Web Design Tips

What Is The Difference Between A WordPress Page and A WordPress Post?

February 7, 2017 Jennifer Bourn

For those of us who work with WordPress daily, concepts like the difference between WordPress pages and posts seem obvious, but then I go to a networking event, blogging event, or conference, and I am reminded that what we as professionals see as obvious is often seen as complex and confusing to new users. This is especially true with WordPress posts and pages — and when custom post types are thrown in the mix, it gets even more confusing.

Just a couple weeks ago, a new client was asking new to explain the difference between WordPress pages and posts. I grinned, told them that I had already written an entire blog post on this very topic, and went to grab the link and email it to them. But I couldn’t find it. Had I really never clicked publish on this post? Did it get buried under newer posts and forgotten about? Yep. It sure did. So needless to say, I’m publishing it now and hoping it sheds some light on this topic for you too!

Build Your Email List Fast With An Irresistible Free Offer

January 10, 2017 Jennifer Bourn

While brands and businesses are all but racing to social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, SnapChat and Instagram, they still are only reaching a small amount of the market. The irresistible email opt-in offer can change that.

The cornerstone of any successful business, online or offline, is its coveted marketing list — the list of customers, clients, prospects and other interested folks who have given you permission to market to them.

Email lists are critical to the success of your business because while not everyone uses social media (it’s crazy, but true), everyone has an email address.

Want to sign up for a social media site? Go ahead. They’ll require and email address.
Want to buy a product? Sure. They’ll need your email address.
Want to subscribe to a publication? No problem. Give them your email address.
Want to become a member? Great. They’ll also ask for your email.

WordCamp Sacramento 2015, A Day of WordPress-Focused Training Is A Wrap!

November 10, 2015 Jennifer Bourn

From the initial logo design and site development, to the content planning and blogging, the social media, email communication, the signage, name badge, and program design, and taking care of other event details and errands, for months, Brian and I have been neck-deep in WordCamp planning.

Now that WordCamp Sacramento is a wrap, we’re elated to call the event a tremendous success.

Driving out to the event Saturday morning, I was nervous and excited, and just hoped we’d have a smooth event — and that people would actually show up. We got registration setup, the signage up, and volunteers began to arrive. It was all coming together and it was do or die time. My stomach was doing some serious flip flops.

As people began to arrive and mill around the Happiness Room with coffee, snacks, and waters, they began chatting up the sponsors and grabbing a seat in the track rooms, and it got real really fast. WordCamp Sacramento was actually happening. It’s something we have been talking about for years, and finally it was here, people were here — and it felt really good.

WordCamp Sacramento 2015 Brings Two Tracks of WordPress Focused Learning

October 27, 2015 Jennifer Bourn

Eleven Days. That’s It. There are only eleven more days until WordCamp Sacramento 2015.

I can hardly believe it.

We’ve been working with WordPress for seven years, and we’ve been attending WordCamps since 2011. We’re frequent WordCampers, traveling to WordCamps across the west coast as they fit into our schedule. We love them, love the WordPress community, and are always happy to see our friends and meet new WordPressers at the events.

For years, we have been talking about bringing WordCamp to Sacramento among ourselves and with others involved with the WordPress Meetup in Sacramento. Almost a year ago, I started calling locations, trying to secure a venue, and it’s thrilling to finally see it coming to fruition, to be part of the organizing team, and to have Bourn Creative as a sponsor.

Organizing Team

WordCamp Sacramento wouldn’t be happening without the volunteer organizing team.

As WordPress enthusiasts, co-organizers of the Sacramento WordPress meetup, and agency owners, Brian and I are proud to be organizers of the inaugural Sacramento WordCamp, alongside Bill Mead, Heather Hogan, Jake Goldman, Joe Boydston, and students Jen Meyer, and Emily Buonauro.

Free Tool to Discover Plagarism And Content Theft

March 23, 2015 Jennifer Bourn

Recently a friend reached out with some disconcerting information — Another web design company was using our content and images. At first she didn’t notice, but when she saw my photo on their website, she looked a little closer and sent me a link to check it out.

Unfortunately today owning a website and doing business online also means that if you’re any good or if your site ranks well with search engines, others will steal, rip off, and copy what you do, that you write, what you say, and even how you look. If you’ve never done the research, the blatant thievery and lack of integrity among content thieves online can be shocking and disheartening.

But how do you know if someone is stealing you hard work?

Google Drew A Line In The Sand: Your Site Better Be Responsive (Mobile-Friendly)

March 18, 2015 Jennifer Bourn

The gauntlet has been thrown. On February 26, 2015, Google affirmed their position on the importance of mobile-friendliness and it’s affect on your mobile search rankings.

Google originally warned us of this change back in November in the post Helping users find mobile-friendly pages, on their Webmaster Central Blog.

In the post, they point out how terrible the experience is when visiting a non-mobile site on a mobile device and you have to pinch and zoom and scroll sideways to see the all of the content, or you can’t click any of the tiny links or menu items with your gigantic fingers.

We began to see hints of this coming back in November 2014, when mobile search results began displaying a “mobile-friendly” label in their search results — and we saw it displayed on our own listed in mobile search results.

A Rebrand, A Redesign, And A Vision For The Future

November 3, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

Let’s just get it out there — I never loved our logo.

The copyediting concept was just a quick idea and great play on our name that Brian came up with when filing our business paperwork. I mocked it up and went with it to get the business off the ground, never intending to keep it. But everyone we met loved it. People raved about it at conferences and networking events when they asked for my card, they raved about it when calling about new projects, and over time, it just stuck.

For the first several years Bourn Creative existed, I was by myself. The colorful rainbow branding we’ve had for years evolved out of my love of color and my desire for something other than the logo to represent me, because at the time, I was the business. I loved the color, the positive feedback, and the praise we received from others about how much they loved it.

Then Brian joined Bourn Creative and took over the company as CEO and all WordPress development, and the brand had to evolve. It didn’t represent a company, but me and my freelance history. So we redesigned the Bourn Creative site, simplifying the rainbows. And about 18 months later, we did it again to “man up” the brand even more. But…

What Is Responsive Website Design?

June 5, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

When mobile devices first grew in popularity, web designers needed to provide better viewing experiences on the tiny screens. The best solution was creating a separate mobile site.

But then additional devices with varying screen sizes and resolutions began hitting the market. Designers saw how impractical and costly it would be to create different versions of a website for every device/size — and due to the rapidly changing landscape of technology, realized it would be practically impossible to keep up.

As the world of web browsers and electronic devices grew, changed, and improved, consumer expectations also changed.

Consumers today expect to be able to browse the internet as easily on a tablet and mobile device as they can on a desktop computer — and they expect to be able to do it at portrait or landscape view, on any device, and sometimes they don’t even have their browser window open to full size!

Responsive Web Design Delivers The Solution.

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.

3 Steps to Turn Your WordPress Site Into a Lead Generating Machine

February 25, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

Last week Brian and I both gave lightning talks at the Sacramento WordPress Meetup. Brian’s talk shared the 5 must have plugins we recommend for every WordPress website. My talk covered how to turn your website visitors into clients and customers — more specifically I talked about website strategy and three steps you can take to turn your website into a lead generating machine.

How to Make Your Website a Lead Generating Machine:

Creating a complete small business website takes comprehensive strategic planning of the content and user flow, the user experience, the sales funnel, the design, the navigation menus, the page templates, and more. Usually my website strategy presentation is an hour long, but for the Sacramento WordPress meetup, I was limited to only 10 minutes!

These are the three website strategies I shared in my talk — the strategies I think are most important for a website owner to understand:

STRATEGY 1: Use the Know, Like, Trust, Conversion approach to naturally lead your visitors to take action
STRATEGY 2: Create multiple opportunities for visitors to find your key money content
STRATEGY 3: Eliminate all unnecessary distractions from your sales funnel and conversion pages

Now, let’s dive deeper into each of these three strategies:

A Behind the Scenes Look at a WordPress Website Makeover

February 7, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

Recently we launched a brand new custom WordPress website for Today’s Innovative Woman, and wanted to share some of the behind the scenes strategy for the site and insight into why we built it the way we did.

At Bourn Creative we view the primary role of design as problem solving. While the visual look and feel is important, it must first and foremost support the overall site strategy.

Today’s Innovative Woman is a magazine for women entrepreneurs and business owners with print distribution of more than 10,000, visibility at events around the country, and a strong online community. While the original WordPress theme worked great when the magazine was first launched, Today’s Innovative Woman was was quickly outgrowing the site. With a booming community, growing subscriber base, and influx of guest writers and featured experts, not only did publisher Cathy Alessandra need a new custom WordPress site, but she needed a whole new online strategy!

3 Biggest Mistakes Business Owners Make When Setting Up Their Website

November 14, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

We’ve received the call for help from a desperate business owner time and time again — A business owner loses control of their website due to a soured relationship with their web developer or IT consultant, and now that things aren’t so friendly, the provider is holding the business owner’s website hostage.

Sometimes the business owner wants to move their hosting, or switch from an old HTML site to a new WordPress site — and they can’t because they technically don’t own their domain name.
Sometimes the business owner just wants to make a simple change to their website — and they can’t because they don’t have a content management system built into their site, and their provider has disappeared.
Sometimes the business owners needs to get access to the files on their website or in their hosting account — and they can’t because they don’t own their hosting and they don’t have access.

Don’t let this happen to you! Here are the three biggest mistakes these business owners made when setting up their website — and how you can avoid making the same ones:

Planning Your Website Sidebar

September 1, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

Once you understand your overall website strategy and approach, the next step, while developing your content and design, is to think about your website sidebar. You don’t want to just load up your sidebar with badges, widgets, and gizmos just because it’s cool, because someone else uses it, because it might work, or because you can.

Like your content, your sidebar needs a strategic plan!

Planning the sidebars of your website is just as important as planning your content, your sales funnel, and your irresistible free offer. Your sidebar exists on almost every page of your website. That means it affects your visitors’ experience on your site. It also affects the way visitors move through your site, what they click on, and how long they stay.

Do You Suffer From Scope Creep?

July 6, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

First, I hope you enjoyed a fabulous 4th of July! Here’s a view from one of my favorite spots to relax and occasionally work outside (below), which I’ve been doing A LOT this summer! I also love working in the cabana because we’ve got a huge table in there to spread my stuff out on.

The holiday was a great break from the daily grind — just this past week, I’ve designed four new client sites, moved another into programming, and worked on revisions to three others. Plus, we’re still working on our new site. Yes, still. It seems like we’ve been working on it forever … and we’re dealing with some serious scope creep. Scope Creep is the term we use when projects expand past the original scope of work little by little and get bigger and bigger.

Scope creep can be a time-hog and a profit killer. When this starts to happen, service providers need to communicate clearly and provide the client with a change order or amendment to the original agreement.

If Your Website Had to go to a Job Interview…

February 26, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

If your website had to go to a job interview, what sort of first impression would it make? Just as first impressions matter when searching for a job, they arguably matter even more when it’s your website. If you don’t hook your audience in the first few seconds, you could lose an opportunity that may not reappear.

While you may be sitting at home in your pajamas where no one can see you, your website is visible to everyone with internet access, anywhere in the world. There is no question that the first impression it makes has to be instantaneous and excellent at the same time.

There are 5 ways to ensure that your website gets the kind of attention you want it to get as soon as a prospect lands on your home page.

4 Keys to Landing Pages that Clinch Conversions Every Time

February 19, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

If you’ve been thinking of your landing page a just a holding area where your website visitors can launch browsing excursions to all the other areas around your website, I’d like to change your way of thinking. You do not want your visitors to leave your landing page to browse your website. Your landing page isn’t just a portal or a launch pad. It’s the first place you’re going to clinch a conversion and win a new customer.

If you haven’t been thinking of your landing page as a place where you land conversions, your strategy may need some revising. Here are five keys to creating a landing page that does what it’s supposed to do – win customers.

4 Things You Must Know When Creating Your Irresistible Free Offer

January 18, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

Now that you know the 8 components of a successful website opt-in box, you have all the information you need to create an awesome opt-in box. But, even though your opt-in box has all the right pieces and works the right way … it may not actually work to build your list?

What?!

If your free offer — the thing you’re giving away for free in exchange for their name and email address — isn’t what your visitors want or need, they won’t sign up and enter their name and email, even if your opt-in box is awesome!

Create a Super Secret Password One Sheet

May 16, 2011 Jennifer Bourn

A BIG pet peeve of mine is that most people have no idea what their log-ins, passwords, IDs, or application keys are. We need them when setting up, configuring, and managing a website.

In some cases, we receive incorrect information that doesn’t work up to two or three times before we get working information. In many cases it is because a virtual assistant or some other team member set it up for them and either never gave them the credentials, never wrote it down during the initial set up, or threw it away when they parted ways (this does happen).

When Your Website Home Page Isn’t The Entry Point

May 11, 2011 Jennifer Bourn

Your home page is one of the most critical pieces of your website, and if you use a squeeze page, splash page, or some other form of home page with little-to-no content, you’re shooting yourself in the foot!

Search engines value high quality, relevant content and links. That means that content and links into your website are the top things they are looking for when they are scanning websites and indexing pages to include in the search results.

To search engines, your home page is considered the main page and entry point of your website, so it needs to include valuable, relevant, high-quality content.

If you really want to benefit from high organic search engine rankings, you MUST put effort into your home page. Now I’m not talking about putting a lot of effort into writing your home page content once and not touching it again for months at a time. I’m talking about tweaking and testing different headlines, keyword combinations, bold text, and even the design of your home page.

Planning a Successful Small Business Website

March 18, 2011 Jennifer Bourn

Often when we start working with a new client, they are anxious to get their site up quickly and want to jump into the website design process and get started right away. But design isn’t the first step in the process of creating a successful small business website. Before we get started on the design of any client site, we first need to work with our clients to plan the site.

Planning a small business website can be a daunting task, but it will make a huge difference in your conversion rates, sales, and results you see from the site.

Here is a list of things you need to take into consideration and plan for before you get started on the design of your website:

A Website Footer Is For More Than Your Copyright Notice

February 21, 2011 Jennifer Bourn

I guarantee that if you browse the internet for any length of time, you’ll notice that while some websites put a lot of information in their website footer, most simply use it as a space to put their copyright notice and maybe, just maybe if you’re lucky their contact information.

Like your website sidebar, the footer of your website is a very powerful part of your site that can make a big difference in your search engine rankings and how your website visitors move through your website, yet it is one of the most under-utilized tools.

Before I share with you some ideas on how you can leverage your website footer to improve your website and search engine rankings, I want to cover some of the biggest mistakes website owners make when it comes to their website footer:

What To Include In Your Website Sidebar

February 18, 2011 Jennifer Bourn

Is your sidebar sitting all alone with no one to talk to and no one to share with. Is your sidebar bulging at the seams from being stuffed with unnecessary junk. Is your sidebar confused about why it exists and what it’s for?

Here’s the problem I see over and over with websites that use a single sidebar web design: The website owners is usually trying to stuff it full of everything they think is “cool” or “might work” and as a result, they’re confusing things for everyone.

Planning the sidebars of your web design is just as important as planning your content, your sales funnel, and your irresistible free offer. The sidebar is an element that exists on almost every page of your website. That means it affects the experience the user have on your website. It also affects the way they move through your website, what they click on, and how long they stay.

9 Simple Tips To Increase Online Sales

December 2, 2010 Jennifer Bourn

If you’re selling a product, program, or your services online and you’re using a shopping cart to do so, you need your website to convert prospects into leads, and leads into customers. And, If you’re like other entrepreneurs, you need your small business website to increase online sales and help you create multiple streams of income.

But the big questions is, “How do you do that?”

Here are nine tips you can use to increase your online sales conversions: