WordPress articles
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Understanding the WordPress reading settings options
Have you gone into settings > reading on your WordPress site dashboard? It’s a pretty short page, but the items on it are often misunderstood. Let’s break the options down: Front page displays – This is where you can create a homepage that doesn’t show blog posts or use your blog main page as the homepage for your site. Blog pages show at most – On your blog page {whether that’s home or not} this number sets how many posts should show. It usually impacts shopping cart plugins as well,…
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Improving your blog images + site speed
What a lot of clients don’t realize is just how taxing large images can be on their server. And when you have only a few seconds to make an impression with your visitors, you need your site to load completely in those few seconds. Here are a few quick tips for speeding up your site by making smart image choices. Save images at the size you need them If you are creating a graphic for your blog or website, make sure you save that image to the size you want…
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Stages of web design + development
Building a new website — or redesigning an existing one — is a big task, no matter how many features or pages the final product has. Because there are so many moving parts + things to consider, using these stages of web design + development for your project helps keep everything on track + on schedule. Each project is unique, but they all follow these stages pretty closely. The only difference is that some might take less time if they aren’t as feature rich or complex. Project discovery When a…
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My fave WordPress plugins
Backup Buddy It shouldn’t be a secret that I love + talk non-stop about Backup Buddy. if you are interested in peace of mind when it comes to your website, this is the app for you. Automatic backups can be scheduled to run whenever you want them to — and you can send those backups offsite for even more security. Gravity Forms If I’m building a site for someone with a form +/or opt-in on it, you can bet that I’m using Gravity Forms. {Unless they use Ontraport since those…
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The key to great images for your blog + site
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. With that in mind, what are your blog + website images saying to your visitors, fans + potential clients? Quality The biggest issue I see with images + photos on websites is that the quality is not right for web. Usually it’s because the image quality is so poor, but that isn’t always the case. In fact, you can go too high quality when saving images for your site. Poor quality images What happens when you save a picture that is…
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Don’t treat site visitors like spammers
Making your site visitors responsible for proving that they are, in fact, human is a bit of a dick move. It’s no secret that I’m all about making websites more secure. But your business’s online security shouldn’t be at the expense of someone trying to visit your website. There are 2 ways you can protect your online forms — one makes it harder for your visitors + the other simply doesn’t. Captcha Most of us all know + hate the captcha field. If you’ve ever struggled to figure out what…
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Nerd alert: Gravity Forms for client intake
One use for Gravity Forms: client intake I use Gravity Forms for a lot of things around my site, but the options it gives me for client intake is worth the cost alone. It starts simple enough, with a contact form that I direct all leads to. Ask the right questions The questions + options on the form help me better understand whether or not I’m the right fit for the project as well as what the person reaching out is looking for. Thanks to the conditional settings, I can…
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Client love guide – Initial contact
But let’s take the new year inspiration + dive into how to make your clients love you before they are officially your clients, by talking about the initial contact they experience with you + your business. Not only does this set the right tone for the project, it also helps convert leads into paying clients because you knock their socks off from the start. Contact page The majority of the time, someone reaches out to me through the contact page on this site. Every service page links back to this…
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4 lessons I learned from offering retainer services
For years I offered hourly work for anyone that needed my skills. it was great… except for the flux in hours my clients needed + no real way to schedule my time. so I decided to get clients set up on retainer – whether monthly or quarterly – to narrow the range in hourly requests + set myself up with a more manageable schedule. I spent tons of time researching retainer contracts + systems, but still learned a few very valuable lessons that I want to share with anyone considering…
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Tutorial: How to organize your site content
The number 1 culprit of delayed website projects is content. A lot of business owners underestimate the time necessary + quantity of content that is required when building a website. To help make that task feel less insurmountable, I want to start with the foundation – how to share site content with your team. Knowing how to save, format + share your content will make it so much easier to collect what you need since you’ll be doing it an organized way from the start. And while it is important…
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Ways to incorporate a quiz into your site
Looking for a fun way to add content to your site? Want a way to give potential clients a taste of your amazing knowledge? Ready to segment offerings but want it to be easy for clients to pick one? One way to accomplish one or all of these things is by adding an interactive quiz to your WordPress website. And it doesn’t have to be a “quiz” per se, but I’ll be using that term to cover similar elements like polls, surveys, assessments, etc. New way to add content Adding…
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Client love guide – treat with care
The golden rule {the business version} Treat others the way you want to be treated We are all so familiar with the golden rule, and there is a reason for that. It’s generally a great way to live your life. Whether it’s being kind or leading by example, treating others with respect, empathy, generosity, love, etc is a win-win. And it isn’t difficult to apply that same rule to business by treating other businesses or business people the way you want to be treated as a business owner, I strongly…