Your website is your most powerful tool to attract customers. That’s why you need a website that converts from day one. Unfortunately, this can be a challenge for many new business owners. After all, a great website requires internet marketing expertise that few new business owners have yet to develop. Thanks to WordPress, however, building a simple but effective website has become a possibility for anyone with basic computer skills.
Still, building a WordPress website that looks good does not always mean that it will convert. Many factors, such as SEO, thought sequence, and website design ultimately affect the conversion rate of your new WordPress website. The following four tips will show you how to design a WordPress website that converts right away.
- Set goals and design a thought sequence that will achieve those goals before doing anything else for your website. The biggest mistake people make with WordPress website is to choose a look before ever really working out whether it accomplishes the goals of your website. List the goals of a page before ever doing any other work on it; otherwise, you’ll never achieve your objectives. Get into the mind of your ideal customer and work out what questions they may have and address them in your design. A useful website always converts better than an attractive website. Ideally, you’ll get a website that is both, but substance has to come first.
- Modify an existing theme by leveraging tools readily available online. With WordPress, you can easily design your own website from scratch, but you’re almost always better off simply modifying an existing theme. WordPress makes it incredibly easy to change the PSD files available with the theme, and the themes available from WordPress come with plenty of pre-existing functionality helpful to both designers and users of your website. Plus, these themes often come with formal support (or at least a dedicated help community). When you leverage online WordPress tools, modification becomes a snap.
- Choose the right plugins. WordPress plugins can transform an average website into an SEO optimized, easy-to-use powerhouse more quickly than anything else in your website design. Explore all available plugins (especially popular and universally useful ones like Yoast SEO, Contact Form 7, and WordPress Backup to Dropbox) to find the ones that best add to your WordPress website design.
- Create a unified content strategy that starts on your homepage. Ultimately, website design must align with your overall content and brand strategy. Make sure to design your WordPress website around this strategy, not the other way around. Link all content in a helpful fashion and integrate your content on the website from the very beginning for better conversion.
A well-designed WordPress website can make a huge difference in the conversion results you get, so follow these rules on how to design a WordPress website at the very least. The better your website is designed, the better it will convert. Of course, it’s not always easy to design a powerful WordPress website without internet marketing expertise. Working with a Provaro expert may be able to help you get the results you need from day one.
Talk to one of our Santa Rosa web designers about your project to begin.