also embed video with a custom background.
Hello is a minimalist WordPress theme built specifically for the Elementor page builder. It has a featured image with a large custom logo and content in the header section. Other than that, you can add a call-to-action button and custom icons below.
It comes with custom colors, flexible header options, navigation menu, and more. This theme fully supports RTL languages.
Alethea is a stylish WordPress Elementor template for florists, flower shops, and nursery. It features a beautiful layout and a flexible design with all the usual features you’d expect from a premium theme.
You can customize default theme settings via live customizer or use Elementor to create custom layouts.
Orfeo is a one-page WordPress multi-purpose theme designed to create any kind of website. It is highly customizable and works well with Elementor to edit or create custom layouts.
It is easy to set up and requires minimal effort to get started. Other notable features include custom header, background, multiple sidebars, and navigation menus.
Sydney Pro is a modern WordPress theme designed to create small business websites for freelancers and agencies. It can be customized using Elementor drag and drop page builder and WordPress customizer with live preview.
The theme offers custom headers, page templates, contact form, and social media icons. It fully supports WooCommerce and can be used to create an online store.
ColorWay is a free and lightweight WordPress theme built specifically for eCommerce stores, restaurants, small online businesses, and freelancers. It has a colorful design which offers an engaging and fun user experience for your visitors.
The theme layout is based on elements and you can easily customize it with Elementor page builder.
Public Opinion is a beautiful WordPress magazine theme designed for newspaper and publishing businesses. It features multiple color variations for each part of the layout. You can also place ads using a custom widget.
It comes with advanced category layouts to organize your articles and content. Using the Elementor modules, you can customize each and every section of your website easily.
Deep is an excellent WordPress Elementor theme built with Elementor page builder. It offers visual footer builder, advanced mega menu, and powerful theme options. It comes with 1-click demo content installer to help you get started right away.
It features multiple custom widgets including social channels, post slider, testimonials, latest reviews, and newsletter subscription.
We hope this article helped you find the best Elementor themes and templates. You may also want to see our list of the best Beaver Builder themes and templates.
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.
Are you looking to choose a business VoIP provider but not sure which one is right for your needs?
VoIP is a term used for business phone service which allows you to use advanced call management features on your computer or mobile device.
Unlike the old school bulky phone setup, business VOIP is a perfect phone solution for small businesses. You can cut down phone costs while enjoying all the powerful tools to grow your business.
In this article, we will explain what is business VoIP, and how to choose the best business VoIP provider for your company. Since we had to choose a VoIP provider for our own business, we will also share our best VoIP phone providers for small and growing businesses.
What is VoIP?
VoIP or Voice over IP is a term used to describe internet phone service. Unlike a traditional phone service which uses the landline, VoIP services use the internet to receive and make calls.
Benefits of using VoIP
Following are just some of the benefits of using a business VoIP phone system:
You can receive calls using computers, VoIP phonesets, and even cell phone.
You can share one number with several employees.
You can easily track call duration, hold times, wait times, and overall usage.
Most business VoIP services come with call forwarding, caller ID, call waiting, call routing, and more.
You can use the same number anywhere you want.
It gives you a business phone number, so you don’t have to share your personal cellphone number with clients.
Business VoIP offers cheaper local and international calls.
The business VoIP technology offers a lot of flexibility and freedom, and it has made it easy for businesses of all sizes to have a business phone number. Whether you’re a small 1 person company, a growing 10 people team, or established business with over 100+ people, you can use business VoIP.
However if you don’t choose the best business VoIP provider, then you can run into some serious challenges.
For example, the voice quality on VoIP calls varies depending on the internet connection and the service provider you’re using. Unlike landlines, you’ll loose VoIP connection during a power outage or internet disruption, but this shouldn’t impact most small businesses if you’re well prepared.
Having said that, let’s discuss when is the right time to start thinking about a business VoIP solution.
Does Your Business Need VoIP Business Phone Solution?
In any business, giving people a way to contact you is helpful in building trust and boost your sales.
When starting a website, most business owners add a contact form, which makes it easy for users to contact you via email.
However depending on the industry, sometimes customers may prefer more instant communication.
This is why many businesses offer live chat or phone number on their websites. Giving users more than one way to communicate with your business can improve customer support and result in more sales.
Whether you run an online store to sell products or a business website to sell services, a VoIP based business phone service can help you grow your business without the high costs.
Your website visitors can easily call you to request a quote, ask a pre-sale question, or even request support.
In short, business VoIP phone enables you to better manage and track your calls, collect customer information, and build stronger relationships with your customers.
How to Choose The Best VoIP Service Your Business
There are a lot of large companies offering business VoIP services, and it’s a very competitive space. The abundance of choices and highly competitive nature of advertising makes it difficult for business owners to choose the best VoIP provider for their business.
If you are just starting out, then you may be looking for the cheapest VoIP business phone service. However, you need to be careful when going down this route because they may lack certain features, which you’d later discover to be essential for your business.
Then there are some business VoIP services that are not easy to implement, transfer, or simply too expensive.
When comparing business VoIP providers for our business, we looked for a balance of features and reasonable cost. Here’s a quick checklist that we used:
Cost of local vs international calls. Most business VoIP services offer different plans for international calls. You need to choose a provider based on the geographic location of your customers.
Features available in the VoIP plans. Many companies offer different features while some sell them as separate add-ons which would increase your costs.
Mobile apps and features that you can share among multiple users.
Third-party integrations that you can use to connect your VoIP service to other tools like your CRM software, email marketing service, and more.
That being said, let’s take a look at our pick of the best business VoIP providers.
Nextiva is the best business VoIP service on the market. We can say this confidently because while researching for a VoIP service for our own business, we ended up choosing Nextiva.
Their business VoIP service offers all the essential features needed by a growing business including call routing, free domestic calling, voicemail to email and text, online fax, and more.
Other standard features include free number porting, caller ID, call forwarding, custom greetings, hold music, and more.
They also offer a free local or toll-free number with their plans.
We were able to quickly setup professional sounding welcome message with directory and phone routing which helps make our small business compete with the big guys.
What we really liked about Nextiva was their support team was extremely helpful from pre-sales all the way to onboarding and setup.
Even though we didn’t need any fancy desk phone sets, they gave us a full demo and showed us how we can easily use Nextiva with traditional desk phones or conference phones as our business grows.
The best part was they went above and beyond even though we’re a relatively small customer for them considering they help large businesses like Taco Bell, Ashleys Furniture, Conan, and others.
Pricing: Starts from $20 / per user / per month. Unlike other business VoIP providers, they don’t require annual contracts. However you can get discounts on buying pre-paid packages, and you can also get lower rates when you add more users to your plan.
RingCentral is another excellent business VoIP provider. With RingCentral, you get all the standard feature you would expect from a reliable business VoIP provider like call forwarding, advanced routing, call waiting, caller ID, hold music, and more.
They offer easy integrations with third-party services like Dropbox, G Suite, Salesforce, and more.
Other notable features include online meetings, video calls, screen sharing, conferencing, and an easy to use web-based administration panel.
We first discovered RingCentral organically because they are very well known and a fairly large company in the business VoIP space. While their feature offering is great, their pricing is a bit on the higher end unless you sign the annual contract.
Pricing: Starting from $34.99 / per user every month for the first user. Their monthly pricing drops significantly when you add the second user to $24.99 per user every month. You can also save 40% by switching to the annual plan.
GrassHopper is a popular business VoIP service suitable for startups and growing businesses.
They offer virtual phone numbers over VoIP platform, allowing call forwarding to any numbers or devices. The downside is that you’ll need a landline for outgoing calls.
They offer all the features you will expect like call waiting, forwarding, hold music, advanced routing, voicemail to email, and more. You can manage it from a computer using your web browser or mobile phone apps.
It works with local, toll-free, vanity numbers, and you can choose from the US, Canada, or UK based numbers.
Pricing: Starting from $29 per month with 1 number and up to 3 extensions. They offer a 10% discount if you sign an annual contract.
Phone.com is another popular choice among small business VoIP service providers. They include many European countries and Canada in their local call minutes. If you are operating in those locations, then it could be a cheap business VoIP service for your needs.
Their service includes call forwarding, routing, waiting, custom greetings and music, conferencing, and more. You can also integrate your VoIP plan to popular CRM software like Salesforce or Zoho.
Pricing: Starting from $12.99 per month with 300 monthly minutes. Their unlimited plan starts at $29.99 per month per user extension.
Vonage is famous for offering residential VoIP however they also offer business VoIP services for small to medium-sized businesses as well as enterprise clients. They offer a wide range of business communication tools including VoIP.
It includes all the usual features such as call forwarding and routing, caller ID, waiting, and more. Apart from that, they also offer team messaging and chat, conference calling, CRM integration, automatic call attendant, call recording, and more.
They offer different plans each with different features and limitations.
Pricing: Their base plan starts from $19.99 per month per line.
Which is the Business VoIP Provider for You?
Above we have shared the best business VoIP providers in the market today. Each of them offer a slightly different product and service at different prices.
When looking for a business VoIP solution for our company, we did extensive research to compare each of these companies, their ratings on top user review websites, and even what their employees were saying about them.
At the end, we ended up choosing Nextiva for our business.
We recommend using Nextiva as the best business VoIP provider. Their plans are suitable for businesses of all sizes with an impressive set of features and great customer service.
They offer fair pricing, do not require annual contracts, and their customer service is top-notch.
RingCentral came as a close second. They offered a lot of the same features, but at the end it came down to pricing where Nextiva clearly won.
It doesn’t matter what type of business you have or what industry you’re in; everyone needs to incorporate email campaigns into their marketing strategy.
There’s a common misconception that email marketing is dead. That’s just simply not the case.
So for those of you who are struggling with your email strategy, there’s a good chance that you’re making some mistakes. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying this to discourage you.
This is actually good news. All this means is that you need to make some adjustments with your approach to have more success.
One of the reasons why email marketing is so useful is because it delivers a high ROI. For every $1 you spend on email campaigns, you can expect an average return of $32.
81% of small business owners say they rely on email as their primary customer acquisition method. Additionally, 80% of small businesses say that email marketing is their primary method for customer retention as well.
Even if you’ve been having decent success with your email marketing campaigns in the past, you can still benefit from this guide.
Without even realizing it, you might be making mistakes that are holding you back. So if you’re ready to take your email strategy to the next level, review and correct these eight mistakes that should be avoided at all costs.
1. Not welcoming your subscribers
You just added a new subscriber to your email list. That’s great news!
This person was navigating through your website, made their way to a landing page, saw your email value proposition, and filled out the form fields required to sign up. They took a lot of steps, so clearly they’re interested in your website and brand.
Now what?
If you’re not planning to contact them until you send your next newsletter or coupon, then you’re making a big mistake. Welcome emails should be triggered immediately after a sign-up. That’s because they have the highest open rates compared to every other email category.
This makes a lot of sense. Think about it for a second.
Why did this person sign up?
Maybe you have an ecommerce shop and you promised something along the lines of exclusive discounts or offers for people who opt-in to your email list. Obviously, this visitor wants to buy something.
They’re on your site right now, and probably still have the browser open. But if you wait a day or a week to send that email, it’s going to be extra steps for that person to go back to your site and make a purchase. By now, the want or need for whatever you’re offering might be out of their mind.
Furthermore, welcome messages have a 336% higher transaction rate as well as a 196% higher click-through rate than any other email you send.
You need to take advantage of this. Yes, ideally you want this subscriber to be engaged with all of your emails down the road. But there’s no reason for you to wait. Get them to convert now by triggering a welcome as the first message in a drip campaign as soon as they sign up.
2. Forgetting a call-to-action
You think about your business and website all day, every day. Nights, weekends, holidays, it doesn’t matter; your business is always on your mind.
While it would be nice to think that your customers feel the same way as you do, that’s just not the case. So sending them a “hello” or “just checking in” message for no reason doesn’t add any value to their life.
All of your emails need to have a purpose and include a clear CTA that drives your goal home.
Otherwise, what do you expect the recipient to do with the message? Even if you’re sending a newsletter or some type of breaking news update, there should still be something in the message that entices conversions.
That’s not the only CTA mistake I see people make. On the flip side, instead of forgetting to include a CTA altogether, some site owners will go overboard and have four or five in the same message.
Shop now
Join our loyalty program
Forward this message to a friend
Share this on social media
Sign up for our upcoming event
Alone, all of these CTAs are just fine. But when you add all of them to one message, the reader will get overwhelmed. Too many conflicting CTAs will just confuse your subscribers and end up hurting your conversion rates.
The content of the message should be priming and setting up the call-to-action. For example, if you’re releasing a new product, the CTA should be about buying. If you’re hosting an event, the CTA should be about signing up. For those of you who want to promote both of these, it needs to happen in two independent email campaigns.
3. Sending too many emails
Just because someone subscribed to your email list, it doesn’t give you the right to bombard them with messages all day.
The average person who works in an office receives 121 emails per day. That’s more than 44,000 emails each year!
So it’s no surprise that the number one reason why people unsubscribe from email lists is because they get too many messages.
Think about this for a moment. Put yourself in the shoes of a consumer.
How often do you check your emails and feel annoyed about all of the messages you have? This drives me crazy.
You don’t want people to have that association with your website and brand.
They should be happy when they get a message from you, not feel annoyed. Remember, they signed up to get messages from your website, so they obviously have some interest in your content.
Realistically, people aren’t going to shop every day or visit your website every day. This is something that you need to accept.
So I would limit your email promotions to once per week at the most.
You can even allow subscribers to set up their preferences when they sign up. Ask them the communication frequency that they want, as well as the type of messages that they prefer. Then segment your subscribers accordingly based on their answers.
4. Not segmenting subscribers
If you have one long master email list where every subscriber receives the same content at the same time, you’re doing it wrong. This is a huge mistake.
I just briefly explained during my last point how some people may want messages more or less frequently than others. Some subscribers may only want promotions and coupons, while others want your newsletter. Everyone has different needs and preferences.
For example, let’s say you run an ecommerce shop. A 20-year-old male subscriber isn’t interested in the same products as a female subscriber in her 50s. So sending them the same message is not a winning strategy.
Take a look at how these marketing metrics increase as the result of segmenting emails.
You’ll get more opens, revenue, and leads, while simultaneously increasing customer retention, acquisition, and transaction rates.
Furthermore, studies show that 60% of people will delete an email that they find irrelevant. 27% of people unsubscribe from irrelevant emails and 23% mark them as spam.
That’s right. Even if you’re not sending emails too frequently, your subscribers can still unsubscribe. But segmenting subscribers decreases the likelihood that your content will be perceived as irrelevant.
I regularly consult with lots of different website owners and businesses. When we talk about email marketing, lots of them have the wrong impression about when email campaigns should be sent.
Let me give you an example. I’ll use nice and round numbers to make it easy.
Say you have 1,000 email subscribers currently on your list. You sent out a message to all of them last week. You’re ready to run a new campaign this week, but you only gained ten new subscribers since your last campaign.
That’s not an excuse to put off the campaign.
But all too often I see business owners delay campaigns until they get more subscribers. As long as you’re not sending the messages too frequently, you can still deploy a new campaign to the same people, regardless of how many subscribers you gained or lost in between messages.
Your current subscribers are already familiar with your brand. The probability of selling to a current customer is 60 to 70%. But the chances of selling to a new customer is just 5 to 20%.
Based on these numbers, there’s no reason for you to hold off. Plus, any new subscriber should be getting a welcome email, which we discussed earlier in this guide. So you’ll be able to target them with an offer right away. For everything else, pick a schedule and stick to it. Stop coming up with excuses for delaying new campaigns.
6. Neglecting mobile users
I’m assuming that most of you will be using a computer to craft your email marketing messages. On these devices, everything looks great.
Time to send it out to your subscribers, right? Not so fast.
You need to check and see how your message looks from mobile devices. Most email marketing software out there will have mobile-optimized features.
But the best way to do this is by sending a test email to yourself. I have a category on my email marketing list for office and executive. Basically, it’s just a few of my email addresses. I always send content to this group first, so I can check everything before it goes out to the masses.
Smartphones are by far the most popular devices for people of all ages.
So even if your message is technically mobile-friendly based on the test run through your email software, there are other things you should keep in mind.
Avoid long blocks of text. Something that’s two or three lines on a desktop computer could up being ten lines on a 4-inch smartphone screen.
Your email should have visuals, but don’t rely too heavily on images. Here’s what I mean by this. Some email apps won’t automatically display images. So if your entire message is based on the context of your picture, you might be out of luck.
Earlier I explained why you shouldn’t delay campaigns. But with that said, emails shouldn’t be sent in a matter of minutes either. Take the same approach that you would if you publishing a blog or adding anew landing page to your website.
Plan it out. Create an outline. Write the copy. Put it through some editing software. Proofread, and then proofread it again. Slang, spelling errors, and improper formatting will not reflect well on your business.
Imagine getting an email from a high-end brand trying to sell you a $2,500 watch. But the message is filled with type-os and grammar mistakes. Are you going to buy that watch?
Probably not. It looks like a poor reflection of that company as a whole.
People think that if you don’t take the time to do something as simple as writing an email, what other shortcuts are you taking?
The reply to address for the email should be your business. Not your old screen name @hotmail.com. You should also A/B test all of your emails for formatting purposes. All of this will ensure that your messages look as professional as possible.
8. Not prioritizing sign-ups
Your email marketing campaigns will only be as good as your subscriber list.
It doesn’t matter if you have great content in your mobile-optimized message with the perfect CTA and professional design. If you only have 30 people to send it to, you can’t expect great results.
I realize that email lists don’t get built overnight, but this needs to be something that you’re always working at. No number is ever high enough.
If you just have “sign up for our emails” buried somewhere in the corner of your website, it won’t generate subscribers.
Remember, people are getting bombarded with nearly 1,000 emails per week. They won’t be signing up to receive more unless they have a good reason.
First of all, you can’t miss it because it takes up nearly the whole screen while a user is browsing. Since they operate an ecommerce site, it’s safe to assume that the visitors are interested in their products.
By offering a discount in exchange for an email sign up, they’re essentially killing two birds with one stone.
Add an incentive for purchases
Gain email subscribers
Refer back to what we discussed earlier in terms of a welcome message. When a visitor signs up in a situation like this, it’s absolutely necessary that they are welcomed with the discount immediately.
Even if you don’t have an ecommerce shop, you still need to prioritize sign-ups and add value to potential subscribers. Offer them free downloads, video tutorials, or other types of exclusive content for email opt-ins.
Conclusion
Email marketing is still alive and thriving. Everyone needs to make this a priority.
But some people are doing email marketing wrong. After reviewing this guide, you might have just realized that you fall into that category.
Don’t worry. These common mistakes are fairly easy to correct.
Identifying them is the hardest step. But now that you know what needs to be done, you can make those adjustments and apply the changes to your email marketing strategy moving forward.
The most extensive and comprehensive introduction to online marketing that you’ll find anywhere.
Why We Wrote this Guide? Online marketing moves at the speed of light. To keep up, you need a strong foundation with the judgment to think critically, act independently, and be relentlessly creative. That’s why we wrote this guide — to empower you with the mental building blocks to stay ahead in an aggressive industry.There are plenty of guides to marketing. From textbooks to online video tutorials, you can really take your pick. But, we felt that there was something missing — a guide that really starts at the beginning to equip already-intelligent professionals with a healthy balance of strategic and tactical advice. The Beginner’s Guide to Online Marketing closes that gap.
Who This Guide Is for? We wrote this guide for an audience of first-time marketers, experienced entrepreneurs and small business owners, entry to mid-level candidates, and marketing managers in need of resources to train their direct reports. Most of all, we want you to walk away from this guide feeling confident about your marketing strategy.
How Much of this Guide Should You Read? This guide is designed for you to read cover-to-cover. Each new guide builds upon the previous one. A core idea that we want to reinforce is that marketing should be evaluated holistically. What you need to do is this in terms of growth frameworks and systems as opposed to campaigns. Reading this guide from start to finish will help you connect the many moving parts of marketing to your big-picture goal, which is ROI.
1. Be Laser Focused on Your Customers
Your customers, prospects, and partners are the lifeblood of of your business. You need to build your marketing strategy around them. Step 1 of marketing is understanding what your customers want, which can be challenging when you’re dealing with such a diverse audience. This guide will walk you through (1) the process of building personal connections at scale and (2) crafting customer value propositions that funnel back to ROI for your company. Get Started
2. Build Your Marketing Framework
Mediocre marketers think in terms of campaigns. Great marketers think in terms of growth frameworks. Learn how to position your marketing strategy into a sustainable, ROI-positive revenue engine for your brand. Gone are the days of shallow branding. Leverage metrics to build a solid revenue stream. Get Started
3. Develop Your Brand’s Story
When people spend money, they’re thinking with both their rational and emotional brains. The most effective marketing frameworks appeal to both. Storytelling is one of the most powerful tools that your company can wield to build customer connections. This guide will walk you through the mechanics of cultivating your company’s story. Get Started
4. Get ‘Em to Your Site: Foundations of Traffic Acquisition
You can have the most amazing web storefront, blog, or product in the world, but if you’re not getting traffic, your business’s growth strategy will fall flat. This post will walk you through some of the most common free and paid traffic acquisition frameworks for bringing visitors to your website. Get Started
5. Get the Plumbing Right: Foundations of Conversion Optimization
Traffic acquisition is only half the marketing equation. You need to invest the time in building a strategy for driving sales. Conversion optimization is the practice of (1) converting first-time visitors into customers and (2) converting first-time customers into repeat buyers. This post will teach you how. Get Started
6. Build Audience Connections with Content Marketing
Content marketing is more than just blogging. When executed correctly, content including articles, guides (like this one), webinars, and videos can be powerful growth drivers for your business. Focus on building trust and producing amazing quality. And most of all, make sure that you’re capturing the right metrics. Create content to generate ROI. Measure the right results. This guide will teach you how. Get Started
7. Find Customers with Paid Channel Advertising
Paid channel marketing is something you’ve probably come across in some form or another. Other names for this topic include Search Engine Marketing (SEM), online advertising, or pay-per-click (PPC) marketing. Very often, marketers use these terms interchangeably to describe the same concept — traffic purchased through online ads. Marketers frequently shy away from this technique because it costs money. This perspective will put you at a significant disadvantage. It’s not uncommon for companies to run PPC campaigns with uncapped budgets. Why? Because you should be generating an ROI anyway. This post walks through the basics of how. Get Started
8. Amplify 1:1 Connections with Email Marketing
Email marketing has a bad rap. Why? Because in the majority of cases, it’s spammy. When executed correctly, email marketing can be incredibly powerful. The trick is to prioritize the human-to-human connection above the sale. Balance automation with a personal touch. This post will teach you how. Get Started
9. Drive Incremental Sales Through Affiliate Marketing
It’s hard to believe that the Internet is now multiple decades old. Affiliate marketing has been around since the earliest days of online marketing. It’s a great solution for businesses that are risk-averse or don’t have the budget to spend on upfront marketing costs. Use affiliate marketing to build a new revenue stream for your ecommerce or B2B business. Get Started
10. Get Found with SEO
Search engines are a powerful channel for connecting with new audiences. Companies like Google and Bing look to connect their customers with the best user experience possible. Step one of a strong SEO strategy is to make sure that your website content and products are the best that they can be. Step 2 is to communicate that user experience information to search engines so that you rank in the right place. SEO is competitive and has a reputation of being a black art. Here’s how to get started the right way. Get Started
11. Get the Word Out with PR
You’ve launched an amazing product or service. Now what? Now, you need to get the word out. When done well, good PR can be much more effective and less expensive than advertising. Regardless of whether you want to hire a fancy agency or awesome consultant, make sure that you know what you’re doing and what types of ROI to expect. Relationships are the heart and soul of PR. This guide will teach you how to ignore the noise and focus on substantive, measurable results. Get Started
12. Launch Your Social Strategy
Your social media strategy is more than just a Facebook profile or Twitter feed. When executed correctly, social media is a powerful customer engagement engine and web traffic driver. It’s easy to get sucked into the hype and create profiles on every single social site. This is the wrong approach. What you should do instead is to focus on a few key channels where your brand is most likely to reach key customers and prospects. This post will teach you how to make that judgment call. Get Started
13. A Quick Note on Mobile
Most businesses aren’t optimized for the mobile web, and that’s a problem. We operate in a cross-platform world. Smartphones and tablets are taking over. If you’re not optimizing your site for mobile visitors, you are likely losing money. Learn how to craft a data-driven mobile approach. This guide will help you learn the ropes. Get Started
Are you comparing the best CRM software for small businesses? CRM software helps you manage customer relationships, increase sales, manage leads, and grow your business.
Due to the critical role Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software plays in your business success, it’s extremely important that you properly research the industry and compare the top CRM providers before making your decision.
In this article, we will show you our expert pick of the best CRM software for small businesses. We will compare popular CRM software in terms of features and share the pros and cons to help you choose the best platform.
What is a CRM Software?
CRM software or Customer Relationship Management software is a tool that helps you manage customer data and offer streamlined customer services across your business.
Most businesses need a contact manager to handle contact details of their customers and prospects. In the early stages of most companies, this is typically done manually through spreadsheets or simple contact management tools.
However, these processes become inefficient as your business grows, and if you don’t fix the problem fast enough, then it can lead to significant loss in opportunity / sales.
A CRM software helps solve the problem by storing all aspects of customer relationship into a database and making it easily accessible. It allows your marketing, sales, and customer support teams to have all the data at their fingertips when needed.
CRM software are incredibly useful in increasing sales, building customer relationships, and providing amazing customer services. Your customers get more personalized, more attentive, and highly efficient service.
What to Look for in Your CRM Software?
Since there are so many different CRM software companies out there, it becomes quite overwhelming for small businesses to decide which one is the best CRM for their needs.
Here are some quick tips on choosing the best CRM software for your business:
1. Ease of Use – A recent survey revealed that 67% of businesses put ease of use as the most important feature of their CRM software. You and your team will be using it for several hours every day. If the CRM is not easy to use, then it will not you help achieve your business goals.
2. Cloud and Mobile – In 2008, less than 12% of CRM software ran on the cloud. Today, 87% of CRMs are cloud-based software. It is more secure, faster, and easy to integrate with other apps and services.
Another study by the Nucleus Research revealed that 65% of companies using a mobile-friendly CRM, exceeded their sales targets. This means you want to look for a CRM software that is mobile-friendly.
This makes it convenient for your teams to meet their targets. Your customers get quicker responses and don’t have to wait for hours just to get quick answers.
3. Make a Features List – You need to make a list of features that you need in your CRM software. Don’t worry if you can’t think of all the features right away. This exercise will give you an idea of what would be a good fit for your business.
CRM software are not just an address book of your customers’ contact information. They are useful because they integrate into your marketing, sales, and lead generation.
They help you manage every aspect of a customer’s journey with your business with great detail. You would need to see how you can integrate the specific CRM software with your existing business process and sales activities.
4. Integrations – Many modern CRM software include a ton of features. However, you would still need to get them to work with other apps, like your WordPress site, lead generation software, email marketing service, business email service, social media platforms, and more. Make sure that your CRM software supports those integrations.
For example, if you are running a membership website or online store, then you would need your CRM to integrate with your membership plugin or eCommerce platform.
These are just some very basic requirements that you would want to check. You may also want to consider pricing, the ability to add users and departments, security, GDPR compliance, and more.
That being said, let’s take a look at the top CRM software on the market and how they stack up on these criteria.
HubSpot is the best CRM software for small businesses looking for a cost-effective solution to get started. It offers free plans for their CRM, Marketing, Sales, and Sevice hubs.
The free HubSpot CRM comes with unlimited users and unlimited contacts. It is also free forever.
However, many of the features are limited or unavailable in the free plan. To access the powerful features, you will need to upgrade to one of their paid plans under the Growth Suite.
HubSpot is quite easy to use, and you can connect marketing, sales, and service hubs to your CRM software. This provides you a wide range of tools to efficiently manage the customer journey.
With an easy user interface, you get a bird’s eye view of your entire sales pipeline on your dashboard. You can view detailed reports, all contact activity, sales activities, and user/team performance.
HubSpot offers a comprehensive set of features including a mobile app for iPhone and Android, contact manager, email templates, real-time notifications, phone calls, email tracking, scheduling, and more.
Integrations are crucial for CRM software. HubSpot integrates with more than 300 apps and services including WordPress, top email marketing companies, lead generation software like OptinMonster, and many more.
Pricing: HubSpot offers core CRM platform for free. For more features, you can upgrade to their paid plans for Marketing, Sales, and Services hubs or upgrade to Growth Suite, which starts from $113 / month and includes 1 user ($38 per month for each additional user).
Constant Contact is a popular email marketing and CRM software. It allows you to easily store contacts, manage customer information, send emails, and track customer activity from your dashboard.
It is extremely easy to use with simple reports, detailed activity logs for each contact, and powerful drag and drop tools to send out emails. You can schedule emails, create sales funnels, and have easy marketing automation for beginners.
Constant Contact has a huge marketplace of integrations available for third-party apps. Many of the popular services and tools that you are already using like WPForms can be instantly connected to Constant Contact.
For eCommerce stores, Constant Contact offers integrations with all top eCommerce platforms. It includes eCommerce tools which help you capture, engage, and convert leads into paying customers.
Pricing: Their pricing is based on the number of contacts and starts from $20 per month. However, if you want to add team members then you will need their Plus plan which starts at $45 per month.
WPBeginner users get a free 60 day trial, and you can also get a 20% off if you use our Constant Contact coupon code.
PipeDrive is a sales driven CRM software for businesses. It offers a complete sales pipeline management with an intuitive user interface that gives you quick access to all the information you need.
Designed for sales teams, it includes features like sales reporting, sales forecasting, detailed activity log, advanced contact details, email integrations, and customizable pipelines.
It has a growing selection of integration apps allowing you to connect your CRM system to other services you already use. It also has mobile apps for iOS and Android allowing you to stay connected and get things done.
Pricing: Their plans start from $12.50 per user per month billed annually.
Freshsales is another popular CRM software suitable for businesses of all sizes. It features a sales-oriented approach with tools to maximize your conversions.
They offer a one-stop dashboard that gives you instant access to reports, activities, phone calls, emails, users, and contact management. It has an intuitive web based interface and has powerful mobile apps to help your teams make sales on the go.
Freshsales uses AI-powered lead scoring which helps you prioritize leads more likely to convert. Other notable features include visual sales pipelines, actionable insights into conversations, event tracking, custom workflows, and more.
It has native integrations available for some of the most popular third-party services. Several more integrations are available as third-party apps. However, the number of integrations is a bit limited at the moment.
Pricing: Plans start from $12 per month per user billed annually.
Drip is another popular eCommerce CRM software designed to increase sales. Featuring an intuitive user interface, it is incredibly easy to use yet extremely powerful.
It is loaded with features including marketing automation, advanced contact management, actionable reports, email campaigns, one-on-one conversations, eCommerce user tracking, and more.
Drip comes with native integrations for all top third-party services. This includes email services, lead generation software, SMS services, WooCommerce, Shopify, and many more. It offers workflows to generate leads from Facebook and Instagram which helps you get tapped into their massive user base.
Pricing: Drip’s plans start from $49 / month for up to 2500 contacts.
Streak is a CRM software for Gmail and works with both free Gmail accounts as well as G Suite. It allows you to track customer emails in Gmail, manage contacts, track leads, and manage sales pipelines.
It automatically captures leads from your contacts, allows you to add tasks and reminders, add tags and notes, create custom pipelines, schedule emails, and so much more.
It comes as a browser add-on as well as mobile app for Android and iOS. It supports third-party integrations through Gmail and Zapier, this gives you access to share data across multiple tools and services.
Pricing: They offer a limited free plan for personal use. Their paid plans start from $49 per user per month billed annually.
AgileCRM is a powerful all-in-one CRM software. It packs contact management, sales, marketing and customer service in one convenient dashboard.
It offers sales tools with 360 degree contact view, detailed reports, timeline, calendar, events, project management, deals, and gamification for your sales team. You get access to quick reports that you can drill down to keep track of everything that is happening across your business.
AgileCRM includes marketing tools to generate and capture leads, send out emails, newsletters, landing pages, forms, and social media marketing tools.
Pricing: AgileCRM offers a limited free plan. Their paid plans start from $9.99 per user per month billed annually or $8.99 per user billed for 2-years.
Which is the Best CRM Software for Small Business?
As we mentioned earlier that you’ll have to compare CRM tools based on your businesses requirements and goals.
Based on the criteria we defined earlier, we believe that HubSpot is the best CRM software for small businesses. It is easy to use and offers a comprehensive set of features. They offer a free plan which is good enough for small businesses to get started.
If email is the primary source of leads and sales for your business, then Constant Contact is the best option. It offers an easy to use contact management tool that you can effectively use to boost sales and manage customer relations. Their pricing is very friendly for small businesses.
If you’re looking for a completely sales focused CRM, then we recommend using either PipeDrive or FreshSales because they’re both sales-driven CRM, and they will help you improve your sales processes.
If you’re an eCommerce brand, and you need a CRM that comes with eCommerce focused marketing automation, then look no further than Drip. It is extremely powerful and worth every single penny because it’ll definitely help you grow your overall sales.
