But you can’t rest on your laurels quite yet.

As they read through a product description to decide whether or not they will purchase something from your e-commerce business, the million-dollar question arises: Will they buy what you’re selling?

The answer, in large part, depends on how much time and effort you put into your product description.

It may seem drastic to weigh product descriptions so heavily, but research shows that they’re often a decision-making point in the customer journey.

Simply put, users who find sufficient information in a product description are more likely to feel confident and make a purchase.

Those who don’t? They’re more likely to abandon the page or bounce from your site altogether.

In an online-heavy, post-pandemic world, there are three leading factors influencing how U.S. consumers choose where to shop:

• Delivery options and speed (amen)
• Price (of course)
• The quality of the online images and product description (wow!)

Well-written product descriptions are a critical conversion tool for modern online business websites.

If you want to increase e-commerce sales, it’s time to polish your product descriptions. Let’s talk about how and why.

Why Prioritize Product Descriptions?

Here are just a few of the reasons it’s crucial to consider your product descriptions in e-commerce.

Improve Satisfaction (And Reduce Returns!)

Detailed product descriptions inform customers about each product’s features, uses, and benefits, clarifying their understanding of the product and how it fits their needs.

This can lead to higher customer satisfaction and fewer expensive returns for you due to mismatched expectations.

Improve SEO Performance

Well-optimized product descriptions can seriously improve search engine optimization (SEO) for your e-commerce website. Including relevant keywords, clear product information, and engaging content can enhance your visibility in search results, attracting more organic traffic.

Differentiate Your Products And Value

A well-crafted product description articulates a product’s unique value proposition, showcasing its benefits and advantages over competitors. This differentiation is key in attracting customers who resonate with the specific advantages your product offers.

Make Sales More Hands-Off

Effective product descriptions guide potential buyers through the sales funnel, transitioning them from curious browsers to motivated buyers. By presenting compelling information, product descriptions encourage users to take the next step and make a purchase. This streamlines the sales process without additional effort from you or your team.

Build Brand Trust

Detailed and accurate product descriptions build trust in not just your offerings but in your overall brand.

When customers have access to comprehensive information about your products that has turned out to be true, they are more likely to trust your brand, leading to repeat purchases and positive word-of-mouth recommendations.

10 Ways To Write An Excellent Product Description

What actually makes a good product description?

In this guide, we’re giving you ten tips (along with winning examples) that provide a comprehensive look into what makes an effective product description.

Let’s go!

(*record scratch* You don’t have an e-commerce site yet? That’s actually not a big deal anymore. Platforms like WooCommerce and Shopify plug seamlessly into a WordPress website to help you handle listing products, posting reviews, shipping goods, and even monitoring store performance metrics. That said, you don’t have to have your website perfectly finished to work on product descriptions. So wherever you are in the process, this guide should still be helpful for you. OK…now let’s go!) 

1. Identify Your Buyer Personas

To successfully write about product features that land with your potential buyers, you must know who they are.

This means you need to reference your buyer personas, which are fictional representations of your ideal customers based on market research. If you don’t already have a buyer persona, the time to create one is now.

A buyer persona should answer the following questions:

• What demographic do your ideal buyers belong to?
• What are their interests?
• What is their native language?
• What kind of language appeals to them? (e.g., Does industry jargon appeal to them or turn them off?)
• How do they spend their free time?
• How do they find your website?
• Why are they interested in your store?

If you have the luxury of big data at your hands, collect information on your current customers to also understand:

• Product preferences
• Behavioral patterns
• Purchasing tendencies

Access to this data will help you fine-tune your buyer personas. Once you know who you are selling to, it will be easier to write product descriptions that resonate with them.

2. Focus On Product Benefits And Features

Your buyers don’t head to your page to simply connect. Instead, they come to learn what your product can do and how it will meet their needs and solve their pain points. To help them accomplish this, you need to write an extensive list of your product’s features and benefits.

Start with the features. For example, if you sell shoes, include size information, material, color, the weight of the shoe, etc. Your features section should be comprehensive and tell consumers everything they need to know about what makes your product special.

And while a list of features is a great start, it’s only half the battle. Potential customers also want to know the benefits of your particular product. This is where your product description really starts to shine. Following the shoe example, benefits would include things like comfort, flexibility, odor resistance, wet and dry traction, etc.

Allbirds does a fantastic job of highlighting some of the benefits of their shoes without being verbose. Their key advantages are spelled out in short, sweet blurbs that get right to the point.

Benefits are your main selling points, your differentiators, and the reasons why customers will select your product over your competitors. Always clearly identify them.

3. Stay True To Your Brand’s Voice

Aligning with your brand’s voice is essential to creating authentic and engaging product descriptions. Your brand’s voice should reflect your personality, values, and style across all communication channels, including product descriptions.

If your brand’s voice is professional, your product descriptions should be professional. If your vibe is funny, then your product descriptions should match.

Most people are familiar with the hilarious Poo~Pourri (now just “~Pourri”) advertising videos (not safe for work!) that launched a $500+ million empire.

They’re memorable in part because ~Pourri has a unique brand identity and tone of voice, which they follow even on their product pages.

4. Tell A Full Story

Every good story has a solid beginning, middle, and end. Unless, of course, it’s the Game of Thrones television series…but I digress.

With product descriptions, the formula for good writing is no different. You need to present a complete story to engage your readers. This doesn’t mean you need to write a novel, but at the same time, your product description shouldn’t just be a list of features and benefits either.

Instead, show (not tell) your customers how the product will improve their lives. Help them visualize a real-life scenario where your product solves a problem. The goal is to create a narrative arc in which the reader is the hero and your product is the tool that enables them to succeed.

But what if your product isn’t especially photogenic or is *gasp* kind of boring?

People may have once thought that about athletic wear, but I bet no one thinks that when they imagine Nike. Nike’s commercials, brand strategy, and even the way they describe their products transcends the materials to help the reader imagine how their life could change with just this one product.

Customers aren’t just buying the shoes — they’re buying the experience, the confidence, the ability to excel.  Now that’s a powerful product story.

5. Use Active Language To Persuade Buyers

Your mom was right — The words you use make a difference, especially with product descriptions.

The truth is that some words are more persuasive than others. In fact, experts have tested all kinds of language to come up with 189 words and phrases that actually improve conversion rates.

Consider these 20 tried-and-tested words recommended by David Ogilvy, the proverbial “Father of Advertising”:

• Suddenly
• Now
• Announcing
• Introducing
• Improvement
• Amazing
• Sensational
• Remarkable
• Revolutionary
• Startling
• Miracle
• Magic
• Offer
• Quick
• Easy
• Wanted
• Challenge
• Compare
• Bargain
• Hurry

The common theme? Persuasive words encourage consumers to take action.

Jon Morrow of SmartBlogger has a similar list of power words that tap into your customer’s emotions, making them more likely to engage with your message.

Since many companies use awe-inspiring (see what we did there?) power words in their product descriptions, it’s easy to find good examples, even for seemingly bland products.

Here’s one from Jack Black that utilizes power words to make shaving cream feel swanky.

When writing product descriptions, take a moment to scan through your copy and make sure each word pulls its weight.

Related: How To Write An Effective Call To Action

6. Make Text Scannable

Scannability is one of the most critical elements of writing a good product description, especially since attention span is on a downward trend.

This means it’s essential to make your content easily digestible. There are several solutions to packing a narrative punch in a relatively small space:

• Apply headings and subheadings to break content into sections
• Put short snippets of info into bullet points or numbered lists
• Use bold or italicized text to emphasize important phrases
• Keep any paragraphs concise and focused
• Ensure there’s white space between content 
• Select a legible font size and on-brand font style

J.Crew does this well. Below an eye-catching headline and a longer description (great for SEO!), they highlight product features in an easily scannable list of bullet points.

The more you can do to make a product description scannable, the better.

7. Optimize Copy For Search Engines

Copywriters and business owners have a unique challenge when it comes to writing product descriptions. They must persuade readers, but there’s another audience to keep in mind, too: search engine algorithms.

SEO is the practice of applying both on-page tricks (such as using keywords) and off-page tactics (such as a backlinking strategy) to make your website findable via a search engine. 

That’s why SEO, including identifying and using the appropriate keywords for your products, should be a critical part of your product description writing process.

Google’s algorithms are constantly changing, so what works one day might not the next. However, some keyword strategies stand the test of time, such as avoiding duplicate content and including target phrases in the following places:

• Page title
• Product title
• Meta descriptions
• Alt tags
• Product descriptions

The keywords you use in your copy help Google and other search engines identify what the page is about. This information is then used to determine how to rank your site on the search engine results page (SERP) so that relevant results are served up to people inputting related search queries.

For example, when you type “shaving cream” into Google, Google displays lots of products.

There are literally hundreds of shaving cream products on the market today. Those that show up first have a combination of good advertising and SEO strategies.

Take Cremo Shave Cream, for example. When visiting the landing page for their shaving cream products, it’s clear they have maximized the use of keywords such as shaving cream, shave cream, and shave.

8. Add Images And Video

It should go without saying that a great product description must include images. If you need extra persuasion, remember that Etsy found that 90% of their shoppers rank quality of images as important when making a purchasing decision.

If your e-commerce store can afford to hire a product photographer, awesome! If not, there are plenty of DIY product photography tutorials to help get you started. Of course, good photos start with good equipment, including:

• Camera
• Tripod
• Backdrop
• White bounce cards made of foam board
• Table
• Tape

Once you’ve gathered your gear, you need to know how to take stellar photos, which you can do on a budget with tricks like:

• Setting up a simpler backdrop so it’s easier to touch up images
• Relying on natural light or affordable lighting solutions
• Using a low-cost tripod to steady your camera for clear, detailed shots

Budget even tighter? Pull out the computer in your pocket. If you don’t think a smartphone will do the trick, think again. Hundreds of small brands successfully DIY their product photos on Instagram. Professional photographer Chris Pieta even put together a video to prove that an iPhone 15 Pro can capture great product photos.

Considering that video has the highest ROI of all media formats and short-form video has the best performance among all video types (thanks, TikTok!), it also makes sense to learn how to make these types of videos.

For a corporate example of excellent product photography and awesome videos, iRobot’s Roomba product page features various forms of media to show consumers exactly how each version of their famous vacuum product works.

Related: How To Create A Winning Social Media Strategy

9. Incorporate Reviews

In addition to powerful content and beautiful imagery, many successful e-commerce sites use product reviews.

Just like the descriptions you write, customer reviews can emphasize your product’s value and features, help build brand trust, and even boost SEO.

Reviews tap into social proof, which is the phenomenon where people are more likely to participate in something they see others doing. In a marketing sense, content that shows people using and loving your product can spur others to try your product. Reviews are a free way to create this kind of content.

The majority of consumers read reviews before making a purchase, 77% specifically look for websites with reviews, and almost half will walk away from a product if there are no reviews available.

With stats like that, we recommend making sure your e-commerce website has reviewing capabilities. Also, consider creating a program that rewards consumers for reviewing your products once they’ve received them.

Related: 9 Steps To Build An Online Store And Become Your Own Boss

10. Measure And Improve

As we know, the primary goal of a product description is to persuade a shopper to make a purchase. How can you determine if your descriptions are fulfilling this objective? Track their performance by benchmarking and measuring movement on key performance indicators (KPIs).

Here are some common KPIs brands use to monitor how well product content is doing:

• Conversion rate: The percentage of page visitors converted into customers (or leads). This is a good indicator of the power of the content on a product page, and how well it connects to any marketing or advertising that has led shoppers there.
• Cart abandonment rate: The proportion of shoppers who add items to their cart but leave without completing the purchase. High cart abandonment rates may suggest issues with product descriptions, but they can also expose friction in the checkout process.
• Return rate: The percentage of products shipped out that customers return. This metric could indicate discrepancies between product descriptions and the actual products.
• Support inquiries: A high number of queries about a product may signify unclear product descriptions.

Most pre-built e-commerce platforms enable you to track KPIs like these. You can also install Google Analytics and similar third-party tools to do the same.

Finding opportunities for improvement? A/B testing software is a popular method for creating alternate versions of product descriptions and testing them with a subset of your audience to compare performance.

How To Create A Product Description Template

While we’ve just outlined tons of tips for writing product descriptions that really sell, it’s important to note that there’s no one-size-fits-all “best” description. That’s because your offerings likely have different product details, benefits, and selling points.

However, if you have a list of similar products and don’t want to start from scratch every time you write a product description, it can be beneficial to create a template.

Follow the key tactics above to build the core sections of your template by asking:

• What are your buyer personas?
• What are the pain points of your customers?
• How does your product solve customer pain points?
• What power words can you use in your copy?
• Do you have a unique story or brand voice?
• Is your language accessible and free of industry jargon?
• What are the main features and benefits of your products?
• Do you have an image and video library?

Once you’ve addressed each of these questions to create the template outline, you can tweak it for different product types and audiences. Then, keep an eye on performance metrics. If you find a specific layout outperforms others, use that template for other products to grow your brand and revenue.

Help Your E-commerce Site Shine With Reliable Hosting

Only you can revolutionize the way you write product descriptions.

But what if you want to transform how you display them?

It’s critical that you have a functional, well-designed, and always-on website to feature those product descriptions you’ve worked so hard on.

At DreamHost, we offer various affordable website hosting solutions to get your site online — as well as white-glove professional services for website design, development, and even ongoing management and marketing.

Let’s work together to build and run the perfect custom website to make your online store shine.

Your Store Deserves WooCommerce Hosting

Sell anything, anywhere, anytime on the world's biggest eCommerce platform.

See Plans

The post How To Write Product Descriptions That Really Sell: 10 Tips appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

That’s because, these days, anyone can build a stellar website.

And that’s a beautiful thing.

How else could you discover some of the internet’s most creative, mind-boggling and, well, useless websites via The Useless Web?

Or, explore all the touchstones that got us to where we are today via Internet Artifacts (check out the main Neal.Fun website for more)?

However, that means that one of the most important tasks a business owner, full-time blogger, or professional marketer can do is get people to actually find your website.

Making yours visible in the ever-growing crowd can be challenging.

And doing it on a budget can feel quite overwhelming, if not downright impossible today.

This is where digital marketing to promote your website becomes key.

By deploying a combo of creative marketing techniques, you can increase awareness around your site, which is the first step towards encouraging people to visit it. And, hopefully, complete a transaction!

The best part is that effectively promoting your new website can be done on the cheap, as long as you have some time to spare and know where to start.

Which is right here.

Experiment with these 30 free (or inexpensive) ideas to promote your website and watch the traffic roll in!

Why It’s Vital To Drive Valuable Traffic To Your Website

What we mean when we say web traffic is the number of visitors your site gets on a regular basis. High-traffic sites have more page views per day or month than low-traffic sites.

It’s probably no grand revelation to you that website traffic is important.

After all, visitors are critical to conversions. A conversion refers to an action you want your users to take, like making a purchase. When somebody buys something on your site, for example, they’ve converted from regular users into customers. Conversions can be many other things as well, such as signing up for a newsletter, creating an account, or completing a form. Either way, to improve your conversions, you’ll naturally want to increase the traffic on your site.

However, traffic shouldn’t just be a numbers game. Good traffic is essential.

Good traffic refers to visitors who stay a while, interact with your content, return multiple times, refer their friends, and of course, ultimately convert. Having just 500 visitors who convert is better than having 5,000 visitors who leave quickly, never to purchase or return.

30 Tactics For Promoting Your Website

So how do you go about attracting and retaining the valuable kind of traffic that converts?

Grab a snack and settle in, because we’re going to be here a while diving deep into 30 affordable, achievable website marketing tricks.

Refresh Your Digital Directory Listings

First up, a local business marketing strategy which is all about updating or creating business profiles across the internet to make sure they’re accurate, optimized, and ready to direct interested parties your way.

1. Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is a free service that enables your business to show up when potential customers use Google Search or Google Maps to look for products or services near them.

Your profile here should be complete with accurate hours, location information, description, and of course, a link to your website.

Bonus: Registering with Google’s business directory may help improve your ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs) for searches related to your website.

2. Bing Places (Really!)

Google may be the big kid on the block but, believe it or not, other search engines and directories exist!

And people (maybe even your potential customers) use them. Bing offers a freebie website promotion tool called Bing Places.

One test found that claiming and optimizing Bing Places listings helped a business with multiple physical locations grow both website traffic and conversions.

3. Yelp

Yelp is another directory and review source that can drive visitors not just to your physical location(s) but to your website to learn more, make reservations, complete transactions, and more. Make sure your information is up to date, respond to reviews, post photos and menu options, offer discounts, and link to your website and blog.

4. Other Online Directories To Try

Every link helps, right? The internet is filled with free online business directories. Once you’ve checked off the ones we’ve already mentioned, go to town with any others. These sites will get you started: Local.com, eLocal, and Insider Pages.

You may even want to seek out platforms that serve your specific niche. Spafinder is an example of Yelp of sorts for local spa businesses.

Keep in mind you usually won’t need to pay for a basic listing on most directories. If payment is required, make sure you understand the payment structure to ensure that the return will be worth it to you.

Get Crafty With Content Marketing

With your online presence refreshed, let’s roll up our sleeves and get into some real work — creating and enhancing value-adding content to power a clever content marketing strategy.

5. SEO Keyword Research

When you are looking for the answer to a question or solution to a problem, your first resource is probably a search engine like Google.

This means Google searches can be a powerful source of website traffic for you, if you play your cards right.

When potential customers search for something on Google, they aren’t likely to look down past the top two or three results. So your goal is to get any content related to the keyword a user searches up near the top of the Google SERP. That’s where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in.

SEO is the art and science of increasing your website’s visibility in organic search engine results. One of the best ways to optimize your website is by filling your content with keywords and phrases that people will likely search for. SEO is a basic but essential method of bringing traffic to your website. Without it, your website can get lost among the thousands of voices clamoring for your visitors’ attention.

To get started, learn how to do keyword research using Google Ads Keyword Planner to find keywords related to your website and get stats on how often they are searched in your target market.

While SEO can be cost effective — if you do the work yourself, you won’t have to pay anything for it — optimizing your website for search engines is definitely not a quick fix. It takes time to nail SEO methods, to optimize your website, and to keep it up to date as trends, competitors, and your business or website changes.

If you don’t have the time but do have the funds, you might consider hiring or contracting with a marketing pro to accelerate results.

Related: 25+ Best Free And Paid SEO Tools Around (Bookmark These!)

6. SEO-Informed, Expert-Level Blogging

Integrate original, relevant blog content into your website. Of course, this is also a prime place to include SEO keywords and build a following of loyal readers who will come back for more.

Today’s surfers love multimedia, so be sure to include images, videos, and even audio (more on that later) and always encourage readers to share posts they love on social media (another tactic we’ll talk about soon!).

To give your content an authoritative boost, contact and interview experts in your field. Your own list of five ways to bug-proof your garden may draw clicks, but ten tips from a long-time organic farmer? Now you’ve got a highly-shareable post that lends credibility to your entire site.

If your sources include well-known names that boast a sizable following of their own, you may draw their fans to your site. Let your sources know when you publish, and you may get a digital shoutout.

Related: 36 Brilliant Blogging Tools To Help You Write Better, Publish More, And Increase Traffic

7. Guest Blogging

Once you’ve got the hang of your own blog, it’s time to set your sights on others in your market.

To get your name out there, search out blogs that accept guest blogging pitches. Peruse their posts, take a look at their submission guidelines, and polish up a pitch to send over. If your pitch is accepted, make sure to include a link to your website in your bio to send traffic your way.

8. Add Your Website To Search Engines

Set up Webmaster Tools on Bing and Search Console on Google, ideally as soon as you set up your website. Doing so makes sure your site is indexed with them and will be included in their search results. It will also allow these platforms to communicate with you about any problems or recommendations for your website.

9. Email Marketing

Now that you’ve found your voice and have plenty of content creation experience, you can branch out into email marketing.

Email marketing is a tried-and-true tool for communicating with and reengaging your existing customers, and converting and retaining the newer ones. It essentially involves (legally!) collecting the email addresses of any potential customer and then sharing content — newsletters, promotions, discounts, and information — to build relationships.

Year after year, email has shown to be a preferred channel for consumers and marketers alike.

10. Link Building

Internal links direct users to other pages within your website, while external links guide them to external web pages. A balanced presence of both types of links is crucial for enhancing your website’s user experience (UX) as well as SEO.

As a website owner or marketer, it’s imperative to also focus on another type of link. Backlinks are links on external web pages that point back to your site. For instance, if someone includes a link to one of your blog posts in an article on their travel website, that would be a backlink.

Backlinks are critical because they:

• Make your website visible to a new audience
• Bring in new visitors to your site
• Signify to search engines that your content is valuable and worth linking to, thus boosting your search engine rankings (it’s all connected!)

As you probably guessed, quite a bit of planning goes into building a fresh and valuable web of backlinks. Luckily, we have a thorough guide where you can learn how to create a link building strategy.

Strategically Repurpose Content

Drowning in content?

That’s exactly where you want to be to excel at these next few website promotion tips.

11. E-Books

E-books are a fantastic tool for drumming up deeper engagement and conversions on your website.

The good news is that if you run a website with a lot of published content, you might already have the makings of an e-book on your hands! If you’ve written a ton of blogs on a single topic, for us, that’s definitely WordPress, you should be able to pretty easily compile them into one e-book to create an ultimate resource.

With an e-book ready to go, you can launch new marketing initiatives, such as:

• Using the e-book as a lead magnet for which visitors just have to provide their email addresses to access
• Promoting the e-book on your social media pages to gain followers and drive traffic back to your site
• Holding a giveaway for one lucky person who signs up to download your e-book

12. Infographics

Infographics are great because they make existing content more fun to look at and much more shareable. As such, they are also great sources of backlinks to your site.

If you don’t have an eye for design, start with a template from a website like Infogram or Canva. And when designing infographics and incorporating them into your site, keep your entire audience in mind — make sure the graphics are accessible to all users.

Stay Active On Key Social Channels

We’re all familiar with social media and how the number of platforms and types of content you’re supposed to be posting seems to grow with every passing month.

The trick to being consistent and successful on social media is identifying where your audience interacts the most and then building a social media strategy focusing on those core channels.

Want to reach a lot of founders? See how you do on LinkedIn. Are the visuals around your product or service a big selling point? A visual platform like Pinterest may serve you well.

Once you know your niche, here are a few tactics you can quickly implement across various channels to connect with your audience and drive them toward your website.

13. Facebook

It doesn’t cost a cent to create a Facebook account to promote your website or small business. Which is great, because it’s still the social platform with the most monthly active users.

Once you’re on Facebook, join/form groups or create a business page to interact with your followers, build a community, and share your content. Drive engagement and spread brand awareness with discounts and giveaways (more details on these later!) that reward Facebook followers who share your posts or tag friends.

14. Pinterest

Pinterest is a highly visual social network. If your website or brand focuses on art, design, crafts, style, DIY projects, or anything else with high visual impact, try a Pinterest business account to promote your website and biz.

Create boards and fill them with pins to share your style, establish your expertise, and find your people, and, of course, promote your content and brand!

15. Instagram

To capture an audience that’s really active on social media, you may want to set up an Instagram account.

Aside from the still images that Instagram was built on, you can also share videos on your profile, as well as Reels and Stories. Since video has the highest ROI out of all media formats, we recommend trying your hand at creating short, simple, and visually pleasing videos to show up more often in follower feeds and increase awareness of and engagement with your brand. Make sure your branding is clear and your message succinct and memorable, as attention can be fleeting on social media.

Use the bio section of your Instagram to post links to your website, individual blogs, and anywhere else you want to drive user traffic.

16. TikTok

Of all video formats, short-form video has the best performance when it comes to ROI, lead generation, and engagement.

Enter TikTok.

TikTok hinges on short-form videos, which are especially ideal for demonstrating businesses with something visual to offer, like restaurants, clothing retailers, and so on. Additionally, its impact is far-reaching, especially among younger generations who are wielding more spending power as they enter the workforce.

Similar to Instagram, businesses can put links in their bio to direct TikTok users to their website, etc.

17. LinkedIn

Depending on your website’s purpose and brand, a LinkedIn company page might be the perfect social tool to drive traffic.

Leverage it by completing an interesting profile and building connections. Follow influential people in your field and read what they share, join (or create) relevant groups, post content from your website’s blog (with links) often, and comment regularly on other posts.

18. YouTube

Creating YouTube videos can help you market your brand and likely improve your presence on Google SERPs, as Google owns YouTube.

Make sure your video titles and descriptions apply keywords that align with what your target audience wants to learn, and that your descriptions link to your website. Include a call-to-action in the video — ideally one that takes viewers to your website.

Creating video content may be free, but it isn’t a walk in the park, of course, and can take plenty of time to get right. If you’re looking for a simple approach just to get your channel off the ground, try:

• Creating video versions of existing content, either by recording yourself or using stock graphics
• Developing video summaries of some of your latest or most popular content
• Doing video interviews with internal experts that might not translate well as regular articles

No matter how you do it, putting together high-quality videos for your website does and should require some work. To expand the reach and hopefully ROI of all this effort, embed YouTube uploads on your website and share to other social platforms.

19. Podcasting Platforms: Spotify, Apple, Etc.

Podcast listening is on an impressive upward trend.

Millions of people follow and listen to podcasts on a regular basis. If you’re up to creating your own podcast and committing to releasing new episodes periodically, then you can tap into a huge potential source of website traffic.

There are several upsides to going with the podcast approach, such as:

• Low(ish) barrier to entry, since you really only need basic recording equipment.
• Podcast listeners are used to long-form content, so no quick cuts or complicated editing is needed.
• You can launch your podcast on various platforms for free or on the cheap (Spotify is free, Apple’s basic offering is free, and so on) to broaden your reach.

To be fair, creating a podcast isn’t as easy as just picking up a microphone and talking your listeners’ ears off. If you want to sound professional, you’ll probably need to work out a script in advance for each episode. Plus, you may need to invest in better recording equipment than just a headset if you want to maintain a high level of quality.

20. Cross-Promote With Other Businesses On Social

At its essence, cross-promotion revolves around collaborating with businesses with which you can build a reciprocal relationship. AKA — you scratch their back, they scratch yours!

Cross-promotion occurs when two or more businesses join forces to endorse each other’s products or services to their respective target audiences on social media and beyond. In addition to creating brand awareness, it can generate actual sales, subscriptions, and other types of conversions.

In contrast to traditional advertising, cross-promotion is inherently cooperative — and affordable. Likely, you’ll only have to pony up free products/services and time, versus shelling out actual cash for ads.

It’s crucial to note that the key to a successful cross-promotion lies in identifying a partner whose business complements yours and whose audience aligns with your target market.

Here are some ways you can partner with other brands via social — and everywhere else — to pull off cross-promotion:

• Use social media to shout out and share your cross-promotion partners
• Offer discounts on your social channels as well as your website, content, and checkout process that draw attention to your partner brand
• Co-host a webinar, podcast, or YouTube series
• Co-author an e-book (don’t forget to share it on social!)
• Create and share bundle deals for complimentary offerings. You sell web design and we sell website hosting? We could bundle those offerings to make a great deal for buyers!
• Promote each other’s products, services, or events in your email newsletters

Up The Ante With Paid Advertising

Ready to splash out a little green to boost the content you’re already creating to promote your website? Here are some totally approachable ways to get started.

21. Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising (sometimes called cost-per-click, CPC, advertising) can be layered on top of your SEO and other marketing efforts to amplify your visibility on various platforms, including Google, Amazon, and Meta products, such as Facebook.

Basically, instead of leaving your findability up to chance, you’ll create an ad that puts your website or profile in front of people who align with your target audience or are searching for something you provide or a phrase you’re targeting.

Typically, you pay a fixed price for every click your ad gets. On most platforms, you should be able to set up your budget and target audience so you don’t end up overpaying for clicks that aren’t likely to pan out.

To see ROI from this promotional strategy, be sure that you’re focusing on converting clicks into customers once they land on the link your ad has taken them to. Serve quality, relevant content that creates a clear, short path to fulfilling their needs.

Get started setting up PPC campaigns with this helpful guide.

22. Retargeting

One of the greatest frustrations for small online businesses is seeing the majority of their traffic leave without making a purchase. Retargeting (remarketing is another term for this process) advertising uses cookies to create ads that remind previous visitors of your brand. The idea is that this reminder spurs them to come back to your website and, ideally, complete a transaction.

After you’ve put so much into getting people to your business website the first time around, it might be worth the extra buck to get them back for a second chance at converting.

Most social media sites enable you to set up retargeting when you visit the advertising center in their various admin panels, as does Google. There are also plenty of third-party platforms for retargeting. Check out this HubSpot guide for a detailed walkthrough and list of tools.

23. Social Media Influencers

Influencer marketing refers to when an expert or recognized figure in a particular field markets your product or brand in their content.

And it doesn’t have to be an excessively expensive advertising channel when you know who to partner with.

Smaller influencers (called “nano” and “micro”) are people on social media who work in or regularly post about a specific field or niche. Unlike a celebrity, public figure, or field expert, smaller influencers have a tighter circle of influence — but a higher level of direct engagement.

Later x Fohr’s Influencer Marketing Report found that the smaller the following, the higher the engagement. Engagement with posts and ads is exactly what you want to see as a business that’s spending its hard-earned capital to gain awareness and website visits.

In addition, partnering with smaller influencers is, of course, much more affordable. On average, a nano-influencer on Instagram ( (500 to 10,000 followers) may charge $10 to $100 per post, and a micro-influencer (10,000 to 50,000 followers) $100 to $500 per post. That can sound like a lot for a single ad when you’re used to thinking in pennies when it comes to PPC ads, but don’t forget about the specifically-targeted, highly-engaged audience you’ll be reaching through smart and small influencer marketing.

Finding the right small influencers for your brand all starts with research.

Social monitoring — sometimes called social listening — is a way to collect information in real time about what’s being talked about on various digital platforms. Use a tool like Sprout Social, Mention, etc. to identify keywords related to your brand or vertical and who’s using them with impact across the internet. When you’ve identified those sources, that’s where you can start finding your small influencers to partner with.

And, there are other simple and free ways to spot potential micro-influencers:

• Conduct hashtag searches on Twitter or Instagram to see who’s already posting in your niche
• Search for bloggers who are already creating content in your field of interest
• Look at your list of followers and see if you already have some influencers in there

Once you’ve found as many small influencers that meet your criteria as possible, it’s time to reach out. Contact them through social media or look for contact information on their websites, present your offering to them, and explain what you want your brand to achieve through cooperation with them. Remember that they may receive several offers per week and that they may be selective about who they advertise for, so keep it short while also being engaging, thoughtful, and authentic.

Engage With Forums

If you’re willing to spend more time than cash and have extensive in-house expertise on your side, participating in some of the many digital forums out there can make for a super organic and natural way to funnel visitors to your website.

24. Quora

Similar to Yahoo Answers (rest in peace), Quora is a searchable online place for people with questions and people with answers to mingle.

Follow, ask, and answer questions in your area of interest, and include the address of your blog in your profile and answer credentials. You can include links to your blog in answers you write, but do so with caution — Quora will block answers it feels contain spammy links, and blatant self-promotion will garner no respect (or upvotes).

25. Help A Reporter Out

Press coverage of your business will help get your name out there and establish you as an expert in your field. Get media attention by registering with Help a Reporter Out (HARO), a free database that connects reporters and other writers to sources they can interview for their articles.

It’s a win-win: The writer gets the scoop and you get press coverage — plus you may be able to request a link to your site if the story is published online. After you register, you’ll receive source requests relevant to your industry and can then pitch your expertise, along with your answer, to the requesting reporter.

26. Reddit

Reddit is a massive, free-to-use website that allows users to submit stories, links, images, videos, etc., from across the internet, and other users can either upvote or downvote these submissions as well as create threads of commentary related to them.

While the site can be a great driver of traffic, the Reddit community generally frowns upon users who only share their own content or are only there to promote themselves. Become an active user in your chosen communities (called “subreddits”) and regularly interact with other posts, along with posting your own content.

Be warned: Redditors are a tough crowd so don’t be discouraged if your posts flop or garner a negative comment to two. And be sure to read the rules before posting, as you can get banned from subreddits for disobeying guidelines around self promotion.

27. Product Hunt

Product Hunt is like the Skymall (look it up, youngins) of new apps, websites, games, and devices, making it a haven for techies in search of the next big thing. Being featured at the top of Product Hunt can be a huge win for your business in terms of traffic. Here’s how to use Product Hunt to launch your business.

Offer Irresistible Deals

Finally, an age-old promotion technique that shouldn’t be ignored. If you’ve tried lots of other creative and/or free website marketing tactics and you’re still looking for a little bit more of a boost — you can’t go wrong with a juicy deal.

28. Giveaways

The easiest way to get people’s attention? Give them something for free. That holds true both in the physical world and online. The only difference is that running an online giveaway can actually be a lot easier, and cheaper.

One very common (but effective) approach for service providers is to give away a free e-book chock-full of industry tips and how-tos in exchange for visitors’ emails. Or, if you run an online boutique, it will probably make more sense to give away products instead.

In that scenario, you can lower the expense involved by holding a giveaway with parameters, such as free product for the first 5 people who share your post or the first 10 who sign up for your marketing newsletter. This lets you drum up enthusiasm and traffic without going out of business at the same time.

29. Creative Discounts

Every holiday season is packed with special offers and discounts, and it could be a great idea for your brand to participate in those. But if you really want to cut through the noise, maybe consider offering discounts with outside-the-box themes.

How about a discount centered around the anniversary of the founding of your business? Or around a lesser-celebrated holiday that conveniently coincides with your brand, such as National Sock Day (happy December 4!) for retail brands?

30. Referral Program

Have a lot of happy, repeat customers? That makes you the perfect candidate for building a referral program to offer deals like discounts, freebies, and other rewards in exchange for referrals.

This approach not only keeps your existing users happy, but it can also help you market your business to new clients with little effort on your part!

There are many resources online to help you build a referral program. In fact, here’s one to get you started.

Need Some Help Promoting Your Site?

We truly hope this long list of free and inexpensive — yet powerful! — promotional techniques will enable website owners and marketers to grow the online presence of the websites in their charge.

That said, sometimes the best way to get by is with a little help from friends.

With website marketing pros who are well-versed in SEO, social, and more, the DreamHost team is your friend in driving the engagement needed to boost conversions.

Want to stop worrying about promoting your website so you can focus even more on the aspects of your business that you love? Schedule a free consultation today and find out how our expert marketing team can help you.

Get More Visitors, Grow Your Business

Our marketing experts will help you earn more traffic and convert more website visitors so you can focus on running your business.

Learn More

The post 30 Affordable Ways To Promote Your Website (Ultimate Guide) appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

Well, not entirely.

Since its launch in 2005, YouTube has become an absolute powerhouse for sharing media of all types, from the funny to the sincere. Today, it is one of the best platforms for gaining visibility. After all, nearly 3 billion people around the world are on YouTube every month.

So whether you’re an aspiring influencer, professional business, or digital marketing manager looking to blow up a brand — if YouTube isn’t part of your marketing strategy, you’re missing out.

Maybe you aren’t utilizing the platform’s potential for brand growth because it’s too daunting to start, or you just weren’t sure of its efficacy.

That’s okay, let’s fix that.

Come along as we share 17 actionable YouTube marketing tricks to apply both on and outside of your channel to increase the visibility of your videos and boost your brand.

Let’s get into it.

YouTube Marketing Tactics To Grow Your Channel

Want a sneak peek before we get stuck in?

You’re about to learn…

• Why to apply SEO to YouTube
• How to determine video length for the best engagement
• What to do with that dang community tab, and other new(ish) features
• Where to apply automation to make your job easier
• Cross-promotion techniques to build beyond YouTube

…and tons more.

Ready to come away with actionable marketing strategies that can be applied right now to enhance your YouTube channel’s performance, and build your brand?

It’s only a scroll away!

Rewind: Don’t have a business channel yet? Here’s Google’s (they own YouTube) official guide to account creation. Follow that, then come back to this guide. 

1. Develop A Clear, Consistent Brand

The way you carefully developed a logo, website design, print materials, and packaging that all tell your brand story? You want to apply that same energy to your business YouTube channel.

Here are some tips on how to do just that:

• The name of your YouTube channel should ideally match your brand’s name, enhancing your target audience’s ability to locate you.
• Your profile picture should feature your latest logo, or whatever the face of your brand is.
• The banner image that displays at the top of your YouTube business page should be on-brand. You can also update this to align with any promotions or announcements. A simple design tool like Canva can help with this.
• Be sure to fill out the channel description section under “About.” Later, we’ll talk about tips for optimizing this to gain more traffic.
• Make the most of the links section by including URLs for your website, blog, and social media.

Your channel is basically a video-based showcase for your brand, displaying videos that highlight your products/services, your expertise, and your brand voice. The point is for it to serve as an extension of your business, so make sure it looks like one.

Here’s an example of how we follow this advice by mirroring the feel of our DreamHost website branding on our company YouTube channel:

2. Nail The Thumbnail

The thumbnail image is the still cover of a YouTube video that people see before it plays. If a person comes across one of your videos and isn’t familiar with your business, it’s your best tool for convincing them to click play and (hopefully) become a fan.

That means thumbnails need to be 1. on-brand and 2. enticing.

For that first goal, the approach is similar to the branding tips above: Use your existing logo/face of your brand, make sure the look of the thumbnail aligns with your typical branding, and be consistent. For those who do know you, they should be able to tell a video’s yours by glancing at the thumbnail.

As for being enticing, focus on using a really great graphic or photo, overlay a bit of text, and think about all the classic web standards for readability (font choices, color contrast, etc.).

Remember, you want thumbnails to be tantalizing and lead people to click — but not to be dishonest. Lickd has a pretty good guide to all things YouTube thumbnails.

3. Get To Know Your *Actual* Audience

Successful marketing on YouTube, as with any platform really, relies heavily on understanding your audience.

The good news is, YouTube makes this pretty easy. YouTube calls its analytics page YouTube Studio, and you can get to it by:

• Signing in to your channel
• Clicking the channel icon in the upper righthand corner with your profile picture
• Selecting “YouTube Studio”

The most helpful section in our opinion is Analytics, which shows you where watches come from, average watch time for videos, basic demographics about your viewers, and what other types of content they like. For even more detailed analytics, there are tons of specialty platforms out there like Socialinsider, ChannelMeter, and so on.

With this information, you can identify the predominant audience who’s driving content engagement and develop a detailed subscriber persona. A persona is helpful in guiding the creation of content that not only appeals to your current audience but also attracts new subscribers, ultimately growing awareness.

4. Balance Length + Engagement

Posting longer videos on YouTube, rather than just short clips (though Shorts is an important feature — more on that later), keeps viewers on your channel for more time.

Very generally speaking, in marketing, the longer you can keep a consumer engaged with your content — the better. It makes for more chances to tell your brand story, form relationships, and inspire higher conversions rates.

That said, we definitely recommend you use your YouTube analytics to find out how long your average viewer actually spends watching individual videos. Because “longer” is all relative, and should be determined on how long your particular audience is willing to engage.

If your target audience is typically engaged for, say, 13 minutes of a video, creating anything much longer than that is probably a waste of everyone’s time.

5. Know Thy Competition

Creating a competitive analysis is a crucial step in developing any marketing strategy, and it also applies to YouTube.

Observing the activities on your competitors’ YouTube channels can serve as a source of inspiration, and maybe even help you identify practices to avoid.

Key aspects to focus on during a competitive analysis include:

• The nature and topics of competitor content
• The types of videos they post: testimonials, product walkthroughs, etc.
• The number of video views they receive
• The frequency with which they post
• Their strategy for designing video thumbnails

If you don’t want to do this manually, there are social media insight software options like Keyhole that can make this process faster and easier.

6. Give Shorts A Spin

Shorts is a YouTube feature for sharing 60-second (or less) videos on YouTube, and seems to be the brand’s answer to TikTok.

Shorts feature heavily in YouTube search results and people do like short-form video when it comes to learning the details of a new product or service for the first time. Plus, for you, they can be a little less involved to create! For these reasons, we suggest marketers and businesses on YouTube at least try out the feature and see how it performs.

Start here to learn everything there is to know about Shorts, or dive right into remixing your existing content into Shorts by following How to Create YouTube Shorts from Existing Videos.

7. Don’t Neglect The Community Tab

Another newer feature to YouTube is what’s known as the Community tab. This brings a sort of traditional social platform aspect to YouTube, giving creators a place to post text updates, GIFs, short videos, polls, and more.

The YouTube experts at vidIQ ran an experiment to see if the Community tab impacted channel growth and found that, yes, it probably can contribute to higher visibility on YouTube.

Utilize the Community tab to stay connected with followers and build anticipation between videos. The great thing is that posting to the Community tab feels just like creating content for channels you’re used to, like LinkedIn or Facebook. So it won’t be a huge effort for you to add this to your marketing team to-do list.

8. Collaborate With Like-Minded Creators And Brands

If you’re on social media at all, you’re no stranger to the collab.

Collaborating with well-known brands or creators can enhance your visibility with their audience, potentially growing your YouTube subscriber count and your brand.

For example, Allbirds collaborated with famous ex-footballer Marshawn Lynch to promote their brand’s commitment to sustainability for this YouTube video (language warning: not safe for work).

If you’re a smaller channel, you need to be ready to splash out some of your marketing budget to get a bigger name to appear on your channel. Your compensation is their audience, theirs is the payment.

If you’re looking for a more affordable opportunity, you can reach out to similarly-sized channels with audiences who could benefit from your offerings and see if they’d be willing to build a mutually-beneficial collaborative relationship that’s low- or no-cost.

9. Take Advantage Of Playlists And Autoplay

Playlists are great for keeping related videos grouped together, which helps you understand how well you’ve covered key topics and helps viewers navigate to exactly the videos they want to see.

But there are more tactical reasons to set up playlists.

Playlists come with an auto-play feature, which means after a watcher has finished one of your videos, another one from the same playlist will play next. Also, as a viewer is watching a video, videos from the same playlist may be featured in the right sidebar/under the video (depending on the device). This increases video visibility and chances that a user will continue to stay on your channel.

Creating and managing playlists is easy from inside the YouTube Studio tool. Here’s the official guide from Google.

10. Never Miss A Post With Automation

Unfortunately, most smaller businesses and brands can’t commit a ton of resources to consistently posting, or ramping up operations, on YouTube.

That’s where tooling comes in.

The shoe brand Rothy’s implemented automation via Google Ads’ Performance Max campaigns to grow conversions and revenue almost 60%. Impressive!

How can small channels follow their lead and apply automation to YouTube to make an outsized impact?

Look for tools that automate some of the more time-consuming but somewhat menial jobs related to YouTube. For example:

• One of vidIQ’s features is to automatically recommend topics, relevant keywords, and video titles and descriptions.
• Smart Replies in YouTube Studio automatically suggests scripts that make comment management much faster.
• Zapier is a powerful platform for building recipes to automate almost anything. One of the best things you can use it to do is automatically upload a video to YouTube when you save it to a specific Dropbox or Google Drive folder. Here’s how.

11. Conduct Keyword Research

We just touched on keywords in the last tactic, but we wanted to expand on that more before moving on.

YouTube is the second-largest search engine on the planet. When it has so much content to sift through, how does it know when to surface the right content for a search query?

It relies on keywords.

By including keywords that are relevant to your content and important to your audience across your YouTube channel (more details in the next tip), you’re more likely to be found by people who will really love and support your brand.

Keyword research is a big business. Thankfully, it’s easy to find tools that will help you with YouTube keyword research.

If you want to keep it free, YouTube Studio does have basic tooling for this in the Analytics > Research section. You can find what your watchers as well as what watchers across YouTube have searched for in relation to your keywords. The best part of this tool is that it marks some search terms as “Content Gap,” which means you may win a lot of valuable traffic if you can fill that gap. Here’s a guide to learn more about that.

Some other keyword research tools include Ahrefs, TubeBuddy, and TubeRanker to get you started.

12. Optimize YouTube Titles And Descriptions For SEO

OK, now we’re going to build on the keyword research we’ve done and conduct some search engine optimization (SEO) in the form of enhancing video titles and video descriptions with our best keywords.

Experts suggest that you put the phrases that are most important to you toward the front of your video titles and descriptions. This is because both sections truncate at a certain point — Titles at around 70 characters (with spaces) and descriptions around 100. That said, descriptions can contain 5,000 characters, as well as links and some additional formatting. We do recommend you use this space thoughtfully to summarize the video and direct watchers to related videos and other links (such as your blog!) that they may like.

Another tip is to write for the reader, not the algorithm. Stuffing your content with keywords can make it read as choppy, and YouTube is getting smart enough to notice this “keyword stuffing” and dock you for it.

YouTube has posted an insightful video on how the platform views titles and descriptions.

13. Used Closed Captioning

Search engines also utilize video captions to help surface videos that align with the terms a searcher typed in. Plus, including closed captioning is simply good practice when it comes to increasing accessibility for viewers with disabilities. It’s a win-win.

Start with YouTube’s automatic captioning. Then, log into YouTube Studio > Content to select your video, choose subtitles, and edit your video transcript to be as accurate as possible. For a step-by-step guide through this process, we found this page from the UC Berkeley Digital Accessibility resource very helpful.

Note: To include more keywords in your captions, you have to use more keywords in your videos. If this is a goal for you, we recommend at least jotting down a loose script that includes your target phrases before you start filming.

14. Deploy YouTube Tags

For our final keyword-related YouTube tip, we bring you tags.

Tags are another way to attach keywords to your videos, but keep in mind that even YouTube says they aren’t as powerful as titles, descriptions, and even thumbnails. Mostly, they’re useful for targeting phrases that your audience uses but that you don’t want to include in those other places — think misspellings, acronyms, really niche terms, and so on.

Here’s how to add tags to your YouTube videos if you have time and want to complete this last optimization step.

Beyond YouTube: More Marketing Tactics To Build Your Brand

For those looking to spin their budding YouTube stardom into more traffic beyond YouTube, here are some things you can do outside of the platform to further your efforts and continue to grow your business.

15. Create A Brand-Wide Content Plan For Consistency

We’ve mentioned consistency several times already, and that’s for good reason. Consistency is key for standing out and gaining a loyal following in a competitive environment.

But consistency can be pretty hard to maintain without a plan.

A content calendar is going to be a very important marketing tool for planning posts that create awareness, move consumers toward conversions, and build retention for your brand. It should incorporate all of your channels so that you can ensure full coverage of every topic and find opportunities for repurposing and cross-promoting content to boost its impact — more on both of those strategies in a sec.

First, some quick recommendations from the pros. How to Create a Social Media Calendar to Plan Your Content from HubSpot is an amazing resource full of templates, examples, and more. For a (slightly) shorter read, How to Create a Social Media Calendar and Stay Organized from Hootsuite will show you how to create your calendar in a handful of steps.

16. Build Blogs Around Videos

To really power-up your content marketing campaigns, consider repurposing your YouTube videos into blog posts.

Think of how you can break up your video into “chapters” and spin each of those topics into its own section of a blog. You can even use the transcript from a video to give you a head start on writing content. Use your CMS to seamlessly embed the video the blog post is about into the content to maximize video exposure. Then, link to the blog post from the video’s description on YouTube to bring it full circle.

For folks who have been really working to improve SEO on their website for years, this enables them to capitalize on the traffic they already have and bring more awareness to their YouTube channel.

17. Reframe & Promote To Social Media

The idea of promoting across social media accounts comes pretty naturally to most marketers today. However, most other social media platforms are pretty focused on shorter content.

What we recommend doing here is taking a page from YouTube Shorts and grabbing either short snippets or making shorter edits of the best parts of your long-form videos. These can be used to build intrigue as to what the full video holds. Use captions to direct watchers back to your YouTube channel, where they can get the full scoop.

Using these methods opens the door to segments of your audience who might be on Facebook, TikTok, and other platforms more than they’re on YouTube.

Get Help Making YouTube A High-Value Marketing Channel

Do you feel more confident navigating the ever-changing world of video content marketing?

We hope so, because all of the above tips have helped us, as well as plenty of our clients, come to view YouTube as a valuable marketing channel vs. a pain in the you-know-what over the years.

Don’t have the time (or the desire, it’s OK to admit it!) to embark on a new YouTube optimization journey? As marketing nerds, we’d love to help.

Just tap our marketing pro services team for help with social media marketing, SEO marketing, or the whole shebang. 

Let us focus on the YouTube tactics, trends, and tweaks — so you can focus on your core business.

Get More Visitors, Grow Your Business

Our marketing experts will help you earn more traffic and convert more website visitors so you can focus on running your business.

Learn More

The post 17 YouTube Marketing Tricks To Help You Grow Your Brand appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

Understanding which pages people frequent, how long they’re there, and what pages they click can help you understand what’s working and what isn’t.

But collecting (and analyzing) all that data can feel like a mountain to climb if you don’t have the experience. And on top of everything else you’re trying to manage in your business, who has the time?

That’s where Google Tag Manager (GTM) comes in.

GTM provides a free and beginner-friendly way for marketers (or anyone else who isn’t a web developer) to create and manage tags for their websites without knowing how to code. Once you’ve mastered GTM, you can set up tags with specific triggers and variables to collect data on a wide range of visitor behaviors, even as far down as nuanced movements like specific clicks and scrolls.

In turn, that data can help you optimize your site to boost sales, capture more leads, and create a more inviting (and customer-friendly) experience.

Ready to learn how to use GTM? Let’s get into it.

What Is Google Tag Manager?

GTM is a free tool that allows you to install, store, update, and manage marketing tags without needing to know how to modify your website code. Marketing tags are code snippets that collect data to track user actions. For example, Google Analytics tags track user interactions on your site, AdWords tags help track ad performance, and heat map tools track user engagement across different parts of a webpage.

Platforms like Google Analytics require tags to collect the data they need. However, if you tried to place them within your website’s code yourself, it may open your site up to a lot of risks (like forgotten, lost, or broken tags and other web elements). GTM eliminates that risk by installing, deploying, and managing tags from within its software instead of your site’s code. This also makes it possible for people who don’t know how to code to manage tags – bridging the gap between developers and digital marketers, analysts, and other stakeholders.

How Google Tag Manager Works

Google Tag Manager operates through a container tag that you place on your website. Once installed, the container acts as a middleman between your site and the tracking tools you want to implement. Instead of adding each tracking code directly to your site, you add them to the GTM container via the GTM interface. The container holds all the tags you want to implement and fires them on your site based on triggers you define, such as clicks, form submissions, or page loads.

This not only streamlines the process of managing multiple tags, but also gives you control over when and how the tags are triggered. With GTM, you can set detailed rules and conditions for each tag, ensuring that they collect data precisely as needed. This level of customization is crucial for data accuracy and aligning with user privacy and consent regulations.

During the process, Google Tag Manager functions by bringing together three critical components: Tags, Triggers, and Variables. Each plays a unique role in the process of collecting and sending information. To understand how GTM operates, you need to know these elements and how they interact with each other.

Understanding Tags

Tags are the heart of Google Tag Manager. They are snippets of code or tracking pixels from third-party tools (like Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, etc.) that collect and send information from your website to another data collection system. Each tag is designed to gather specific types of data: page views, form submissions, e-commerce transactions, etc. GTM serves as a centralized platform where you can manage all these tags without having to manually add them to your website’s code.

When you set up a tag in GTM, you specify when and where the tag should fire on your site, which is controlled by Triggers.

Examples Of Tags

• Google Analytics 4 Configuration Tag: Sets up tracking for the latest version of Google Analytics, capturing a wide range of user interactions.
• Google Ads Conversion Tracking Tag: Tracks conversions from Google Ads campaigns, such as form submissions or purchases.
• Facebook/Meta Pixel Tag: Tracks user behavior and conversions for Facebook ad campaigns.
• Hotjar Tracking Tag: Records user behavior and creates heatmaps for user interaction analysis.
• LinkedIn Insight Tag: Tracks conversions, website demographics, and retargeting for LinkedIn ad campaigns.

Understanding Triggers

Triggers are the conditions you set for when a tag should execute its code on your website. Essentially, they tell GTM when to fire a tag.

You can create triggers based on various user interactions or behaviors, such as clicks, form submissions, pageviews, or even when a user has scrolled to a certain point on a webpage.

Triggers can be very specific, allowing you to target certain elements on a page, or they can be broad, applying to multiple scenarios. By combining different triggers, you can precisely control your tags, ensuring that they fire only under the right circumstances to collect the correct data.

Examples Of Triggers

• Page View Trigger: Fires tags when a user views a page. It can be set for all pages or specific ones.
• Click Triggers: Fires tags when a user clicks on an element. It can be further specified for all clicks, some clicks, just links, or just buttons.
• Form Submission Trigger: Activates when a user submits a form on your website.
• Scroll Depth Trigger: Fires tags based on how far down a user scrolls on a page.
• Timer Trigger: Fires tags at set time intervals or after a certain amount of time has passed.

Understanding Variables

Variables are the third pillar of Google Tag Manager, providing additional flexibility and precision for your data collection. They are named placeholders for values that change, such as a URL, a form input, or a click ID. Variables can be used both in triggers and tags to define and capture specific data that you want to use. For example, a variable can be used to capture the URL of a page when a user submits a form, allowing you to know which page was the source of the conversion.

Variables can make triggers more intelligent. For example, instead of triggering a tag on all clicks, you can use a variable to specify that it should only fire when a user clicks on a button with a specific label or ID. This level of detail ensures that tags fire only in the right context, enhancing the accuracy of your data collection.

Examples Of Variables

• URL Variable: Captures and stores the URL of the current page.
• Referrer Variable: Holds the URL of the referring website.
• Click Text Variable: Stores the text of the clicked element.
• Form Element Variable: Captures the values entered into a form.
• First Party Cookie Variable: Reads the value of a specified first-party cookie.

Why Use Google Tag Manager? (Benefits)

Google Tag Manager has been a game changer for marketers and other non-developers who need to manage tags on their websites and mobile apps. Here are some of its main benefits.

Simplified Tag Management

GTM streamlines the process of adding and updating tags. Without GTM, you would have to manually code each tag into your website, which can be time-consuming and prone to errors. GTM’s user-friendly interface allows you to manage all your tags in one place, reducing the need for complex coding and simplifying the overall tag management process.

No Need To Rely On Developers For Every Change

One of the most significant benefits of GTM is the independence it offers marketers from the IT or web development team. Once the GTM container code is added to your site, marketers can add, edit, and deactivate tags without any further code changes to the website. This speeds up the process and allows for quick implementation of tracking tags, which is especially beneficial in fast-paced marketing environments.

Improved Site Speed

Too many tags can slow down your website, affecting user experience and SEO. GTM helps in this aspect by allowing tags to fire asynchronously. This means that tags can load independently without affecting the loading time of other elements on the page. The result is a faster website and a better experience for your visitors.

Better Data Accuracy

GTM’s precise triggering options ensure that tags fire only under the right conditions. This precision helps you collect the most accurate data possible. GTM also offers built-in error checking and debugging tools, which help ensure that your tags are working correctly before they go live.

Version Control And User Permissions

Every change made in GTM is saved as a new version. This means you can easily roll back to a previous version if something goes wrong with a new implementation. GTM also allows you to set user permissions, giving you control over who can view, edit, or publish tags. This is particularly useful for larger teams and agencies.

Built-In Testing And Debugging Tools

GTM comes with a robust set of testing and debugging tools, including a preview mode that allows you to test tags on your site before publishing them. This helps you catch any issues early and ensures that your data collection is accurate.

Compliance With Data Privacy And Consent Requirements

With increasing emphasis on user privacy and data protection laws like GDPR and CCPA, GTM aids in compliance. It allows for easy implementation of consent management platforms and ensures that tags only fire when consent is given, respecting user preferences and legal requirements.

Cross-Platform Tracking

GTM is not just limited to websites: it also supports mobile apps. You can use it to manage tags in Android and iOS apps, providing a unified tag management solution across web and mobile platforms.

Cost-Effectiveness

Finally, Google Tag Manager is a free tool. Despite its powerful features, there are no direct costs associated with using the basic version of GTM, making it accessible for businesses of all sizes.

How To Add Google Tag Manager To Your Site

1. To set up Google Tag Manager, log in to your Google account, go to Tag Manager, and click Create Account.

2. Enter your “Account Name.” Google recommends that a business only have one Tag Manager account, even if it has multiple websites, so your company name can be your account name. At this page, you’ll also select your country.

3. Enter your “Container Name.” The container is the piece of code you’ll add to your site to make Google Tag Manager work, and you’ll typically create a unique container for each website, so your container name can be your site name or URL.

4. Select your “Target Platform”. For websites, choose Web.

5. Click Create. This will finish your Tag Manager account and create your first container. You’ll see two pop-ups.

The first one is the Google Tag Manager Terms of Service Agreement. You’ll need to check the box at the bottom of the page and click the Yes at the top right corner to accept the terms.

The second is a how-to guide with the code snippets you need to install your first container on your site. It explains where to copy and paste the two snippets (the first one as high up in the <head> of the page as possible, and the second one immediately after the opening <body> tag). It also links to Google’s quick start guide in case you need more help.

How To Add A Tag

You can add more than 50 different types of tags, but we’ll walk you through the process of adding a Google Analytics 4 Tag, one of the most commonly used tags. Before following the steps below, make sure to remove any Google Analytics code from your website (otherwise, once you add the GA4 tag, your analytics may register double hits).

1. Log in to your Google Tag Manager account. Click the Container name. Once on your GTM dashboard, click New Tag or Add New Tag.

2. Add a name for your tag. For a GA4 tag, use something descriptive, like “GA4” or “GA4 Configuration.” In the Tag Configuration box, select Google Tag. In the Tag ID field, enter your Google tag ID. Click Save.

3. Click the “Triggering” box, select “All Pages” from the list, and click “Save.”

4. Go back to your workspace overview page and click “Preview.” Enter your website’s URL in the next screen and click “Connect.” This will open your site in a new window so you can test your new changes and debug them if needed. Keeping this new window open, return to the preview page, which should say “Connected!” Click “Continue.” You should then be able to see your new GA4 tags firing on the preview page as you navigate your site in the other window. This means your tag implementation was successful.

5. Go back to your page overview and click “Submit.” Give your version a name and description, then click “Publish” to push the new changes to your live website. This will publish a new version of your container to your site and allow you to start collecting GA4 data as visitors navigate it.

5 Ways To Use Google Tag Manager For Tracking

There are too many ways to use Google Tag Manager for us to cover in this article. But below, we’ve listed a few that can get you started.

1. Track page views and user behavior

• With Google Analytics: The most common use of GTM is to deploy Google Analytics (GA) tracking. By adding the GA tag in GTM, you can track page views, user time on site, bounce rates, and other standard metrics.
• With heatmap tools: Integrate heatmap tools like Hotjar or Crazy Egg using GTM to understand how users interact with your website.

2. Track events and conversions

• With button clicks: Track clicks on specific buttons, like “Buy Now” or “Sign Up” to understand user engagement and conversion.
• With form submissions: Monitor when users submit forms on your site, which is crucial for lead generation tracking.
• With file downloads: Keep tabs on how often users download PDFs or other resources from your site.

3. Track e-commerce transactions

• With Google Analytics Enhanced E-commerce: Use GTM to implement Enhanced E-commerce tracking for a detailed analysis of user interactions with your e-commerce site, including product views, adding items to carts, and completed transactions.
• With third party e-commerce platforms: Integrate tags from platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce to align your ecommerce tracking with your analytics platforms.

4. Implement remarketing and advertising tracking

• With Google Ads Remarketing: Add the Google Ads remarketing tag through GTM to show ads to users who have previously visited your website.
• With Facebook/Meta Pixel: Use GTM to implement Facebook/Meta Pixel on your site, which helps track conversions from Facebook ads, optimize ads, build targeted audiences, and remarket to people who have already taken some kind of action on your site.

5. Ensure GDPR compliance and consent management

• With cookie consent management: Implement tags for cookie consent management platforms through GTM. These tags can be set up to fire only when the user has given consent, helping you stay compliant with GDPR and other privacy regulations.

Google Tag Manager Vs. Google Analytics: What’s the Difference?

Google Tag Manager (GTM) and Google Analytics (GA) are both powerful tools offered by Google, but they serve very different purposes. It’s important to understand the differences between them so you can effectively leverage both in your digital strategy.

Google Tag Manager

Purpose: GTM is a tag management system that allows you to quickly and easily update measurement codes and related code fragments collectively known as tags on your website or mobile app. The main functionality of GTM is to host and manage JavaScript and HTML tags used for tracking and analytics on websites.

Functionality: It simplifies the process of adding and editing tags without the need to modify the code on your website. GTM handles not just Google tags but third-party tags as well. It enables you to deploy and manage various marketing and analytics tags, including Google Analytics, Google Ads, Hotjar, and many others.

Google Analytics

Purpose: GA is an analytics service that provides insights into website traffic, user behavior, and other key metrics. Its primary function is to collect data from your website and compile it into comprehensive reports that help you understand how visitors interact with your site.

Functionality: Google Analytics tracks things like page views, user sessions, bounce rates, and user demographics. It can also track more complex interactions like e-commerce transactions, events (such as clicks on a button or video plays), and goals (like form submissions or downloads).

Key differences

Data handling: GTM is essentially a middleman that helps you manage how various tracking codes are implemented on your website. It doesn’t collect or store any data itself. In contrast, GA is all about data; it collects, stores, and analyzes data about your website’s visitors and their behaviors.

Implementation: To collect data using Google Analytics, you need to implement the GA tracking code on your website. This can be done directly in the site’s code or via Google Tag Manager. GTM simplifies the implementation process by allowing you to inject the GA tracking code (alongside other tags) through its interface without needing to alter the site’s codebase directly.

Data presentation: GTM does not present data; it simply deploys tags based on your configuration. Google Analytics, however, has a robust interface for data analysis and visualization, with various reports and tools to interpret the data collected from your website.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why Is Google Tag Manager Important For SEO?

Google Tag Manager itself doesn’t directly impact SEO, but it facilitates better data collection and tracking. By providing accurate user behavior data, it helps SEO specialists make informed decisions to improve the website’s performance and user experience, which are critical factors in SEO.

What Is Google Tag Manager Used For?

Google Tag Manager is used for efficiently managing and deploying tracking and marketing tags on a website or mobile app without the need to modify the code. It’s used for tracking conversions, site analytics, remarketing, and much more.

Are There Any Reasons Not to Use Google Tag Manager?

While GTM has many benefits, some potential reasons not to use it could include:

• Complexity: For very simple websites with minimal tracking needs, GTM might add unnecessary complexity.
• Learning curve: There is a learning curve associated with understanding how to use GTM effectively.
• Control and security: Some organizations prefer to have direct control over all code that goes on their website, including tracking codes, for security or policy reasons.

Get More Visitors, Grow Your Business

Our marketing experts will help you earn more traffic and convert more website visitors so you can focus on running your business.

Learn More

The post What Is Google Tag Manager & How Does It Work? The Full Guide appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

You’ve barely taken a sip of your coffee (or tea or smoothie) and are already buried under a mountain of emails, customer inquiries, and endless to-do lists. As a small business owner, you wear many hats — balancing bookkeeping, sales, marketing, and all other business needs.

Time is a luxury you can’t afford to waste.

Luckily, there are a variety of affordable and free small business apps out there you can use to help with day-to-day operations so you can focus on developing strategies, boosting conversions, and increasing revenue.

Let’s get into the best small business apps you need to know about and explore how to use them in your business.

Why Small Businesses Need Apps

While you could keep using pencil and paper to run your business, you’ll likely hit a wall at some point.

A US Chamber of Commerce study from 2022 found that 94% of small business owners find that using the right tech and tools helps them run their businesses more efficiently. 84% of owners that adopted six or more tools and apps reported a higher increase in profits, 82% saw an increase in sales, and 74% had to grow their team to keep up with growing demands.

While there are some tasks you’re just better off outsourcing, the right apps massively cut down the time you spend on boring stuff like invoicing, payroll, and scheduling. Saving time means you can focus on growing your business (or even clocking out early for once.)

Need to invoice a client? There’s an app for that. Want to step up your social media game? There’s an app for that, too. Need time tracking for yourself or your employees? Well, sadly, there’s no app for that.

Totally kidding. There are several apps for that.

Incorporating these tools into your workflows and processes saves time and money. The name of the game is streamlining. Apps can contribute to an increase in sales, improve customer retention, and showcase areas where your business is siphoning money so you can make operational adjustments.

You spend a little (or nothing) to save a lot.

So, if you’re still on the fence, consider this your nudge to get with the times and make your life easier.

How To Choose The Right Apps For Your Business

A common trap entrepreneurs and small business owners fall into is “shiny object syndrome.” You start researching different small business apps, and now you want to download all the things with all the neat features all at once.

Don’t do that just yet.

If you’re a smart, savvy small business owner, you can identify what your business needs, which type of app will meet those needs, and then learn what is available and which apps are compatible with one another.

Here are some things you’ll want to think about when selecting the best apps for your small business:

• Budget: Your bottom line matters at the end of the day. Consider the upfront costs and the ongoing monthly or annual subscription fees when using a new small business app. Will it be worth your return on investment?
• Scalability: As your small business grows, will your apps grow with you? Look for scalable solutions that offer different plans or features so you can upgrade rather than search for a whole new platform when the time comes.
• User-friendliness: Few small business owners have the time to mess around with an app that’s overly complicated or hard to use. When you’re an entrepreneur, your time is worth money. Opt for apps that have intuitive features, a robust knowledge base to refer to as you get used to its interface, and responsive customer support.
• Integration: It will be incredibly frustrating to find out you’ve invested time and money into a standalone tool that doesn’t play well with the others you use daily. Check if the app can integrate with other tools you’re already using, like your customer relationship management tool or your payment processing system.

Many subscription-based apps have a free version or a limited free trial period. Use this to test the app’s basic features and see if it fits your small business and needs. You can upgrade to a pro or version if you decide it’s a good fit. Take your time, do your homework, and choose a suite of small business apps right for you.

Accounting And Bookkeeping Apps

First and foremost, let’s look at a couple of small business apps essential for financial health: your accounting apps. While accounting may not be everyone’s passion, it’s definitely an essential part of running a successful business. It lays the foundation for long-term operations and provides much-needed visibility on your financial health.

1. QuickBooks

QuickBooks has been in the accounting software game for a long time (since 1983!) and offers a wide range of plans that allow you to customize to your needs. It’s versatile, reliable, and bundled with neat features to organize your business finances.

While QuickBooks is still available as a desktop app (used on a single computer), their cloud-based platform, QuickBooks Online, is ideal for small or medium-sized businesses. It’s accessible from anywhere, offers payroll and inventory options, a simplified user interface, and even allows your accountant to plug directly into the platform.

Features

• Expense tracking: No more piles of receipts, no more inboxes full of invoices. QuickBooks automatically sorts through your transactions and categorizes your expenses for you.
• Invoicing: Behind on invoicing clients? Create custom, branded, and professional-looking invoices with just a few clicks. Save customer information to make future invoicing even easier.
• Payroll: Make sure your people get paid on time and schedule (and you, too!) with an automated payroll system that includes tax calculations. You can opt to add payroll to any plan type.

Tip: Scan Your Receipts

Use the QuickBooks mobile app for Apple iOS or Android to scan your receipts with your mobile device and digitally store them for safekeeping so you’ll no longer need that one drawer stuffed with random receipts.

QuickBooks pricing starts at $30 per month. Each plan includes a free 30-day trial.

2. FreshBooks

FreshBooks is ideal for freelancers, consultants, solopreneurs, or small business owners in the early stages of growth, particularly those who offer services rather than products.

FreshBooks is a great option if your business revolves around client projects and tracking billable hours. It’s a solution for those needing more project management and time-tracking visibility.

Features

• Time-tracking: Know exactly what you’re doing with your time and how long it takes to get things done. Log your billable hours directly in the app and easily add them to an invoice.
• Client portal: Give your clients and customers a clear space to view their invoices and pay you your money.
• Financial reports: Get a top-level view of your cash flow. Generate profit and loss statements, expense reports, and other business financial documents with a few button clicks.

Tip: Communicate With Your Clients

Use the FreshBooks client portal to streamline communication with your clients, keep them happy, and get paid.

Pricing starts at $8.50 per month, or you can try it for free for 30 days.

Project Management

As a small business owner, you need to know that things are getting done on time and how they’re supposed to. You can’t remember everything you must complete in a day, no matter how many checklists you’ve got in your notebook.

That is why you need a project management app.

Project management (PM) gets especially tricky when you have multiple team members and numerous projects with looming deadlines. Coordinating tasks or projects can become a full-time job when they involve multiple people at different times.

Let’s look at some affordable PM options to minimize the stress.

3. Asana

Asana is a popular project management app designed to help you plan, organize, and track your projects. It’s great for businesses that deal with complex projects and need a centralized place where their team members can collaborate. You can organize projects with multiple steps and stakeholders or add items to a do-to list.

Features

• Task management: Assign and track tasks for multiple team members and groups. That way, everyone knows their responsibilities, and when their tasks are due, so everything runs smoothly.
• List, board, and calendar views: Visualize your project using different views and understand how much time and work it’ll take to get it done. This is great for projects with multiple steps or with hard-and-fast deadlines.
• Collaboration: Comment on tasks and attach files, so that all of your team members have visibility on the status of a given project. There’s even a built-in “chat” feature to message anyone involved in a project that needs a running dialogue.

Tip: Set Goals

Use Asana’s Goals feature to ensure your tasks and projects align with your company’s objectives.

The Basic plan is free. Paid plans begin at $10.99 and open up features like dependencies, which allow tasks to be blocked until a prior task is marked complete.

4. Trello

Trello may be the way to go if you’re more of a big-picture thinker and you tend to organize information visually. Trello’s Kanban board layout is simple and intuitive.

Features

• Kanban boards: Organize your tasks into cards and boards and organize them in columns based on status or linear workflow steps.
• Automation: The built-in automation can automatically create tasks, which is especially handy for ensuring you or your team complete routine tasks.
• Integration: Trello syncs seamlessly with other common small business apps like Google Drive and Slack, which can make for a more consistent workflow

Tip: Create A “Done” List

Moving your completed tasks to a ‘done list‘ can give you a sense of accomplishment and the satisfaction of a job well done. It also helps you keep track of what you’ve already completed.

Trello has a free plan suitable for individuals, or you can upgrade to the standard plan for small teams for $5/user per month.

Payment Processing Apps

In today’s fast-paced world, customers expect quick and hassle-free payment options, whether they’re shopping online or in-store. Whether you’re an appliance repair company or you run an online boutique, you need a reliable payment processing app.

Why?

It’s not just about making your life easier when it comes to collecting payments; it’s also about offering your customers a smooth and efficient checkout experience. Before you pick an app, consider what payment methods you’ll accept: credit cards, mobile wallets, and even cryptocurrencies. Do you need to process payments both online and at a physical location?

A good payment processing app can help you cover all these bases, making transactions seamless for everyone involved.

5. Square

Square is a multi-functional payment processing app that offers a point-of-sale system, online invoicing, and analytics tracking. It’s a comprehensive solution ideal for handling both online and in-person payments.

Features

• Point-of-Sale (POS): Accept in-person payments with a mobile card reader or POS dock or on your website.
• Invoicing: Send digital invoices and accept payments online — a lifesaver for any service-based business.
• Inventory management: Do you keep physical goods or have e-commerce retail goods? You can keep track of your inventory in real-time within the app itself.

Tip: Track Your Analytics

Use Square’s analytics features to look at your sales trends and optimize your payment processing with data-driven decisions.

Square has a free plan but does charge processing fees.

6. PayPal

PayPal is the popular choice for businesses that specialize in online payments. It’s great for e-commerce businesses that take international transactions because it allows you to accept payments in multiple currencies.

If your business is primarily online, PayPal may be a smart choice.

Features

• Online payments: You can easily accept payments via your website or online store by allowing customers to pay using their debit or credit cards, bank accounts, or their own PayPal accounts.
• PayPal Zettle: Did you know you can use PayPal for in-person payments? PayPal Zettle (formerly PayPal Here) is a mobile app POS and card reader. It allows in-person customers to pay using their PayPal accounts.
• International payments: Accept payments in multiple currencies and open your business to a global customer base.

Tip: Use OneTouch At Checkout

Use PayPal’s handy OneTouch feature to simplify the checkout process. Your customers can click one button, and money is coming.

PayPal doesn’t have a monthly subscription and just charges processing fees.

Social Media Apps

Social media platforms have become the modern billboards and airwaves for businesses to promote their products and services. It’s better even because you can cast a wide net or target specific customers in your niche.

Social media allows you to connect directly with your audience, build your brand, and even offer real-time customer service. If you still need to incorporate social media into your marketing strategy, now is the time to start.

If you’ve been trying and need help optimizing your efforts, let’s look at a couple of apps.

7. HootSuite

HootSuite is a robust tool designed for serious social media management. It lets you pre-schedule posts, monitor real-time engagement metrics like likes, comments, and shares, and even allows seamless collaboration between your social media and content teams.

If data-driven decision-making and teamwork are crucial to your social media strategy, then HootSuite is the app you’ll want to check out.

Features

• Scheduling: Plan and schedule your posts across multiple popular platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube.
• Analytics: Track your engagement and performance metrics, such as likes, shares, and follower growth, so you can see what’s working and what isn’t.
• Team collaboration: You can set up approval workflows to review posts before they go live.

Tip: Automatically Schedule Posts

Use HootSuite’s AutoSchedule feature to automatically post content at the best times for optimal reach and engagement.

The standard Hootsuite plan is one of the more expensive on our list, starting at $99 a month, but it does come with a 30-day free trial.

8. Buffer

Buffer focuses on delivering a streamlined, user-friendly experience in social media management. Unlike the feature-rich HootSuite, Buffer emphasizes simplicity, making it an ideal choice for freelancers, small business owners, and solopreneurs who need straightforward solutions without the learning curve.

Features

• Content calendar: Visualize your posting schedule in a calendar, and know exactly what’s going out and when.
• Engagement analytics: Measure your likes, shares, and comments and determine whether your posts are striking a chord with your audience.
• Multi-account management: Manage and schedule the content for multiple social media accounts and channels on one dashboard.

Tip: Pause Your Posts

Take advantage of Buffer’s Pause Posts feature when launching new products or entering busy seasons. Pausing posts gives you the flexibility to adjust your social media strategy on the fly, ensuring you’re sending out the most relevant and timely messages.

Buffer’s basic features are free, limiting how many channels you can connect (three) and how many posts you can schedule (10 per channel). Upgrade to Essentials for $6/month to get publishing and analytics tools. You can try any of the paid plans free for 14 days.

Marketing Automation Apps

As a small business owner, managing your marketing can feel overwhelming. Marketing automation apps can dramatically simplify your workflow, turning a long list of tasks into just a few automated steps.

For those exploring marketing automation solutions, Mailchimp and HubSpot are noteworthy contenders. Mailchimp’s user-friendly approach is excellent for those seeking a dedicated and economically efficient marketing automation solution.

In contrast, HubSpot is a versatile platform not limited to advanced marketing automation capabilities but extends to sales, customer service, and operations.

Let’s look at each more closely.

9. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is not just for sending emails. It’s an all-in-one marketing platform offering many features to help you expand your business. Its data-driven marketing approach makes it unique; the platform employs artificial intelligence to help you craft campaigns for your unique audience.

If you want to get your business online and improve your marketing, Mailchimp has the practical tools you need to make it happen.

Features

• Email marketing: Create and send bulk emails to your most engaged customers and let them know when you have a sale or new blog post.
• Landing pages: Create specialized landing pages to attract new leads. You can integrate these pages into your website or share them on social media.
• Customer segmentation: Understand your audience better and segment them based on behavior, consumer preferences, and purchase history.

Tip: Split-test Your Email Campaigns

You can optimize your email campaigns to get better engagement with Mailchimp’s A/B testing feature. Test out different subject lines, sending times, and content to increase your click-through rates.

Mailchimp offers a free plan with limited features. They also provide a 14-day free trial with the Essentials ($13/month) or Standard ($20/month) plans.

10. Hubspot

HubSpot is more than a marketing automation tool: it’s a collection of tools designed to streamline various marketing activities, making it a standout among apps for small business owners wanting to expand their outreach as their business grows.

HubSpot’s Marketing Hub facilitates personalized and timely interactions with your audience through a blend of automation features so you can refine your marketing strategies and achieve improved results.

Features

• Automated workflows: Utilize a visual editor to create targeted workflows, allowing you to craft simple follow-up campaigns and complex customer journeys in real time.
• Advanced segmentation and personalization: Implement sophisticated segmentation to enroll the right contacts in your workflows and individualize emails using data integrated from your CRM.
• Chatbots and tailored email triggers: Leverage chatbots and customized email triggers to connect effectively with your audience and offer timely, relevant communications.
• AI content generation: HubSpot’s new AI content writer offers a streamlined, AI-powered solution for creating various content types, now available for free.

Tip: Enhance Engagement Through Workflows

Optimize engagement by exploiting HubSpot’s automated workflows. Experiment with various segments and personalize follow-up campaigns to ensure effective nurturing of each contact, enhancing your overall marketing strategies.

Hubspot has a free plan to take a tour and test it out. The Starter plan starts at $18/month if you want to open up some more features and expand your limits.

Time Tracking And Employee Management Apps

Time is one of the most valuable resources. Efficiently managing and allocating time can significantly impact productivity, cost management, and, ultimately, the success of your business.

Time-tracking tools provide insights into time spent and highlight enhanced efficiency and resource allocation opportunities. These tools are invaluable whether you aim to optimize your schedule or oversee team members’ productivity. The data from time tracking platforms provides a clear perspective on work dynamics and helps to align efforts with your business objectives.

11. Toggl

Toggl is great if you need straight-forward features with an intuitive interface. It’s ideal for freelancers and small consultancies who need to track their billable time and invoice clients.

Features

• Simple time tracking: Keep track of your time on tasks with a single click. It is a must-have to bill clients accurately.
• Reporting: You can export report details and summaries and view historical billable rates, which can help you find ways to spend your time better and allocate your energy to where it has the most impact.
• Team management: Toggl allows you to monitor your team’s performance if you manage a small team. You can ensure everyone works efficiently and understands what needs to be done.

Tip: Take Breaks In Your Workflow

Toggl has a built-in Pomodoro timer, reminding you to take breaks every 25 minutes of deep work. You can change these settings to accommodate whatever work/break schedule makes sense for you.

You can start with Toggl for free.

12. When I Work

When I Work is a scheduling platform with time tracking and employee management features. It’s a good option if you’re a small business owner who manages a team. The platform also integrates with small business tools like QuickBooks, Square, and Zapier.

Features

• Employee scheduling: Create your employee’s schedules and manage them online. Remove the need for paper schedules and reduce the chance of messy scheduling conflicts.
• Time tracking: Monitor your employee’s billable hours for payroll purposes.
• Communication: Quick, in-app communication between you and your employees helps coordinate your business management so that your business feels like a team.

Tip: Let Employees Manage Their Own Schedules

You can allow your employees to manage their workday with the Swap feature. It takes work off your plate and gives your employees more flexibility, which can help keep them happy.

The Essentials plan starts at just $2.50 per user.

Communication And Workspace Collaboration Apps

Over a third of the US workforce works from home as of 2023, so remote communication is paramount to effective collaboration.

The rise of asynchronous communication is a response to the diverse work schedules and locations, allowing for interaction that doesn’t require immediate response, thereby accommodating various time zones and work hours.

Implementing a robust cloud-based collaboration app fosters effective communication, whether your team is fully remote, in-office, or embraces a hybrid model. It ensures that every member is aligned and informed.

13. Slack

Slack is effectively a super chat room. You can organize different “channels” by project, client, interest, etc. You can also direct message team members either individually or in groups. You can create user tags to ping certain departments or roles and use collaboration tools within the platform, like checklists or video calls.

Features

• Real-time messaging: Slack allows for quick messaging between team members without talking to someone’s desk or waiting for an email reply. It also allows you to set reminders to revisit messages or pin important announcements so they don’t get lost.
• File sharing: Share documents, files, and images directly in the chat. To find all files ever shared in a channel, check its settings. (Note: The free Slack plan periodically clears file shares and message histories).
• Integration: Slack seamlessly integrates with cloud-based tools like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Asana so you can create more unified workflows and processes.

Tip: Organize Channels For Projects And Fun

Create just-for-fun channels for memes, affirmations, and photos of your pets to encourage team bonding. You can also add teambuilding apps like HeyTaco to let team members know they’re appreciated.

The app is free to start or upgrade to the Pro Slack version for $7.25/user per month.

14. Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a more robust collaboration tool and can be an ideal choice for businesses that need a more comprehensive set of features and plan to adopt other Microsoft Office products.

Features

• Video conferencing: Microsoft Teams gives you best-in-class high-quality video calls if you have frequent team meetings.
• Real-time collaboration: Teams automatically syncs with other Office 365 apps so you can edit your Microsoft Word or Excel files in real-time with other project members.
• Slash commands: Use command shortcuts to work faster and more efficiently. You can save messages or let someone know you need help.

Tip: Plan Your Tasks Within Your Team

Microsoft Teams also has neat project management features like their Planner tab. Set your tasks and your deadlines from within the app.

The Microsoft Teams starts at $4/month for the Business plan, but you can also check out the free Home plan.

Use Apps to Bring Out The Best In Your Business

Identifying the right apps for your small business can be a game changer. It won’t magically make everything effortless, but it can significantly free up your time to focus on crucial aspects like customer engagement and team building.

By pinpointing the apps that truly align with your needs, you’re not just acquiring tools but creating opportunities for sustainable growth, enhanced customer relations, and potentially increased revenue.

When it comes to establishing your small business, you need a reliable and affordable hosting solution is crucial. DreamHost offers steadfast support for businesses ready to expand their digital footprint. If you’re searching for a reliable hosting partner, consider signing up for a hosting plan with DreamHost.

The post 14 Practical Small Business Apps You Need To Know appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

What happened?

Hackers gained access to Target through a third-party vendor that lacked a CAPTCHA or any kind of authentication to ensure there was a human — not a malicious bot — entering their system.

From there, it didn’t take long for the bot to infiltrate this third-party vendor’s organization and work its way into the major retailer’s payment network.

What’s the lesson here?

If bad actors want a way into your website, a CAPTCHA can be a powerful first line of defense, and even convince them to move on to an easier target (pun *highly* intended).

Intrigued by this CAPTCHA concept?

Then read on to learn:

• The difference between CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA (and what all those letters mean!)
• The core types of CAPTCHAs in use today
• How CAPTCHAs can help website owners avoid spam and abuse
• A few downsides to consider with CAPTCHAs
• Two ways to add a Google reCAPTCHA to your WordPress site

What is reCAPTCHA?

Get ready folks, because this one’s got layers.

Let’s start with a basic definition: “reCAPTCHA is a service from Google that helps protect websites from spam and abuse.”

reCAPTCHA from Google is a popular, branded version of CAPTCHA. The original idea of CAPTCHA was envisioned at Carnegie Mellon University around 2000. reCAPTCHA was also created by developers at the same university, then purchased by Google around 2009.

Now for the next layer: What do all the letters in “CAPTCHA” actually mean?

The phrase CAPTCHA is short(ish) for “completely automated public Turing Test to tell computers and humans apart.”

And that explanation brings us to a final, logical layer to peel back: What’s a Turing Test?

If you’re like us, your primary exposure to the Turing Test comes from the 2014 movie The Imitation Game, featuring mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing.

Alan Turing developed the Turing Test (which he originally dubbed the imitation game — humble) to answer the question, “Can machines think?”

Today, Turing Tests are primarily used to tell humans and bots apart by testing a bot’s capacity to display the same intelligent behavior a human would. Bots, in this case, refer to automated software programs, often powered by artificial intelligence (AI).

CAPTCHAs help prevent spam and abuse on websites by blocking bots with challenges that are relatively easy for us humans to figure out and accomplish, but often expose bots for the programs they are.

Now that you know enough to definitely write a novel on the background of the CAPTCHA, let’s talk about all the different ways we see this concept appear in everyday life.

Different Types of CAPTCHAs

CAPTCHAs have developed in various directions over the years in an attempt to make the distinction between humans and bots. Today, there are several common types of CAPTCHAs which require different forms of reasoning and input.

Text-Based CAPTCHAs

Text-based CAPTCHAs show characters in odd arrangements, using unusual fonts, and on colorful backgrounds.

These CAPTCHAs require reasoning and translation to sort out what each letter and number is meant to be — an intelligent task that many pre-programmed bots can’t do.

Image-Based CAPTCHAs

With an image-based CAPTCHA, the website user must identify which displayed photos match the provided prompt. By using similar-looking photos that require a level of logic to distinguish, this option can also outsmart bots.

Google’s reCAPTCHA tests use this method quite often — which makes sense considering its vast source of photos from Google Street View.

Audio-Based CAPTCHAs

With audio-based CAPTCHAs, sound is the medium. This method is often paired with others, like text and visual CAPTCHAs.

Audio CAPTCHAs are not only more accessible to people with vision impairment – they are also a powerful bot-blocker as they rely on how tricky it can be to distinguish actual words from background noise.

Checkbox-Based CAPTCHAs

While these CAPTCHAs may seem simple on the surface, they’re actually assessing how website users interact with the checkbox itself.

Bots fill out forms and complete checkboxes instantly, whereas humans navigate through this process more slowly.

This method may be combined with other CAPTCHAs if you want even more assurance that a user isn’t secretly a software program cleverly disguised as a human wearing sweatpants and drinking Starbucks.

Behavior-Based CAPTCHAs

The thing is, software has gotten so smart that a lot of the above CAPTCHAs can be bypassed these days.

That’s why the newest version of reCAPTCHA — Google’s reCAPTCHA v3 — changed the game with a CAPTCHA method that runs in the background.

reCAPTCHA v3 is a mostly invisible reCAPTCHA, which uses a JavaScript API and machine learning-powered, adaptive risk analysis engine to score users based on their behavior as they interact with your web pages.

Behind the scenes, reCAPTCHA v3 gives each user a score that attempts to determine whether they’re human or bot. Of course, in some cases, this monitoring may not be enough to stop the really intelligent bots.

In addition, in an age when the pendulum is swinging back toward privacy on the internet, this method can be controversial as it monitors your on-site activity, with the only warning often being the small reCAPTCHA badge.

What we’ve talked about here are just the most common CAPTCHAs. Other types of programs do things like ask the website user to drag objects to a specific point on the screen, play a “microgame,” and so on. Check out more CAPTCHA examples here.

Use Cases: Where to Apply CAPTCHAs to Prevent Spam

AI-powered automated software has a lot of extraordinary applications, such as helping businesses complete mundane, repetitive tasks to save workers time.

However, hostile actors have certainly found ways to use this technology to attack websites.

Here are some of the best use cases, where applying CAPTCHAs can protect your site from spam and abuse.

Polls and Questionnaires

Businesses use polls and questionnaires for all kinds of reasons.

Externally, they can help you gather feedback and new ideas for products, services, marketing, branding, content, and everything else user-facing.

Internally, polls and questionnaires can help ensure employee happiness and collect insights on new policies and offerings.

You wouldn’t want to skew those results with an overwhelming number of automated, false responses, now would you?

Well, bots certainly might.

User Logins

Bots are often deployed to help hackers access websites through existing accounts that users have already set up.

Typically, they do this via brute force attacks that use software to automatically guess hundreds of passwords in seconds.

Why would they want to access these accounts? Sometimes it’s so they can steal information from accounts and use it to hack into other online properties. Hacking often happens in sequential events.

Other times, it’s so they can use the account to post promotional material or other information they know they’ll get quickly blocked for.

Comment Sections

You’ve probably seen plenty of spam popping up in comment sections across websites and social media.

Bots are used to leave comments en masse to spread advertising, a particular point of view (such as a political one around election time), or links to nefarious sources where hackers are waiting to steal visitor information.

Forms

Just like comment sections, forms that aren’t protected using CAPTCHAs can be overrun with false submissions from bots programmed to try to sell you something, spread a specific narrative, or even phish for sensitive data.

Checkouts

There are several reasons hackers would want to sic their bots on a website’s checkout page.

The first is obvious: buying out tickets or other inventory at a rate humans can’t keep up with. And then, probably, reselling them elsewhere for higher prices. (We’re not bitter about missing out on Taylor Swift tickets at all…)

Secondarily, bots can use unprotected checkout flows to do something called card testing. This is when they run automated scripts in your checkout system to test whether stolen credit card numbers are usable or not.

By requiring CAPTCHAs to be solved before the above actions are completed — your website should be able to identify and shut down most automated abuse carried out by bots.

Potential Downsides of Using CAPTCHAs

While CAPTCHAs clearly have their benefits, there are some downsides to consider when you’re setting up this system on your website:

• CAPTCHAs can make your website less accessible for people with hearing and/or vision impairment, or those who don’t know the language your CAPTCHA features.
• CAPTCHAs may interrupt the user experience, and if they’re too difficult, they may prevent engagement even from human users.
• CAPTCHAs are not completely foolproof, so website owners shouldn’t be lulled into a false sense of security — we still need to remain watchful for signs of spam and attacks.

In addition, there are some elements of Google’s reCAPTCHA in particular that website owners should know about:

• reCAPTCHA v3 can feel invasive to users because it monitors site-wide behavior in order to work, which may cause privacy-minded individuals to avoid using your site.
• Google’s business model is using or selling data for advertising, which can put off website owners (and users) who don’t want their behavior or data monetized.
• reCAPTCHA capitalizes on user labor by harvesting data from user interactions to train Google’s visual identification systems, with which some people may be uncomfortable.
• Google is sometimes blocked in countries such as China, so installing Google technology can severely limit a website’s global reach.

How to Add reCAPTCHA to WordPress via Plugin (6 Steps)

Preface: CAPTCHAs of all varieties can be added to websites of all kinds.

However, since WordPress is one of the most popular website platforms and reCAPTCHA from Google is powerful, free (up to a million assessments), and very popular — integrating these two is what we’re going to focus on today.

Now, let’s get to protecting your site.

Step 1: Register Your Site

First things first, register your WordPress site in Google’s reCAPTCHA admin panel. To complete this step, you must sign into or create a Google account.

During registration, you’ll fill out information like what you want to call your website, which type of reCAPTCHA verification you want to use, etc.

Step 2: Grab Your Keys

With registration submitted, Google will provide both a site key, and a secret key. These are how you’ll get your Google reCAPTCHA to talk to your WordPress website.

Copy them, because we’re going to put them to use soon.

Step 3: Install WordPress Plugin

Now, log into WordPress.

If you don’t already have a reCAPTCHA plugin installed, head to Dashboard > Plugins > Add New and search for “reCAPTCHA.” reCaptcha by BestWebSoft, CAPTCHA 4WP, and Contact Form 7 are all popular options.

Once installed, most of these plugins will walk you through connecting your website to your Google reCAPTCHA. We’ll carry on the rest of this tutorial using Contact Form 7 as an example of how approachable it can be.

Step 4: Turn on reCAPTCHA

With Contact Form 7 installed, head to Contact > Integration in WordPress. Locate the reCAPTCHA integration box and begin the setup process.

You will be asked to paste in the site and secret keys you just got from Google. Once those are added and changes saved, reCAPTCHA will be up and running on your site.

For a walkthrough of setting up Contact Form 7, check out our Knowledge Base article on Troubleshooting WordPress contact forms.

Step 5: Add reCAPTCHA to a Form

Now that your reCAPTCHA functionality is turned on, you’ll need to add it to any forms you want to protect from bot submissions.

To do so, go to Contact > Dashboard in WordPress and add a new form.

Here, you’re going to lightly edit the code of the form template to inject a reCAPTCHA.

Add “[recaptcha]” right before the “[submit “Submit”]” line. Once you save, you should see a shortcode appear under the form title.

Step 6: Publish Your reCAPTCHA Form to Your Website

Copy that shortcode you just created.

Now, go forth and paste that code into posts, pages, or text widgets to install a new form complete with a reCAPTCHA!

How to Add reCAPTCHA to WordPress Manually (4 Steps)

As an alternative to the plugin route, you can add a reCAPTCHA manually to any form on your website.

This will take a bit of code tinkering. If you’re squeamish with things like head tags and JavaScript snippets, then you may feel most comfortable sticking with an out-of-the-box option.

But if you’re ready to roll up your sleeves, getting things set up is pretty easy on a scale from super easy (launching a new website with DreamHost) to super difficult (solving the three-body problem).

Let’s get into it.

Step 1: Register Your Site and Grab Your Keys

Just like with the plugin route, you’ll need to start by signing up for reCAPTCHA from the Google website.

You can do that in two quick steps:

1. Register your WordPress site in Google’s reCAPTCHA admin panel and select the reCAPTCHA type.
2. Copy both your site key and secret key for future use.

Now, let’s get back to the website at hand. There are three core pieces that make reCAPTCHA work:

• The JavaScript library (reCAPTCHA API)
• The HTML form element
• The response verification code

We’ll kick things off with the reCAPTCHA JavaScript library.

Step 2: Add the reCAPTCHA JavaScript Library

To get started, we need to add the JavaScript library to your website. This is a small snippet of code that needs to be added to every page that will use reCAPTCHA:

“<script src="https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api.js" async defer></script>”

The easiest way to make sure this is accessible on all of the necessary pages is to add it to your universal header before the closing “</head>” tag.

You can do this one of two ways:

1. Manually, by accessing the header.php directly within the WordPress admin, or the file manager inside your hosting dashboard
2. By using a plugin to add the code to your header

Adding the Code Manually

If you choose the first route, you’ll need to use either the theme file editor inside WordPress or your file manager to access the header.php directly.

Important Note: Editing your theme files directly could break your website, and your changes could be overwritten whenever you update your theme. If you’re not experienced with editing the theme files directly, skip ahead to “Using a Plugin to Add the Code” for a less risky solution.

Your file manager will look different depending on your host, but if you’re using DreamHost, navigate to WordPress > Managed WordPress in the sidebar. Find the domain to which you want to add a reCAPTCHA and select Manage.

Then, click on the Manage Files button in the Details section.

Open the folder that has your domain name on it. From there, you’ll navigate to wp-content > themes and find the folder for your current WordPress theme.

Find the file called header.php, open it up, and find the closing <code>“&lt;/head&gt;”</code> tag within the code.

Copy and paste the reCAPTCHA JavaScript snippet right before that line.

Using a Plugin to Add the Code

If the above seems like too much, don’t worry. We’ve got you covered.

Instead, you can install a WordPress plugin that will automatically add code directly to your header with no hacking required.

Using a plugin like WPCode, you can easily add relevant code snippets to key parts of your WordPress theme.

From your WordPress admin panel, go to Plugins > Add New and search for WPCode.

Click Install, then Activate.

Once WPCode is activated, you should see a new section in your left-side menu called Code Snippets.

Go to Code Snippets > Header & Footer.

Inside the Header & Footer page, paste the JavaScript code into the Header section and save your changes.

Boom — code added!

Step 3: Add reCAPTCHA to Your Form

Now, we’re going to adjust the code on the actual form where you want to see your reCAPTCHA.

Again, you can use a file manager, the WordPress editor, or even FTP.  It should live inside the wp-content folder, which houses all your plugins, themes, and media.

In the form code, paste the following code before the submit line to add the reCAPTCHA:

“<div class="g-recaptcha" data-sitekey="your_site_key"></div>”

Here’s an example of how it might look:

Replace “your_site_key” with the site key you received from Google.

Step 4: Handle the Response

Perhaps the trickiest part of the process is adding code to handle the response from reCAPTCHA. This basically tells your site whether to process the form or block it.

To configure this, you’ll need to add another snippet of code to the form (the callback function):

$secretKey = "your_secret_key";
$response = $_POST['g-recaptcha-response'];
$remoteIp = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];

$url = "https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api/siteverify?secret=".$secretKey."&response=".$response."&remoteip=".$remoteIp;
$response = file_get_contents($url);
$responseKeys = json_decode($response,true);

if(intval($responseKeys["success"]) !== 1) {
    // Handle reCAPTCHA validation failure
} else {
    // Process form submission
}”

In this code, you’d need to replace “your_secret_key” with the secret key provided by Google.

This is just one example of an implementation that would allow you to customize how the submission is handled. There are many other methods for handling the server-side validation and callback functions.

For more info on how to handle this part of the process, refer to the official documentation from Google.

Goodbye Spam, Hello Security

While we must reiterate that reCAPTCHA and CAPTCHAs are not the be-all and end-all when it comes to website security, they’re a crucial step in helping you fend off automated bots and hackers with ill intent.

For more tips on securing your WordPress website and beyond, stay tuned to the DreamHost blog. We’re always posting resources to help you keep your website safe, fast, and online so you can impress site visitors and search engines alike.

You Dream It, We Code It

Tap into 20+ years of coding expertise when you opt for our Web Development service. Just let us know what you want for your site — we take it from there.

Learn More

The post Say Goodbye to Spam! A Complete Guide to reCAPTCHA appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

A great website should help you elevate your business to the next level. You can use it to increase sales, build brand awareness, market to your core audience, and position yourself as an expert. If you know what you’re doing, you can achieve all of that with a single website!

In this article, we’ll go over 12 ways to help your business website convert more visitors. We’ll show you examples of these methods in action and discuss why they’re effective. Let’s get to it!

1. Make Your Website Responsive

We say a website is ‘responsive’ when it works well on mobile devices. This means the website displays in a way that is easy to navigate on smaller screens, and none of its core elements are difficult to interact with.

Designing responsive websites is essential because most of your visitors are probably using mobile devices the majority of the time. We like to think that people will see our gorgeous web designs on big monitors, but the fact is, a lot of people use their mobile devices more than desktops.

Therefore, if your website isn’t responsive, you risk alienating a significant portion of your audience. Luckily, making a website responsive doesn’t require a lot of technical know-how. If you use software such as WordPress, you have access to themes that are responsive out of the box.

Here’s an example of a WordPress website using one of the Content Management System’s (CMS) latest official themes, Twenty-Twenty Three. This theme is mobile-friendly by default, so there’s no excuse for why your site shouldn’t look perfect on most mobile devices:

When looking for a WordPress theme, check out its demo or previews to see how it looks on a mobile device. If your current website doesn’t look that good on mobile, consider changing themes to one that is more responsive.

2. Consider Readability

One aspect of website design that often gets overlooked is readability. That is to say, how easy it is to read your site’s text. Most websites rely primarily on text to convey information, so readability is essential.

For example, if you make your fonts too small, they might be impossible to read on a mobile device unless you zoom in. Here’s a quick example of how your website’s text should look on mobile:

The same applies to larger screens. Make the text too small, and users will have a hard time deciphering it. On the other hand, make the font too big or use funky fonts, and the text will distract too much from the other elements on your website.

There’s no hard-and-fast rule for which text sizes to use on a website. It depends on your design, but we recommend experimenting by asking other people if they have a hard time reading the text on your site.

On top of font sizes, you’ll also need to consider colors. Sticking with black is fine in most cases, but depending on the background color, you might need to switch to other text colors from time to time. In these cases, we recommend picking contrasting colors for the text to stand out. This approach is common among Calls to Action (CTAs) because it helps them pop:

Keeping an eye on both of these factors will ensure that visitors don’t have a hard time finding and reading offers on your website, and ultimately, that means you’ll be able to secure more conversions.

3. Improve Your Website’s Navigation

Your website’s content might be amazing, but it can only be as effective as its navigation. If visitors have a hard time finding the content, offers, or products they want on a website, they’re not going to have a good time.

A site’s navigation comes down to two factors. The first is menus, and the second is internal links. Most sites have one main navigation menu at the top of every page and perhaps sidebars or footers containing links to less important pages:

In short, a site’s navigation menu should be simple and include links to the most important pages for you and your users. Less important links can go elsewhere, such as in the content itself.

Every page and post offers multiple opportunities to use content to link to other pages on your site. For example, this post you’re reading now contains several links to related articles from our library. Each of these links will help you learn more about a specific topic within the broader subject.

That simple tactic can help you increase visitors’ time on your site, and the more time they spend on-site, the higher the chances they’ll convert.

4. Put Contact Information Front and Center

Any business website needs to make it easy for visitors to find contact information, such as phone numbers, email addresses, opening hours, etc. If your site makes this information difficult to find, it’ll frustrate visitors to no end:

This applies even if all that information is available on local business listings such as Google Business Profile or on social media. If your website’s primary goal is to get you more conversions, you’ll want to include as much information as possible to help visitors decide whether to visit your business.

If your business doesn’t have a physical storefront, you’ll still want to make sure to include, at the very least, a contact email and links to your social media profiles:

The more contact channels you include, the higher the chances that a visitor will decide to reach out, especially if they have a question. Once a user makes that first contact, it becomes much easier to get a conversion.

5. Set Up an Online Contact Form

Aside from publishing contact information on your site, you can go a step further and set up a basic contact form. This form enables users to email you without needing to log into an email client or copy and paste an email address.

Not only are contact forms easy to use, they’re also incredibly customizable. If there’s any information you want to collect from users, such as how they found out about your site, you can add custom fields to a contact form:

There are a lot of tools you can use to set up contact forms. If you use WordPress, you have access to form add-ons that extend the CMS. These will enable you to design any type of form you want, including options with custom fields. Here’s a quick example of a stylish contact form to show you these elements don’t need to look boring:

Contact forms can have their own pages depending on what their primary purpose is — If you want to collect leads for your business, you can include forms at the end of key landing pages. For more general queries, we recommend setting up a Contact Us page.

6. Showcase Positive Reviews

Most modern customers are used to looking for reviews online before committing to a product or a service. A recent study shows that over 99% of users look at some form of review when shopping online, which is a staggering statistic. Even for offline purchases, over 57% of potential customers look at online reviews beforehand!

The fact is, if you’re not asking customers for reviews and showcasing them, you’re missing out on a significant number of sales. A lot of users might see a lack of reviews as an indicator that your business is new or that it’s untrustworthy.

Naturally, no business gets only perfect reviews, but what you can and should be doing is highlighting the best customer reviews on your website. Those that show your products and services in the best light and provide additional information that new customers might be interested in:

As for placement, if your website has product or service pages, they should include individual reviews. We also recommend showcasing standout reviews on your site’s main page to help establish trust with new visitors.

7. Keep Your Website Updated

This tip is pretty straightforward. Visitors don’t like outdated websites, so you should update yours constantly. It’s that simple.

The term ‘outdated’ can have a lot of meanings. For example, if you visit a website and it looks like it was designed in the early 2000s, it can scare a lot of users away, even if the design is a deliberate choice.

Likewise, if a visitor opens your blog and sees that you haven’t published any new blog posts in the past few months, they might assume the website has been abandoned. A business with an abandoned website doesn’t seem trustworthy, so those visitors might look at your competitors instead.

Moreover, as time passes, the information on your site might become inaccurate. To avoid these issues, we recommend going through your site periodically to see if any of its elements or pages need a refresh. While at it, make sure to publish new content often, so users will know the website remains active.

8. Publish Industry-Related Blog Posts

Building trust with your visitors is critical to converting them into customers. One of the best ways to use a website to build trust is by publishing content that can help those users. Our favorite medium for that kind of content is blogging (which should be evident).

By blogging, we mean publishing in-depth content that answers questions that you might have. The idea is that by empowering your users with knowledge and sharing your expertise, you’ll show them they can trust you enough to do business and buy your products or services.

To be fair, not every business niche is a good fit for blogging, and you might not have the time to do it consistently. But consider that blogging can also help you when it comes to getting more traffic in the first place.

Writing blog posts that target popular searches for your business niche means you might appear in the search results for those queries. The more searches your content appears in, the more visitors your site can get and the more chances you have of getting conversions.

9. Don’t Use SEO Shortcuts

Talking about how blog content can help you rank on search engines brings us to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is the collection of practices that website owners use to help their content appear in search engines for targeted queries in the best possible rankings.

The fact is, SEO is hard. Best practices change constantly with search algorithm updates, and what worked a few years ago can get your website buried in the rankings now. In other words, there’s no magic formula when it comes to SEO.

If you try to game the system using ‘black-hat’ SEO techniques such as keyword ‘stuffing,’ buying backlinks, abusing structured data, etc – chances are your website will be penalized for it. You might get a short-term boost in rankings, but you’ll pay for it in the long run.

The only SEO strategy that works for most websites is to learn the fundamentals and practice them over a long period of time. If you publish content that answers users’ questions, is well-structured, and targets popular searches, you will get organic traffic. It might take a while to get as much traffic as you’d like, but that’s normal in today’s internet landscape.

10. Set Up an Email List for Your Customers

If you’re not taking advantage of email lists, you’re missing out on one of the most powerful marketing channels at your disposal. When someone signs up for an email list, they’re basically saying “You’re free to send me marketing emails when you choose to”.

With emails, you don’t need to print flyers or physically mail them. Instead, you just design a campaign and send it. Email marketing platforms even enable you to create emails and schedule them ahead of time, as well as monitor their performance metrics.

All you need to get started is to sign up for an email marketing platform and add a signup form to your website. Signup forms can come in many shapes and sizes, including chat bubbles:

The same goes for email signup forms. They can be simple, as in the example above, or they can offer incentives to increase the number of signups. One common tactic businesses use is to offer some type of freebie, such as access to exclusive discounts or even e-books:

An email list also enables you to collect a list of your ‘core’ audience. These users are much more likely to return to the website and make future purchases as long as they keep opening your emails. The larger your email list, the more people you might convert every time you send a new email.

11. Promote Your Website on Social Media

Social media can be just as important for your business as having a website. Having a social media presence means you engage with followers, post new content often, and send followers to your website.

This way, your audience is constantly reminded that you, well, exist. On top of that, cultivating a consistent online presence can help keep your customers up-to-date on everything from events to promotions.

Take restaurants – any restaurant worth its salt will have a website including information about the venue, photos, and maybe even an online menu. However, most users will probably look up the restaurant’s social media accounts first.

In most cases, social media accounts and websites feed off each other. Some users prefer checking a website for offers or news, whereas others like getting updates from social media.

If your business doesn’t have a strong online presence, we recommend focusing on one or two social media platforms at the most to begin with. Consider who your buyer personas are and what social channels they’re most likely to use. Those are the ones you should be focusing on.

12. Optimize Your Website’s Performance

If there’s one thing that users don’t like, it’s a slow-loading website. When your website takes several seconds to load, it’s going to scare a lot of visitors away. That’s hard-earned traffic from SEO, social media, and email marketing that you’re losing because of a lack of technical optimizations.

There are a lot of factors that can slow down a website. For instance, you might be using a poor hosting service or getting too much traffic for your current server’s capacity. Additionally, having too many unoptimized images (or other media files) can significantly impact your site’s speed.

Optimizing a website’s performance means reducing loading times as much as possible. Ideally, most pages should load in under two seconds. For most users, that’s almost instantaneous, which is exactly what they want.

Achieving those speeds isn’t out of the question, especially if you know how to optimize a website and you use a great web hosting service!

Convert More Website Visitors Today

The goal of most websites is to get conversions. For a business website, conversions can be sales, customer signups, getting new leads, etc. And having a website enables you to do all that, but only if it’s optimized. That means creating the best possible user experience and incentivizing visitors to convert.

Many conversions come down to trust while providing offers that give customers real value. If you have a strong brand, but your offers aren’t enticing, you’ll struggle to get conversions and vice versa. Still, you can bolster a strong product with a robust website. You’ll want to try out a few (or all) of the strategies we outlined above, such as improving your site’s navigation, prioritizing SEO, leveraging forms, and more.

If you’re working on a new website and you don’t have the time or experience to take on the task alone, don’t worry. At DreamHost, we offer custom web design services to help you build a website that meets your business needs! This way, you can rest assured knowing that your website will maximize possible conversions at all times.

Let Us Help You Convert More Website Visitors

Our designers will create a gorgeous website from scratch to perfectly match your brand.

Learn More

The post Small Business Owner’s Guide to Converting More Website Visitors (15 Steps to Success) appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

Fortunately, you can improve User Experience (UX) by implementing caching on your website. This involves saving a copy of your site’s files so visitors don’t have to wait for this data to be sent from the web server to their browser. Caching your site can effectively improve loading times and avoid overworking your server.

In this post, we’ll talk about caching and how it can benefit your website. Then, we’ll show you how to implement caching in WordPress using two different methods. Let’s get started!

An Introduction to Caching

When someone visits your website for the first time, their browser requests your origin server to send over the site’s data. This usually only takes a few seconds, but there are a few factors that can slow down this process.

Most web servers require a physical server location, so geography matters. If the user is very far away from your server, they’ll likely face slow page speeds. Your site may also load slower if your content contains lots of images or large files.

This is where caching comes into play. Caching reduces content delivery time by saving a copy of your website upon an initial visit. That means when a user visits your site a second time, the saved cache is ready and waiting. This can prevent the browser from using its resources to load the entire site files again.

Types of Caches

There are many different types of caches, but these are two of the most common choices:

• Client-side caching. This happens when a web browser stores a copy of a website’s data onto a user’s hard drive. A browser cache can avoid downloading the same data every time, which can strain the server.
• Server-side caching: Instead of storing site files on a user’s hard drive, this web cache saves data on the server. This commonly involves using a Content Delivery Network (CDN).

Less common but also a good option, is object caching. This technique saves database queries to limit the number of requests sent to a database. Additionally, opcode caching saves a compiled PHP code to a server’s memory.

The Benefits of Website Caching

Regardless of the type you use, caching can lead to better page loading speed and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Plus, this can improve your visitors’ experience when they return to your site a second time.

Moreover, one of the main benefits of caching is that it can improve site performance. That’s because when you enable caching, your content can load much faster. By saving files locally, browsers can easily access your website without having to request your site files over and over.

Furthermore, studies show that if your content takes more than three seconds to load, 40% of users will abandon your site. Therefore, when you implement caching, you can easily decrease your bounce rates. By doing this, you can create a less frustrating experience for your visitors.

Additionally, caching your site’s files can help improve SEO. That’s because when Google evaluates your site, it considers page speed as a search ranking factor. This means that caching can be just as important as other SEO techniques such as targeting keywords..

Although caching can speed up your website on follow-up visits, your browser will continue to process initial HTTP requests. Along with caching, you should consider other reasons for slow page speed and try to optimize your content for performance..

If you’re not sure how fast your website is, you can easily test its speed. Using a tool such as Pingdom, you can search for your URL to analyze your loading time:

Keep in mind that you shouldn’t be discouraged by any negative results. You can quickly and easily fix this problem by upgrading your hosting plan, optimizing CSS files, and implementing caching.

How to Implement Caching in WordPress (2 Methods)

Once you decide that caching is a good option for your website, it’s time to implement it. Although you can manually enable caching with HTTP headers, there are some simpler alternatives. Let’s discuss two easy methods to cache your WordPress site!

1. Use Your Host’s Caching Service

Before you install a caching plugin, it’s a good idea to see if your hosting provider already has a caching service. Most web hosts have a preferred method that may already be set up on your website.

Here at DreamHost, our managed WordPress hosting plans come with built-in caching. Using this option, you won’t have to worry about installing a plugin and learning its configuration:

When you sign up for a DreamPress plan, you’ll receive a built-in server cache. In your WordPress dashboard, you’ll also see that the Proxy Cache Purge plugin comes preinstalled:

This caching plugin is a tool that you can use to manage your cache. If you open the Check Caching page, you can enter the URL of your website or a specific page:

Then, click on Check URL to view a report of any caching issues. You’ll also be able to view information about your active cookies, as well as any theme conflicts:

If your website receives lots of international visitors, you may also want to use a Content Delivery Network (CDN). This is a globally-distributed group of servers that cache your website’s content, which speeds up loading times even when users are distanced from your server.

Some web hosts provide a CDN with their plans. For example, our advanced managed hosting options come with an unlimited CDN provided by Cloudflare. If you want to implement this caching service on your website, you can take a look at our DreamPress Plus and Pro plans.

2. Install a Caching Plugin

If your web host doesn’t provide a built-in caching service, you can install a caching plugin. This is likely necessary if you self-host your website or have a shared hosting plan. Most caching plugins provide customizable settings, which are simple for beginners to configure.

However, with so many options available, you might not know how to pick the right plugin. When reviewing any tool, be sure to keep these factors in mind:

• Features: It’s important to evaluate each plugin’s description to see how it works and if it would be an effective option for your site’s data.
• Reviews and ratings: Often, high user ratings can tell you if other website owners have found success using a certain plugin or if they’ve frequently had issues with it.
• Updates: To prevent incompatibilities, it’s a good idea to only install plugins that have been updated in the past six months.
• Support: When you experience a problem, you’ll want to receive fast, informative help from the plugin’s developers.
• Price: Many caching plugins are free, but the premium versions can offer extended features and support.

Once you pick the right option for your website, consider using it on a staging site to test its functionality and performance.

Top 3 Caching Plugins

Now that you know what to look for, let’s go over our top picks for caching plugins!

1. WP Super Cache

Since it was developed by Automattic, WP Super Cache is one of the most popular WordPress caching plugins. It works by generating static HTML files instead of heavy PHP scripts. This allows 99% of your visitors to experience a faster loading speed after this caching process.

One of the main benefits of WP Super Cache is its three different caching modes. Whether you are a beginner or an expert, you can select a caching option to meet your needs. For example, beginners can avoid editing PHP files by setting the plugin to the ‘Simple’ mode.

Features:

• 3 caching modes (Simple, Expert, and WP-Cache caching)
• Enable cache timeouts or schedule garbage collection
• Integration with OSSDL CDN off-linker
• REST API endpoints

Price: WP Super Cache is a free WordPress plugin.

2. WP Rocket

If you need a powerful caching plugin without an extensive configuration process, consider installing WP Rocket. This plugin automatically applies 80% of best practices when it comes to web performance. With only a few clicks, you can start optimizing your WordPress website for speed.

Although WP Rocket doesn’t offer a free version, its cutting-edge speed technology is worth considering. With just its basic features, WP Rocket enables page caching, browser caching, and GZIP compression. Plus, you can also use this plugin to delay JavaScript execution, remove excess CSS, and edit the display options for images and iframes.

Features:

• Page and browser caching
• GZIP compression
• Compatible with popular themes and plugins
• Ecommerce optimization

Price: WP Rocket subscription plans start at $49 per year. This includes plugin updates and support for one website.

3: LiteSpeed Cache

Unlike the other plugins on this list, LiteSpeed Cache creates a server-level cache. It works alongside your server, pointing out cacheable web pages. This plugin is best used with a LiteSpeed Web Server, but its QUIC.cloud CDN service enables you to use LiteSpeed cache with any server.

With the LiteSpeed Cache plugin, you can store a copy of your website content to reduce your number of server requests. This tool includes automatic page caching, with separate web caching for both mobile and desktop views. Using this tool’s simple interface, even beginners can customize their image and page optimization.

Features:

• Minifies CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
• Optimizes images
• Supports WordPress Multisite
• Compatible with WooCommerce, bbPress, and Yoast SEO

Price: LiteSpeed Cache is a free plugin. However, you’ll need to have a LiteSpeed Web Server or QUIC.cloud CDN service to access this server-level cache.

Keep Website Visitors Happy with Faster Load Times

Ultimately, caching your WordPress website is one of the best options for speeding up your content. After you implement a browser or server-level cache, returning visitors can access your website using its cached data. This avoids the need to completely reload heavy files a second time.

To get started with caching, you can easily install a caching plugin such as WP Super Cache. Due to its customizable caching modes, you can choose an option that aligns with your experience level. Plus, it’s absolutely free.

As an easier alternative, you can use the caching service from your hosting provider. Here at DreamHost, our managed WordPress hosting solutions optimize your website’s speed with a built-in cache. Check out our hassle-free DreamPress plans today!

Do More with DreamPress

DreamPress' automatic updates, caching, and strong security defenses take server management off your hands so you can focus on content creation.

Check Out Plans

The post A Comprehensive Guide to Website Caching appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.

Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be a challenge. There are dozens of high-quality themes that are ideal for various affiliate marketing niches. By understanding a few of the stand-out options that are available, you can find your perfect fit.

Start Building Your Affiliate Marketing Website Today

This article will walk you through 17 of the leading affiliate marketing themes for 2022. So let’s dive right in!

1. Zeen

We’ll start with a remarkably flexible theme. Zeen can help you create anything from a magazine to an online store – all with highly-customizable features.

Here are just a few options you’ll gain access to:

• Advanced design features to improve the User Experience (UX)
• Built-in product swatches for colors, images, and buttons
• Support for Google voice search

If you’re selling affiliate products, you might be particularly interested in this theme’s various sales features. For example, you can add a prominent ‘add to cart’ function wherever you like. By linking this button to your affiliate partners’ sites, you can provide users with an easy way to purchase products.

Pricing: Zeen costs $39 and comes with six months of support. If you’d like to extend that to 12 months, it will cost an extra $10.13.

2. Astra

Astra is a very popular WordPress theme. With super-light code and countless layout settings, it’s a powerhouse when it comes to fast loading times. However, that’s not all.

Its other powerful features include:

• A huge library of pre-built websites to choose from
• Design flexibility thanks to its compatibility with page builders
• Optimized speeds for all device types

If you’re looking to reduce your site’s bounce rates, Astra might be the best option for you. Faster load times mean you can appeal to even your most impatient visitors. However, you might also choose this theme if you want maximum design freedom.

Pricing: The basic version of Astra is free. However, if you want full functionality, paid options begin at $49. You can also choose from two higher-tier plans with premium features: the Essential Bundle ($169) or the Growth Bundle ($249).

3. Divi

Divi is another incredibly flexible option. This theme enables you to control almost every aspect of your site.

You’re free to choose from a huge variety of design options, such as:

• Subtle shadow features that you can use to highlight certain products
• Dynamic animations to catch your visitors’ attention
• Optional advanced code editing within the engine

Additionally, Divi also has a companion program: the Divi Builder. This page builder is optimized to work with the theme for a smoother website creation experience. If you’re looking for an all-in-one solution for seamless site design, we suggest that you consider Divi.

Pricing: Divi pricing begins at $67 per year. This includes the Divi Builder. If you’d prefer only to pay once, you can also get the same features for a lifetime license fee of $187.

4. Neve

Today’s users can access your website from various devices – and mobile is at the top of that list. So Neve prioritizes modern, mobile-friendly designs to help you reach the maximum number of shoppers.

You might also appreciate a few other stand-out features like:

• Drag-and-drop customization for headers and footers
• Lightweight code for excellent loading times
• Global color palette options for centralized redesigns

We recommend Neve if you have a robust social media following. Visitors usually access these platforms from mobile devices. As such, your promotional links should lead them to a well-optimized mobile version of your website.

Pricing: Neve licenses start at $59 per year. However, the Business plan might be better if you’re making many affiliate sales. This plan starts at $149 per year.

5. Zox News

Zox News is a multi-purpose theme. You don’t have to run a news-based website to use it – as long as you’re looking for a dynamic, effective way to advertise your content, this theme is a smart choice.

Other benefits included in this theme are:

• A free Reviewer Plugin to display reviews and comparison tables alongside your content
• Featured areas to promote specific formats such as videos
• Sticky sidebars to improve site navigation

Zox News also provides you with the choice of eight different article layouts. That’s why we recommend it if you want to provide more dynamic content. Users may feel that too many similarly-structured articles become repetitive. This theme’s built-in variety can help you easily add more diverse formatting.

Pricing: You can purchase Zox News for $55. You’ll also receive six months of support at this price point. To extend that to a full year, you can pay an extra $16.13.

6. Silk

If you’re building a fashion-forward blog meant to show off the latest trends, you might want to consider Silk. However, this theme isn’t just for fashion – as long as you’re seeking a way to showcase your work, Silk can be an excellent fit.

Other stand-out features you may like include:

• A mega-menu option for ease of navigation
• Integrated social tools to make sharing your affiliate offers easy
• A huge selection of top-tier typography tools

If your affiliate sales strategy relies on a more visual approach, this theme can be a smart choice. That’s because Silk is an especially media-friendly theme. Thus, it’s an easy way to share high-quality product photos or videos with your audience.

Pricing: Silk’s pricing starts at €70 per year (about $79). This includes one year of support and updates. If you prefer a one-time fee, you can opt for the lifetime edition.

7. Affiliates Bloglet

If you run a website focused on written content, we recommend that you consider using the Affiliates Bloglet theme. That’s because it offers a clean interface and responsive design.

As such, your visitors can enjoy a minimalist experience no matter where they visit from, in addition to other features like:

• Uncluttered code for better Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Full-width design by default for easy landing page creation
• High-quality font choices

Without busy elements, your blog can take center stage. However, minimalist doesn’t have to mean empty. You can also use the white space around your content. That’s why we recommend Affiliates Bloglet if you’re running ads alongside your affiliate products – there’s plenty of space for them.

Pricing: Affiliates Bloglet is a child theme of Blogrid and thus follows its pricing plans. The premium options start at $29. In addition to Affiliates Bloglet, you’ll also gain access to three other child themes.

8. CouponXL

Many affiliate sites offer deals and coupons as a part of their offers. If this sounds like your strategy, the CouponXL theme might be your perfect fit.

Whether you’re just starting out or an established figure in the affiliate marketing game, this theme can help you with features like:

• Robust integration of payment portals
• MailChimp support to increase your mailing list signups
• A responsive tech support team

Consider choosing the CouponXL theme if you want to use cloaked links. This feature helps you hide potentially spammy-looking URLs. That means you can build user trust while still earning affiliate commissions.

Pricing: You can purchase CouponXL for $39. To upgrade the six months of support to 12, you can pay an additional $10.13.

9. Tokoo

When it comes to promoting affiliate links, images can be extremely influential. That’s because they’re an easy way to demonstrate what you’re selling. If you want to take advantage of this strategy, consider using Tokoo.

Other impressive features of this theme include:

• Responsive menu options for easy navigation
• Predefined design palettes for a quick start
• Minimum white space for a sales-focused approach

If you want to mimic the layout of top-tier ecommerce sites, you might want to choose Tokoo. It can help you apply the same attention-grabbing format to your affiliate products. The variety of image formats on offer will also help with this.

Pricing: Tokoo is available for $59. If you’re not ready to commit, you can also use the free trial offer to take it for a spin.

10. Mai Creative Pro

A stunning website can go a long way towards increasing sales. The more you can emphasize your professional skills, the more you can build up your users’ trust. That’s where Mai Creative Pro comes in.

It combines an aesthetically-pleasing design with clean, functional options such as:

• Highly customizable widget areas
• Full control over the appearance of your header to match your affiliate branding strategy
• Custom page templates to help you build a beautiful site quickly

Mai Creative Pro might be the best choice if you’re a beginner. It may be customizable, but it’s also impressively user-friendly. When combined with the wealth of detailed tutorials, it’s a top choice for your first theme.

Pricing: You can purchase Mai Creative Pro for $99. You can also check out its full demo if you’re still on the fence.

11. Herald

Herald was designed to act as an online newspaper. However, that doesn’t mean you’ll be choosing a limited option. With plenty of ways to prioritize content, you can show off your favorite articles and best affiliate links.

You might also appreciate the following features:

• Nearly 500 variations on your listing layouts
• Unlimited sidebar and color combinations
• Built-in social sharing features

If you’re using affiliate marketing as one of many monetization strategies, you might want to consider Herald. This theme makes it easy to add banner ads to your home page, archives, or even single posts – all without having to know a single line of code.

Pricing: Herald’s price comes in at $69. To upgrade from six to 12 months of support, you can pay an additional $21.38.

12. SteadyIncome

Affiliate marketing can be one of the most effective ways to turn a profit. Getting users to spend time on your site is the crucial first step of this process.

If you’re looking to make a positive impression right away, SteadyIncome can help with features like:

• Partner logo sliders to disclose who you’re working with
• Compatibility with WP Subscribe Pro to help increase the size of your audience
• A featured products section to advertise your biggest earners

We recommend choosing SteadyIncome if you’re prioritizing new customers over repeat ones. The bold, professional design can help establish trust quickly. This, in turn, can help you make sales more efficiently.

Pricing: SteadyIncome costs $39. This will also get you a year of updates and support for unlimited sites. If you change your mind, you can also benefit from the 30-day money-back guarantee.

13. Consulting Multipurpose Classic Elementor

With plenty of modern content areas, Consulting Multipurpose Classic Elementor is a simple way to showcase professional advice. However, that’s not all it can do. You can also use this theme’s organized format for advertising anything from your brand to the products you’re promoting.

Plus, you’ll get access to other features such as:

• The option to sort affiliate partners into discrete categories
• Attractive icons and blurbs for your products
• Built-in tab formatting to help you highlight particular offers

You might want to consider Consulting Multipurpose if you plan to appeal to a more local audience. Features such as integrated Google Maps can help you emphasize a visual location. However, a more global approach is also possible thanks to an included multilingual plugin.

Pricing: For full functionality on a single site, Consulting Multipurpose will cost $75. There are a variety of premium add-ons as well, such as customization services and an extended support period.

14. Sensational

No matter how well-run your website is, marketing your content is key to boosting affiliate sales. As such, finding ways to show off as much of your work as possible can be essential.

Sensational can be the perfect tool for this challenge, with features like:

• Plenty of room for content balanced out by lots of white space
• Subtle professional touches, such as hovering effects and transition slides
• Unlimited color schemes and backgrounds for countless customization options

You might particularly enjoy Sensational if you prefer a column-based approach. Sensational makes the most of this simple format with four different styles to choose from. That means you can spend less time tweaking designs and more time sharing your links.

Pricing: Sensational is currently available for free. It typically goes for $77, so now might be a smart time to give this theme a try.

15. Marketing Pro

A marketing funnel can be an essential tool for affiliate marketers. You start by offering surface-level information to new users and move them towards more detailed content as they get closer to purchasing. Marketing Pro can support this use with its cohesive design flow.

Other contributing features include:

• A commanding banner at the top that leads into more sales-oriented formatting below
• Nine pre-made templates to make redesigning your site easy
• $72 worth of premium plugins

We recommend Marketing Pro if your affiliate offerings are face-to-face services. For example, you might be promoting a life coaching program. This theme focuses on the buyer’s journey to secure conversions for long-term service plans.

Pricing: You can purchase Marketing Pro for $59. The theme offers an impressive amount of documentation, but to extend direct support to a full year, you can pay an extra $17.63.

16. Netube

Netube is a theme designed for building a video magazine. That means it enables you to showcase several videos at once. The large image spaces mean you can display accurate examples of your work without compromising on quality.

You might also appreciate this theme’s other features, such as:

• The option to organize content by criteria, such as highest rated or most views
• Easy opportunities to allow user-generated video uploads
• A subtle, dark design that allows your videos to stand out

We’ve covered a lot of themes that accommodate written content. Netube stands out as one that prioritizes media instead. If you work with a lot of videos, we highly recommend checking Netube out.

Pricing: Netube is available for $59. This will also give you access to any future updates, so you don’t have to worry about your theme becoming obsolete.

17. iffiliate

There are plenty of high-quality themes that can support your affiliate marketing strategy. However, sometimes what you need is a specialized approach to help you focus on your goals. When it comes to promoting your partners’ products, iffiliate is one of the top tools for the job.

It includes features like:

• A bundled mega menu plugin for better navigation
• Ajax live search that makes for a more dynamic UX
• Seamless integration with the Amazon Affiliate program

We’d recommend iffiliate if you’re building a more traditional ecommerce-style site. For example, you can create single-product pages to advertise each partner’s items. You can then replace the checkout links with your affiliate URLs.

Pricing: You can purchase iffiliate for $59. This comes with six months of support, but you can extend this to 12 for an additional $17.63.

The Right Themes Make All the Difference

Let’s face it: being an affiliate marketer can be tough. Fortunately, choosing the right tools can make all the difference. By carefully picking your WordPress theme, you can set your website up for success.

This article walked you through 17 of our favorite themes for affiliate marketing. We’ve considered everything from minimalist designs to media-heavy approaches. We’d recommend checking out the demos for your favorites and testing them fully before settling on your final choice.

If you want to earn more commissions, picking the right theme counts. However, your website also has to perform at its best and provide a top-notch user experience. For that, check out our DreamPress hosting plans!

Do More with DreamPress

DreamPress' automatic updates and strong security defenses take server management off your hands so you can focus on content creation.

Check Out Plans

The post 17 Excellent Affiliate Marketing WordPress Themes appeared first on Website Guides, Tips & Knowledge.