Transforming Businesses into Extraordinary Brands
I’ve been lucky enough, at industry events and at CaboPress, to spend some quality time with the talented folks over at LifterLMS. Not only do have they created a great product, the LifterLMS WordPress Plugin, they are also really good people. So when Chris Badgett reached out about being a guest on their podcast, LMScast, to talk about branding, of course I said yes!
In this podcast episode, Chris and I talk about branding as it relates to creating an online course.
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!
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.
WordCamp Minneapolis, happening May 21-22, 2016 at the University of Minnesota Humphrey School of Public Affairs, is focused around the idea of intention and that our best work is always done when we have a sense of the greater purpose behind it.
With this theme in mind, many of the sessions will explore the reasons why we do things — whether that’s in development, design, content, teaching, learning, or strategy.
Bourn Creative’s own Jennifer Bourn will be speaking at WordCamp Minneapolis about The Path to Conversion, specifically on designing WordPress themes with intention so they support the clients’ goals, position them in the marketplace, help tell their brand story, and naturally guide visitors to take the desired action.
Most discussions and talks on WordPress theming are focused on development, but to write the code for and develop a WordPress theme, you first need design.
Web design plays a critical role in setting the tone of a website, focusing visitors’ attention, and guiding them through the site to a conversion with as little friction as possible. It also is responsible for shaping brand perception, audience emotion, and telling a story that not only produces results but resonates with clients and customers.
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.
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.
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.
In November Google started warning website owners about the importance of sites being mobile-friendly. We saw this example in mobile search results with the label “mobile-friendly” added to search engines results page listings.
Then in February they made it official, stating that as of April 21, 2015 (TODAY), a new algorithm change will go into effect, meaning that whether a site is mobile-friendly or not will affect on your mobile search rankings.
Back in March I wrote a post on our blog — Google Drew A Line In The Sand: Your Site Better Be Responsive (Mobile-Friendly) — that details the announcements, shows you examples and screenshots, and provides more details about responsive design and mobile-friendly site design.
Marketers and less experienced web designers and developers have been putting the fear of Google into website owners over the last 4-6 weeks, with scary warnings and threats… and some serious misinformation. What makes my stomach turn though, is those who are cheering for the change solely because it’s a way to scare/persuade past clients to hire them again to redesign their site and rework the code.
Let’s look at the reality of this algorithm change and what it means for you.
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?
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
Now, let’s dive deeper into each of these three strategies:
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!
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.
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:
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.
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, 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.
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.
With 2012 officially off to a start, one thing to remember that many people forget to do at the beginning of a new year is to change the copyright date on their websites.
WordPress sites can be built in various ways, so depending on how your site is built, there are a few ways that copyright dates are handled. If your website has the copyright date hard coded into the WordPress theme files (most likely footer.php) you can replace the current year with:
echo date("Y");and the copyright date will change to the current year and change again automatically next year.
Always remember to make a backup copy of your theme before making any changes to your theme files.
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!
Once your website is complete, it’s time to focus on marketing your website and getting people to your site. After all, they can’t hire you ($$$), buy from you ($$), or learn from you ($), or even sign up to receive your free stuff, if they never get to your website in the first place!
The old way of thinking, “If you build it, they will come.” Simply isn’t true.
There is so much competition on the internet these days that there are literally millions of other websites, opportunities, and distractions available that you have to complete with. If you just sit back and wait for people to find your website, you may be waiting a very, very long time. Instead, your responsibility as a website owner and business owner is to get the word out there and market the heck out of your website and business so those people who are looking for and need what you’re offering can find you.
If you don’t like to market, you don’t want to promote yourself, or you’re hesitant to get you name out there in a big way, think of it this way — if you don’t you’re actually hurting and stealing from other people. In a way, you’re robbing them of the opportunity to get to know you, to learn what you do, and to get the help and solutions they have been looking for.
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).
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.
