WordPress Theme Design Archives

7 Ways To Reduce Friction And Increase Website Conversions

June 12, 2018 Jennifer Bourn

The conversion process on every website, especially online stores, must be as easy as possible. Moving a prospective customer from the awareness stage, to the consideration stage, to the final decision stage should be simple, straightforward, and completely obvious.

Friction happens when something on your website slows down or stops the progression of a prospective buyer from moving through your sales funnel. Identifying points of friction in your sales process and addressing them can help increase sales from your existing traffic dramatically.

There are 7 fundamental ways to reduce friction on your website and increase conversions:

5 Ways To Provoke Action And Increase Website Conversions

April 10, 2018 Jennifer Bourn

As a site owner, you put a lot of effort into driving traffic to your website. You write blog posts and invest time and effort into organic SEO and social media marketing. You publish an email newsletter, send email blasts, and leverage email automations and follow up campaigns. You’re a guest on podcasts, you guest blog on other popular websites, you host webinars, and you even invest in paid traffic like Google AdWords, Facebook ads, and Instagram ads.

After all of that work, the very worst thing that could happen when someone visits your website is that they leave without taking a single action. Once a person reaches your website, your job is to get them the information they need quickly and easily, persuade them to stay on the site longer, and then get them to take action.

There are five core ways to easily provoke action on your website and increase conversions:

8 Ways To Mitigate Risk And Increase Website Conversions

February 7, 2018 Jennifer Bourn

The more risk a consumer believes there to be, the less like they are to make a purchase. When asking a visitor to take action, it is your job to minimize or eliminate all perceived risks so they can take action with confidence, be comfortable with their purchase, and feel like they made the right choice.

Mitigating risk is about more than just moving your site from HTTP to HTTPS. In fact, there are 8 key areas you can focus on to mitigate risk and improve website conversions:

WordCamp Minneapolis 2016: A Focus On Intention

May 2, 2016 Brian Bourn

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.

Custom Data Management Made Easier, An Intro To Custom Fields

March 15, 2016 Jennifer Bourn

Bourn Creative is excited to announce that managing partner, Brian Bourn will be speaking at WordCamp San Diego 2016. He joins a stellar line up of 2016 Plugin Track Speakers, delivering a talk on Custom Data Management Made Easier — An Intro To Custom Fields.

Custom fields and custom meta boxes can empower site managers to easily create complex page layouts only possible with extensive HTML markup, without writing a single line of a code. As a designer or developer, custom fields and meta boxes not only empower clients to create these layouts and manage extra site data, but also give you the power to control the markup ensuring proper, semantic HTML, and prevent support issues for “broken” layouts resulting from HTML errors.

In this talk Brian will cover:

What are custom fields & meta boxes and why you should use them
Options for creating custom fields & meta boxes
Design examples utilizing custom fields & code tips for integrating custom fields into a WordPress theme

February Sacramento WordPress Meetup: Visual Storytelling Through WordPress Theme Design

January 21, 2016 Brian Bourn

The Sacramento WordPress Meetup kicked off 2016 with a fabulous new venue — The Urban Hive — and an event with 40+ guests attending, even on a super wet and rainy weekday night. Big thanks go out to everyone who made to out to the event!

February Sacramento WordPress Meetup

The next Sacramento WordPress meetup is happening at 6:30pm on Tuesday, February 2, 2016 at The Urban Hive. All 2016 events will be at this new venue, which also provides a hot coffee and tea bar for your enjoyment.

The topic, presented by Jennifer Bourn is Visual Storytelling Through WordPress Theme Design

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. And, while the design of a WordPress theme plays a supporting role to the content, it is critical in setting the tone for the feeling of a website, focusing visitors’ attention, guiding them through the site to a conversion, and providing flexibility for future site enhancements and expansion.

In this talk we’ll cover:

The Shoemaker’s Kids Finally Have Shoes: Portfolio Update

January 8, 2016 Jennifer Bourn

The last time I wrote about the struggle designers and developers face with their portfolios, I wrote about the notion that the shoemaker’s kids never have shoes — and like the shoemaker, client projects always come first, and our own work often gets pushed off.

When we launched the current rebrand and redesign of Bourn Creative in October 2014, we had every intention of continuing to work on our portfolio, writing longer, case study style project descriptions, creating better imagery, and keeping it more current. But in October 2015, we realized that even though we had worked on some awesome projects with some of our favorite clients to date, it had now been a year and not a single new project was added to our portfolio.

Around the same time, we were neck deep in the fall rush of client projects and trying to squeeze in development time for my new personal blog. It was too much to fit into a sane work schedule, so Brian stopped development on my personal site and made a deal: Overhaul our old portfolio, add the new projects we want to feature, and write case studies for each one. When the portfolio was complete, he’d finish my site and give me access.

I was on a mission but it was slow going. Client work again came first, Soccer ate up our Saturdays, we co-hosted the inaugural WordCamp Sacramento (and I was in charge of all design, marketing, and communications), and we took family vacations at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Needless to say, it took longer than I had hoped, but today I finished.

I’m done done with the update of our portfolio and I’d love to share some of our favorite projects from 2015 with you. And, if you’re interested in reading the case studies and project descriptions for the projects, please check out our portfolio — I’m pretty proud of it!

OfficeHours.fm Podcast with Carrie Dils Welcomes Brian Bourn and Jennifer Bourn

October 6, 2015 Jennifer Bourn

Interviews, whether they are in written Q&A form, via teleseminar, radio show, or podcast, or in video, are always fun — especially when it’s done with a good friend.

Carrie Dils is not only a great friend, and genuinely nice person, she’s a talented developer and the host of the OfficeHours.fm podcast. Brian and I have both been guests on separate episodes of the podcast in the past, but now you get us both on one episode.

While in past episode’s we’ve talked about business growth, marketing, sales, and development, this one was a bit of everything with a side of personal family life. We do talk about business and development workflows — and we also talk about juggling business and family and spending pretty much ALL of our time together, and bicker a bit ;)

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.

Brian Bourn Joins The WP Tonic Podcast For A Discussion About WordPress Theme Frameworks

February 6, 2015 Brian Bourn

This past weekend, I was invited to be part of a live panel discussion on WordPress Frameworks “The Good The Bad And The Ugly” on the WP Tonic Podcast hosted by Jonathan Denwood and Bill Conrad.

Watch The Episode

WordPress and Jetpack

The episode got started with a conversation about what’s happening in the WordPress community, and specifically, Matt Mullenweg’s comments about WordPress and Jetpack (a single plugin with more than 30 modules built in, some of which are paid, some are free, and some rely on WordPress.com, developed by Automattic) at PressNomics.

The Thinking Behind Design, A Talk At The Art Institute of California, Sacramento

December 22, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

Recently, Brian and I were honored to speak to graphic design and web design students at the Art Institute of California, Sacramento.

After bumping into my friend Bill Mead, their Director of Design at WordCamp San Francisco and chatting about what we’ve been up to, we both agreed that sharing a case study of our rebrand with students would provide them with a unique behind-the-scenes look of a redesign.

Designing from scratch is an entirely different beast, than redesigning an existing brand with reputation equity, perception equity, and SEO equity, as well as years of existing content and analytics data. With that in mind, we agreed that rather than another how-to talk, we’d focus on the thinking behind the work.

In this presentation — focused on the thinking behind our website redesign — Brian and I shared:

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…

WordPress Website Design and Development Project Features

June 28, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

We love design — web design, graphic design, logo design, print design, digital design — all types of design, and I know it’s in part because we get to work with some pretty awesome clients on some pretty fun projects.

While I do publish new content to the Bourn Creative blog regularly, sharing tips, tools, insights, tactics, and more, I tend to keep the content focused on education and learning. That means that I haven’t shared any of our projects with you lately!

So, today it’s time for some shameless self promotion and a peek at some of the projects we’ve enjoyed working on!

How To Remove The Genesis Blog and Archive Page Templates

April 19, 2014 Brian Bourn

With the recent release of WordPress 3.9, several new features for theme developers were introduced to further enhance what can be baked into new WordPress themes. Devin Price has a great post over at wptheming highlighting many of the new features. The inspiration for the Genesis specific filter below came from his post.

One reason we design and build WordPress themes on the Genesis Framework is the nature in which it is built. With Genesis, I have the ability to add, filter, or remove almost everything.

Up until WordPress 3.9, the Genesis blog and archive page templates were inherited by child themes and there wasn’t a simple way to remove them. Why does this matter? When we build custom child themes for clients, we use a variety functions to remove every unnecessary item and option from Genesis to create a simplified and focused back-end for our clients.

Bourn Creative Named Genesis Recommended Developer

November 1, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

It’s no secret that at Bourn Creative, we love WordPress — Heck it’s all we use when building websites! It’s also no secret that we’re huge fans of the Genesis Framework for WordPress.

We’ve been designing and developing custom WordPress sites since 2008, but once we discovered the Genesis Framework, we fell in love and made the decision to move all of our development for WordPress to Genesis — and it’s been one of the best decisions we’ve made, seriously.

While almost all of the websites we design for WordPress are custom, one-off solutions, they are all developed as child themes powered by the Genesis Framework — which provides our team of designers and developers a superior code base with HTML5 markup and ultimate flexibility when creating new WordPress sites.

Plus, Genesis 2.0 now supports Schema.org code, which allows you to output microdata in your site’s code. This enhances your site’s search engine optimization even further — as does Google Authorship identification, which Genesis makes incredibly simple. The Genesis Framework has always handled the basics of good SEO for you, like lightweight code for fast performance, and now it’s even better.

Customizing the Genesis 2.0 HTML5 Comment Form

September 9, 2013 Brian Bourn

Now that Genesis 2.0 has been shipped, we are building all of our custom child themes with the new HTML5 markup enabled — and absolutely love the new code base.

On a recent project the design specs called for a customized comment form. I have several code snippets saved for this occasion, but Genesis 2.0 child themes with HTML5 enabled use the native WordPress comment form, instead of the older comment form built into Genesis — so the code snippets I had no longer worked.

This is well documented within Genesis at /lib/structure/comments.php, which shows how older XHTML child themes will use the Genesis comment form for backwards compatibility, and child themes with HTML5 enabled will use the native WordPress comment form.

We’re On Fire! Four New Genesis WordPress Sites Live

April 29, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

With business events, entrepreneurial conferences, software conferences, our local Sacramento WordPress Meetup group, and a few WordCamps, Brian and I have been traveling a lot the past few months. Then when you throw in all our normal client work, and running our own business, things get a little crazy and the hours behind our computers get a little long.

Luckily we LOVE what we do — and we LOVE the Internet. In the past four weeks, we have taken four different Genesis WordPress sites live — Cool right?! Here they are:

Customize Your WordPress More Tag Link Text

March 23, 2011 Jennifer Bourn

Yesterday I wrote about the WordPress More Tag, how to use it, and why the More Tag is so important for blogging success. While I shared some of the ways using the WordPress More Tag can improve your blog, I didn’t share one of the coolest features about the More Tag.

One of the more awesome features that comes with the use of the More Tag is the ability to customize the link text that the More tag adds to the end of your blog post excerpt. You can choose to have it say read more, more, read the full article, or anything else you want. Even better, you have the ability to customize the More Tag link text for each individual blog post — but you have to be in HTML view.

After you have written your content, inserted the More Tag to your post, and switched over to the WordPress HTML editor, look for this code:

Why Use The Powerful and Often-Forgotten WordPress More Tag

March 22, 2011 Jennifer Bourn

The More Tag is a crucial tool for WordPress blogging success, and yet over and over I see bloggers forget to use it The More Tag (only available for posts) is a tag that gets inserted into your blog post content to truncate blog entries so that only the first part of posts is shown on your main blog page and archive pages. When you insert the More Tag, a link will be placed directly after your excerpt, pointing the reader to the full content of the article.

You can find the More Tag button in the first row of the WordPress visual editor toolbar:

And in the WordPress HTML editor toolbar: