The Bourn Creative Blog | Bourn Creative

Website Menus And How They Are Used In WordPress

April 11, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

At the most basic level, a WordPress menu is a collection or list of links. The most common placement of a menu is in the site navigation area or navigation bar and is referred to as a navigation menu.

Each link in a menu is called a menu item. Some menu items may have sub-menu items that are displayed in a drop down menu.

EXAMPLE: A basic website navigation menu may include menu items such as About, Services, Products, Testimonials, and Contact. The Services menu item may display a drop down menu, with the sub-menu items Private Consulting, Group Training, VIP Day.

Below you’ll see a site with a primary navigation menu, a secondary header menu, and a drop down menu of sub pages under the Assessments menu item.

How To Design A Website Header (And What Should Go In It)

April 9, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

A website header is the area is one of the most valuable areas of your website. It runs across the top of the page and appears on every page of your website, except on sales or landing pages templates that have it removed.

The purpose of your website header is to promote your brand and make your site instantly recognizable to those who are already familiar with you. For many businesses, the header is the perfect place to efficiently and effectively convey exactly what your site is about and what your business does.

How to Create A Highly Effective Website Home Page

April 5, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

While many visitors may enter your website for the first time through a blog post, your Home page is the virtual front door of your website and the main door into your site for the rest of the world. When someone visits your site directly through your main URL, your Home page is the first page of your website they will see.

The Home page represents the very first opportunity you have to make an impression. So visitors need to be able to quickly figure out — in just a few seconds — if they are in the right place, and if your site is what they have been looking for.

Defining the purpose of your website, and in turn the purpose of your Home page is the first step in creating a strategy that will attract your ideal clients and customers to your website.

Simple But Effective Copywriting Tips For Email Marketing

March 28, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

Like the email subject line, the copywriting in your email is also an important part of the your email marketing success — and the approach needs to be personal.

When you’re writing for email (and most types of marketing for that matter), you’re not writing to a general audience, to a big group, to just anyone — you’re writing to one person, to one subscriber that has a connection to you. You must think of your email marketing copywriting as the art of creating a conversation between you and a single subscriber.

You want them to read your email and feel like you are speaking right to them. Like they matter. Like they know you and you know them.

How to Write Effective Email Subject Lines That Get Subscribers to Open Your Emails

March 1, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

As a business owner and marketer, you have a lot to say and a lot to share with your audience, prospects, and clients — and it is easy to get so focused on the content of your email newsletter or email marketing message, conversion goals, and click-through rates, that you lose sight of something as simple as the email subject line. But…

Your email subject line is one of the most important parts of your email. The absolute best email subject lines are short, to the point, descriptive, and enticing. They have one purpose — to get you to open the email.

If your subject line stinks, is boring, or seems irrelevant, or worse, seems like spam — no one will open your email, and it won’t matter how much time you spent creating the killer content inside, because no one will ever read it. That’s why your email subject line needs to be interesting and relevant to the recipient. And while it’s job is to be so awesome that it gets them to open your email, you also need to avoid getting caught in spam filters.

So, do you write a killer email subject line that is practically guaranteed to get people to open your email, but may get caught in a lot of spam filters? Or do you play it safe and go with a slightly safer subject line that may not get as many opens, but avoid the spam filters?

Follow Up Sequences Build Successful, Responsive Email Lists

February 27, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

A follow up sequence or auto responder is a series of pre-written emails that are set up in advance and sent to subscribers or consumers automatically after they opt-in, sign up, subscribe, register, purchase, etc. They are a way to continue to provide value, build relationships, and stay top of mind.

Business owners love follow up sequences because it allows them to leverage software to automate tasks and create stronger, better brand experiences with their clients, customers, and subscribers. With a follow up sequence, you can do the work once to create it, then you put it on autopilot and let is do it magic over and over again automagically — yes, automagically — saving you time energy, and money.

Almost every business owner using a shopping cart or email marketing service provider in their business has the ability to use auto responders and follow up sequences. But they don’t.

What Are NoFollow Links and DoFollow Links? Do I Need Them?

January 30, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

I get asked A LOT about DoFollow and NoFollow links — about how they work, what they are for, how and when to use them, and if they really matter. As a reminder, search engines move through the internet by following links from one web page or blog post to another. You could say that internal links are like roads through a website, and outbound links or inbound links from one site to another are like bridges.

When one web page links to another — whether it is an internal link between two URLs on the same website, or a link from one site to another — it passes some of its “page rank” (where it ranks in the search engines) to the page it is linking to, giving it a boost.

Here’s a quick review of how links pass page rank:

WordCamp Phoenix 2014 Recap: Learning, Community, Inspiration

January 25, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

Last weekend Brian and I headed to Arizona for WordCamp Phoenix, a three day event jam-packed with training sessions of all types! With 750 attendees, is the second largest WordCamp in the United States and was better run than some of the larger, most expensive conferences I have attended.

I have to give huge compliments to April Holle (Lead Organizer), the whole organizing team, and all the volunteers for doing such a stellar job! Plus the Schedule and Speakers were pretty impressive.

We arrived on Thursday and had a fabulous dinner with some old and new WordPress friends — WordPress t-shirts were everywhere!
Friday kicked off the actual event with longer workshop style sessions for the Beginner User, Advanced User, Designer, Beginner Dev, and Advanced Dev — they really had sessions for everyone. That night was the speaker/sponsor dinner where I got to meet many of the other speakers.
The Saturday sessions built on the skills developed on Friday with a choice of sessions in three different tracks, including Content & Design, Community & Commerce, and Extension & Development. My presentation on Strategies to Turn Content into Cash was part of the Content & Design track — See what attendees had to say about it on Twitter.
Then there was the after-party, which offered great food, an open bar, an ice luge, multiple bands, a mock casino, and more time to connect with other attendees.
Sunday, the final day of the conference, was a little more informal and was structured as more of a Biz Dev / Contribute Day, with users, designers, and developers all attending joint sessions supporting business of WordPress.

Every session I attended reinforced best practices, taught me something new, and got me thinking about ways to improve our own services, processes, and business — and as usual, the event was free from self-promotion, sales pitches, and hype, which is truly appreciated!

Now there is simply way too much to share in a blog post, but you can get a feel for the event, energy surrounding it, and some opinions on the speakers in the WPwatercooler Recap of WordCamp Phoenix 2014. (Hint: They mention me!)

The Secret to Building More Inbound Links

November 27, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

So you want to build more inbound links to your website. But how do you do that? Yes, you can publish articles, distribute press releases, post to social media sites, bookmark your content on social bookmarking sites, guest blog, and more. But how do you get other website owners to mention you, write about you, and link to your in their content … without you asking them to?

The secret is to give first and always support others. Before you can even begin to expect others to link to you and write about or mention you, YOU need to give mentions, links, and shout outs to others. If you’re reading this post, you’re probably a little more savvy than most (kudos to you!), and think this isn’t a big secret, but unfortunately, the web seems to be getting crowded with people who expect promotion just because they exist.

But it doesn’t work like that.

Learning The Difference Between a Good Link and Bad Link

November 20, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

While inbound, outbound, and internal links can all be leveraged to improve your website’s usability and organic search engine rankings, it is important to know that some links are more valuable than others — and some are even considered bad. Here are three reasons some links are better than others:

Not all links are good links. A website with misleading, irrelevant, broken, or factory-farmed links will make you and your site look bad to both users and search engines.
Inbound links from high-ranking, authority websites are better than links from low-ranking, obscure websites. So a link from www.cnbc.com will mean more than a link from www.weirdcatblog.com. (Hint: Pages may pass some of their page rank to the sites they link to, so be choosy about the sites that you link to.)
In industry links will help you more than random links from your friends’ websites. If you’re in the cupcake industry, links from cupcake, frosting, cake decorating, and baking sites will be worth much more than links from your babysitter, accountant, or golf buddy.

Still not sure what I mean?

Let’s look at this like high school: Each inbound link to your website is like a vote for your popularity. So the more votes you get, the more popular you are. And the more popular you are, the more you’ll be in the spotlight, seen by others, attracting lots of attention.

10 Ideas To Build Quality Inbound Links and Increase Website Traffic

November 8, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

Search engines look for two criteria when evaluating your website links and determining your website ranking: quantity and quality. That means both the number and the relevance of your links are crucial for getting your website found faster by search engines, and by potential clients. The number of links to, from, and within your website come from three areas:

Inbound links: links to your website from external sources
Outbound links: links to other sites from your website
Internal links: links between individual pages on your own website

But just having a lot of links isn’t all you need to consider. The quality of your links is also important. While your goal is to build a good mix of inbound, outbound, and internal links, those links have to be relevant to your content, business, industry, and audience — and you can’t forget that the basic, naturally occurring links are extremely powerful too.

Where do you get your business advice?

August 20, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

I am a firm believer that no one knows everything about building and growing a business — at least I know I don’t! In fact, most business owners and entrepreneurs (like me) start businesses not because they know how to run a business, but because they are exceptional at what they do and seize an opportunity.

In my experience, learning about business and how to run one effectively comes along the way. A few years into my business, I received a great piece of advice: Know the path you want to take and surround yourself with people who are farther down the path. In other words:

Find the people who have achieved what you want to achieve and learn from them.
Find out what they did wrong and what they did right; what worked and what didn’t work; what they wish they had done differently.
Find a mentor or mastermind group who can answer your questions and guide you in the right direction when you need it.