Web Design Built on WordPress
Bounce Rate for a website is a percentage of users who only visit one page of your site before leaving. High bounce rates indicate that visitors are leaving your site as fast as they arrive, and depending on your business plan, that is bad for business. By understanding bounce rate, we should be able to improve it.
Building an engaged audience is the “Holy Grail” of content marketers. As we all try to grow our business with quality content, we have to remember the basics if we want to cut through the noise and build an online community.
The content marketing company Blue Grass has produced this infographic to identify several fundamentals to growing an engaging audience. You need to use good headlines, engage on social networks and use guest blogging.
As with everything in life, we need to become experts in the fundamentals before move to the “cool” stuff. The fundamentals are what keep your grounded and successful. It is the stuff that generated 80% of the value. Keep the fundamentals of content marketing in you mind as you build your business and you will build an engaging audience.
The Genesis Framework is the most stable, secure, and extendable theme for WordPress I’ve used. It can also be a little intimidating to modify.
Adding navigation to a StudioPress child theme is a simple process when you know the steps. In version 1.8, you will need to use the WordPress Menu creator to generate your Primary and Secondary navigation menus. But first, you have to make sure Genesis is setup.
In the Dashboard, go to Genesis>Settings>Theme Settings. This will take you to the Genesis setup window for you to set all the defaults.
Scroll down to the Navigation Settings meta box. Here you will see two check boxes, one for Primary Navigation and the other for Secondary Navigation. Check the box for the navigation menu you want to use.
By checking one or both of these boxes, Genesis will add the necessary code to the site to render the navigation menus.
Now that Genesis is ready for the menu, WordPress can create the menu and populate the navigation. In the dashboard, go to Appearance>Menus.
Click the plus sign, [+], at the top of the page. In the Menu Name field, type ‘Primary Navigation’ and click ‘Create Menu.’
You will now have access to three new metaboxes, the Theme Locations, Custom Links, Pages and Categories. If you have other plugins or software installed, you may have additional options.
- The Theme Locations is your Primary and Secondary navigation that is activated by Genesis Settings.
- The Custom Links allows you to create links to external pages or sites by adding the URL and a Menu Label (name).
- The Pages box lists all the pages you’ve created. They will be sorted by ‘Most Recent’, but you can ‘View All’ or ‘Search’ for specific pages.
- The Category box list all the categories that you’ve created for your posts.
In the Theme Locations metabox, select the Primary Navigation from the drop down. Now go to the Pages metabox and select all of the pages that you want included in your Primary Navigation. Place a check in the check boxes and then click ‘Add to Menu.’
All the pages will populate the menu field to the right of the metaboxes.
You can then drag the boxes around to get the navigation in the order you want it to appear on your site. Move them up and down to arrange the order, move them under and indented to make them a submenu. You can move them around to fit your desired navigation structure.
Onc you have the menu the way you want it, click ‘Save Menu’ and you menu will be live on the site. Go to a page on the site and you will see the Primary Navigation displayed the way you set it up in the dashboard.
You can add pages or remove pages as often as you need. When you create a new page, if you want it to be included in the navigation, you will have to manually add it in the Menu.
If you have any questions, leave them in comments below.
Successful business lessons can come from some of the oddest places.
I have a son who is really into Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, the old 1960’s version. He discovered them on Netflix and has watched them over and over.
As I’ve sat and watched these classic shows with him, I’ve began to notice some very interesting parallels between what makes Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends successful and what makes small businesses successful.
So, the purpose of this post is to provide three business lessons you can learn from that classic children’s cartoon.
The interesting thing about Spider-Man, Fire-Girl and Ice-Man is that they each have a singular, unique power. They are specialized in their heroism and they do that one thing better than anyone else. Who can do what a spider does better than Spider-Man? No-one.
When we are trying to develop a successful online business model, we need to clearly identify our singular, unique power. In business this is your Unique Selling Position, USP. It has been called many things, but the important factor is that you have specific characteristics that make you and your services or products unique.
You may be the best teacher in your area or have the best customer service. Your USP is the super-power of your business. It is what makes you different. This is YOUR thing. It is what you do better than anyone else.
If you plan on running a successful business, online or brick-and-mortar, you must have your own Super-Power.
In every episode of Spider-Man, the super heros are challenged by some villan. They have to fight the bad guys to save the day. Now if Fire-Girl got side tracked with some other project or task, she would fail as a hero. The bad guys would win! Not the way to be a super-hero.
In order for your business to succeed, you have to keep focused on the main thing. Make sure you are spending where you get a return. This applies both to the finances and the activities of your business. If you get side tracked with opportunities and task that are not connected to the success of your business, you will lose. The bad guy will win and the villan will shut you down.
Make sure to keep focused on what it is your are doing. You are a business owner, a super-hero, don’t forget it and let the villans win.
It’s Spider-Man AND His Amazing-Friends. Whenever Spider-Man heads out to fight crime and rid the city of the bad guys, he does it with his friends. It’s a team. Each person in the group has specific strengths and weaknesses and together they always win. Individually, they sometimes get beat, but as a team, they ALWAYS win. Every episode ends the same way!
We are social creatures and business is a team sport. It is incredibly difficult to try and do this all by yourself. You need a team. You need people who have similar goals to help carry the load.
I’m not suggesting that you need employees, but you do need partners. This may come through joint ventures, online community forums or local community groups (like your local chamber of commerce). Whatever approach you take, you need people to bounce ideas off of, to brainstorm, to help keep you in check. We all need that.
If your business is to be successful, you need a team.
What other traits do you see in Spider-Man that is important in business? Share your thoughts in the comments.
If you use MailChimp for your email marketing efforts, you need to have an opt-in form on your site in multiple places. One primary location is the top of the sidebar. This should be prominent and easy to find.
To add the Mail Chip form, log into your account and go to ‘List.’ Select the list you want to add to your page by clicking ‘View List’.
Click on the ‘For Your Website drop down and select ‘Sign Up Form Embed Code.’
You will have three options for how your form will display. Select the form you want and make any necessary adjustment to the form using the drop down box.
Once the form is correct, copy the embed code. This will be added to your site in a text widget.
The MailChimp embed code has several div that can be managed by your CSS. Simply add some style information to your style sheet and the form will look customized for your site needs.
Now that we have the embed code, log into the Admin of your WordPress website and go to Appearance/Widgets. You will 
need to add a text widget to the appropriate widgetized section in the sidebar. Best practice is to have the sign up form at the top of the sidebar. There are a few other ideal location, but we will address those at a later date.
Paste the embed code into the text widget. Give it a compelling title, something that would compel a visitor to subscribe to your email list.
Refresh your website to ensure the changes have taken effect. Now your Mail Chimp email for will be at your specified location.
Building site traffic is not like the movie “Field of Dreams.” Just because you build it, doesn’t mean they’ll come. You have to do some planning and intentional work to get visitors to your website through organic searches. You could spend your hard earned cash and create a pay-per-click campaign and get some site traffic, but to really build site traffic naturally, you need to follow a few specific guidelines.
The purpose of this post is to help shed some light on what the small business owner can do to help build site traffic. There are no magic bullets or gimmicks that will work 100% of the time, there are, however, some very basic steps that make your website much more Google or Yahoo friendly.
Your small business website can get more site visitors without having to spend large amounts of money on Pay-Per-Click campaigns. Site building is dependent upon quality SEO and planning ahead.
What are some of the techniques you use to build site traffic to your website? How has your small business brought visitors through the door of your blog or site?
Many small businesses struggle trying to figure out how to get their website to rank high in Google searches. With all the recommendations about SEO and Page Ranking for organic traffic, it is easy to loose sight of the objective, be found in Google.
For most small businesses, the primary market is local. They are doing business in their community and spending time marketing to that community. So, why is it so important to be number one in Google search for someone outside you local community? It isn’t! It’s just bad business to spend time marketing to people you are not going to be selling your goods or services.
This is where Google Places offers an advantage. Places list your registered business to searches in your local community. It is simple to use and highly effective. Here is how you get your business to appear on page one of a Google search in your local community.
If you do not have a Google account, now is the time to get one. Fill in the blanks with the required information and you are ready to get your small business listed with Google.
Get PlacesOnce you have your account, go to Google Places and Sign In. Under the Dashboard tab you will see a link to “Add new listing.” Fill in the information requested about your small business. As you move through the process you will be able to include information about your hours of operation, payment methods, and upload video’s and photo’s. You will have the ability to add as much information about you business as you feel is appropriate and necessary for you potential clients or customers.
Once you have submitted your small business to Google, it will be reviewed and added to Google listings. Now, when people search for your services or products in your community, Google will put your small business at the top of the list with all the details your customers need to connect with you.
Will this help you connect with your local customers better? Tell us what you think below.
