Beautiful WordPress Technology Themes For Inspiration

Imagine a world without technology. Difficult, isn’t it? No Internet, no computers, no cell-phones, no TV. Surely technology makes our lives easier and more technology makes our lives even easier. New inventions are made every now and then and they need the word to spread so that more and more people will know about them and may use them. In today’s world the Internet is one of the best options available to spread the word about anything. Other aspects like TV commercials, print media ads, posters, etc. are somewhat limited in the sense that they do not provide the “complete information” about a product.

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Conversion Hacks: Increasing Opt-In Rates

How many of you have tried several email campaigns but have wondered why they aren’t so effective? How many of you are actually clueless as to how to maximize the power of email marketing and how you can use it to your advantage? Let’s take at the look at the ways you can increase your email list using these tips and tricks on increasing your Opt-In rates. Check out these terms – Opt-In, Confirmed Opt-In, Double Opt-In, and Opt-Out:

Opt-in:

Sometimes referred to as “single opt-in,” basically means that people are only added to an email list if they actually fill out a registration form. They are given the “option” to receive email with their permission. Otherwise, the unsolicited email is referred to as spam.

Confirmed Opt-in:

This is similar to the opt-in method, but after someone signs up for your email list, you’d send them a “thank you” confirmation email that contains a link to unsubscribe from your list (just in case they were signed up by someone else without their permission).

Double Opt-in:

Someone signs up for your email list. You send a confirmation email with a link that they must click before they’re added to your list. If they don’t click the link, they don’t get added to the list. When users confirm that they want on your list, you should store their IP address, and confirmation date and time in your records. Some say this is the best way to handle your email list.

Opt-out:

This is an old-fashioned way of building your email list where you’d typically have some form for people to fill out but with a hidden or not so obvious pre-checked box at the bottom, with something like, “Yes, please sign me up for your email newsletter!”

Tips and Tricks:

The headline, call to action (CTA) and opt-in box must have good headline. Write 100 headlines and pick the best one.

If you’re using a photo of a person in your landing page, have person looking at opt-in area

Simple plain flat book cover or graphic + opt-in box converts well

Other things that can make a big impact:

  • Have live chat on your site. You can outsource for approximately $300. 1 in 3 chatters buy. Set up a special follow up series for chatters because they are engaged prospects
  • Your best affiliate is your customer service. They know the your customers the best. Turn customer service people into sales people. Give customer service reps affiliate link. Create an email signature for customer service emails with what you’re promoting.
  • Use an Upsell formula
  • Make a “bucket offer”. Offer them more of what they bought at a greatly discounted price. (ex. Buying an apple for $1, then being offer 10 apples for $3)
  • Don’t worry about profit. Try to break even.
  • Send buyers additional offers via Direct mailing buyers additional offers. If someone buys from you but doesn’t buy upsell, direct mail a sales letter for the upsell
  • Telephone follow-up – Calling webinar attendees after webinar can increase your sales if you call your webinar attendees and ask them why they didn’t buy.
  • Ditching the progress bar on checkout process can cut cart abandonments in half

Keep testing your landing pages and keep tab of people’s responses to your marketing strategies to find out which method works best for your company. As you continue to understand your target market’s behavior the better you will be able increase your Opt-in rates and eventually your sales.

Around the WordPress Neighborhood

The WordPress community is comprised of people from all over the world – developers, designers, experts, users, writers, volunteers, and everyone else no matter what skill level they are at – movers and shakers who collaborate and contribute to enrich this ecosystem we belong to. We enhance our own knowledge and grow and improve by learning from one another and by opening ourselves to different perspectives and different points of views.

Here’s a roundup of useful articles from contributors in and around the WordPress community that we think you will find useful.

A Conversation with Om – by Siobhan McKeown

Siobhan McKeown is in search of WordPress users to feature in her book about WordPress and blogging and Om Malik is one of the people on her list. She shares Om’s blogging journey and how it has evolved since the early days. Siobhan McKeown is editor in chief at WP Realm and runs Words for WP, a copywriting service dedicated to WordPress service providers.

Contributing To WordPress – by Siobhan McKeown

If you have been wanting to be more involved in the WordPress community but didn’t know how or where to start, this article opens up the doors to how you can take part. This article shares why you should get involved and enumerates the many ways you can contribute, no matter what your skill set may be. Find out where you can plug your self in and be a proactive member of this dynamic community.

The Future of UI – How Mobile Design Is Shaping The Web – by Sarah Cannon

In this slideshare presentation, Sarah Cannon shares valuable insights on how smart mobile devices have impacted the web. She discusses the influence of mobile on design, trends, and implementation methods, as well as how touch is changing our lives. She also touches on topics such as HiDPI graphics, UI/UX patterns, touch target sizes, gestures, and managing expectations. All the while not losing track of what’s important: Content.

5 Ways to Support High-Density Retina Displays – by Craig Buckler (SitePoint)

In this article, Craig Buckler gives a quick rundown on how to support high retina displays. As hardware manufacturers move towards HD Retina Displays in all sorts of devices, Craig Buckler gives some practical advice on how to manage images and resolution. Craig Buckler is a Director of OptimalWorks, a UK Consultancy dedicated to building award winning websites.

What is a WordPress Child Theme – WPBeginner

p>This article published by WPBeginner is a very good and solid introduction to understanding how WordPress Child Themes work. It explains in detail what a WordPress Child theme is, its use, its advantages and disadvantages, and what to look for as far as picking a good parent theme. WPBeginner is a free WordPress resource site that provides tips, tricks, hacks, tutorials, and other WordPress resources geared towards WordPress beginners.

Business and Solutions – by Thomas Griffin

If you are a WordPress developer, author, or designer, Thomas Griffin’s insights regarding the how the WordPress marketplace is affecting developers like him. Read about his thoughts regarding Avada, Envato, and Genesis and his shift from being a developer into a marketer. Thomas Griffin is an expert WordPress developer, creator of hundreds of themes and plugins, WordCamp speaker, and a valuable contributor to WordPress products.

Redefining My Website – by Brian Gardner

Brian Gardner is well-known in the WordPress community and is the man behind StudioPress and the popular Genesis Framework. He has released several WordPress child theme designs that are currently being used ii and around the WordPresseaommundty. on about his current website redesign and glean insights from his creative journey.

Owning Your Content – A WordPress User’s Guide – Alex Denning (WPShout)

Interesting read about protecting and “owning” your content on the web as Alex Denning shares about protecting images, licensing content, and how social networking sites such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook impact how your images and content are treated. Alex Denning started WPShout around 4 years agoa as a collection of WordPress tutorials.

Finely Tuned Consultant – Aaron Campbell (WPEngine Interview)

WordPress professionals will glean a lot and learn valuable lessons and insights from WordPress Consultant Aaron Campbell in this interview published by WPEngine. Aaron shares his experiences as a WordPress professional and how he deals with the challenges faced by every WordPress consultant on the job. You can find more of Aaron Campbell’s work at Ran.ge

Migrating a Website to WordPress Is Easier Than You Think – Jonathan Wold

If you need are a WordPress beginner and you want to migrate an existing website to WordPress, this article gives you basic and concrete steps you can take to accomplish this. From evaluation, to set up, to importing content, to the actual migration and publishing, Jonathan Wold guides you through each process using instructions, code, video, and images. Jonathan Wold is a full-time business consultant and WordPress developer specializing in basic and advanced WordPress migrations.

Best BuddyPress Themes May 2013

BuddyPress is an open source social networking software package owned by Automattic – essentially, a plugin that can be installed on WordPress to transform it into a social network platform. If you are considering to up the ante on your blog by being more socially connected, here are some of the best BuddyPress themes you can check out:

Flix BuddyPress Ready Team Blogging

Flix is a powerful and flexible community blogging theme for WordPress. you can use to start your own community in no time. This theme includes BuddyPress and bbPress as part of the many superb features of this theme. It also includes a SmartTab system where you can put authors in the spotlight. Easily order the front page by posts from a specific author a specific category without reloading the page. The team blogging feature is perfect for both small and big blogs that have multiple contributors. This responsive theme is also whitelabel enabled which means you can easily customize the theme to suit your business brand.

OneCommunity BuddyPress Theme

OneCommunity theme is a responsive WPMU compatible theme integrated with a BuddyPress plugin. This plugin allows users to register on your site and start creating profiles, posting messages, making connections, creating and interacting in groups and much more. This theme is a social network in a box where you can build a social network for your company, school, sports team or niche community. The theme includes over 40 inner pages to manage profiles, activities, messages, group messages, invitations, subscriptions, and forums of both members and groups.

Razor

Razor is a responsive and clean, professional looking BuddyPress theme for WordPress. Built on a responsive layout structure and supporting Retina (HiDPI) enabled devices, this theme is packed with powerful modern features and the advanced controls such as Drag and Drop Layout Manager, Contact Form Builder, White Label Admin, Sidebar Manager and so much more. Building websites, communities, social networks is a breeze with this amazing looking theme. The possibilities are endless.

Social Buddy

Social Buddy is a responsive, flexible, BuddyPress and BBPress integrated community WordPress theme that is perfect for niche communities and social networks. Its fully fluid responsive design makes it work beautifully on mobile devices. This theme includes extensive documentation and an intuitive options panel making setup and customization a breeze. Theme support is excellent and top notch.

Conversion Hacks : Increasing the Open Rate

Last week, we touched on open rate as one of several tools that can be used to measure the effectivity of an electronic advertising campaign. This week we’ll take a look at how we can take a good email campaign, increase your open rate stats and eventually convert them into actual subscribers for the long haul.

According to the July 2012 Email Marketing Metrics Report issued by Mailer Mailer,

An open rate represents the number of people who opened an email. It is calculated by dividing the number of email messages opened by the number of messages delivered. The result is expressed as a percentage.

( % Open Rate = # of messages opened / # of messages delivered )

An open can be inferred if images are enabled or a link within the email is clicked. Images may be automatically enabled when an email is opened, especially if the recipient has chosen to display them for all emails from that sender.

However, more often than not, the recipient is prompted to enable images for each email. Since recipients may open the email but fail to enable images, this metric is somewhat inaccurate.

Nevertheless, open rate remains a useful gauge of email campaign performance.

A Standard or Normal Open Rate varies from industry to industry or by list size. According to the same report mentioned above, the industries that were among that scored the highest open rates in 2011 include:

Banking (16.8%), Non-Profit (16.1%), and Consulting and Small business (15.9%)

(source: mailermailer.com)

In another more extensive report, the 2013 Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study conducted by Silverpop, statistics show that consumer product emails scored the highest for open rates with a median of 25.4 percent unique open rate. You can find out more about this report on Silverpop.com.

What about the other industries? What can be done to increase their email open rates? If you are looking to improve your open rate, here are a few tips to follow:

It’s All About the Subject Line

FACT: Nothing happens until the email gets opened.

That’s why it is important to create compelling, effective, and actionable subject lines that make users want to open their emails. Good rules of thumb include asking a question, keeping subject lines under six words and using lowercase in all but the first word and proper nouns.

Test your subject lines. Here are some examples of proven subject lines:

  • Odd Numbers : Why He Paid Google 524,838.71.
  • Question Marks: ex. Google Made Me Slap Proof?
  • Percentages: ex. 99% of People Dieting Need to do This.
  • New Video, PDF, Pics, Video Blog Post
  • Free Report: ex. 7 Deadly S.E.O. Mistakes (free report)
  • Personal Pronouns: (you, your, et cetera)
  • Scarcity: ex. Third and Final Notice
  • Pique Curiosity / Confuse / Shock: ex. Kinda Weird But Very Profitable
  • Negative Subject Lines: ex. I Hate Technology
  • Borrowed Credibility: ex. Steve Jobs was Wrong!
  • Fill-in-the blank Subject Lines: ex. 7 Secrets of _____

Subject Line Sources to glean from

  • Reddit.com
  • Google suggest
  • Popurls.com

Knowing that your open rate exceeds the industry average doesn’t necessarily mean you are meeting your company’s most important business goals. The open rate metric is a useful tool but must be used in conjunction with other metrics in order to give you a realistic picture of your company’s performance. Used correctly, the data can help you calibrate your marketing efforts in order to strengthen areas that need to strengthened. Testing is constant in order to cement customer/prospect relationship, and eventually maximize conversions and revenue.

WordPress Theme Clubs: 2013 Edition

If you’ve been around the WordPress community for quite some time, you surely are familiar with WordPress theme clubs, popular or otherwise, and how they work. For those just getting their feet wet regarding everything WordPress, check out our previous article, What is a WordPress Theme Club for a quick run through on theme club basics.

For the WordPress newbie, here are some of the more popular and still active WordPress Theme Clubs to explore.

Elegant Themes

Elegant Themes is one of the most popular WordPress theme clubs, with over 170,000 customers. They currently have more than 81 themes, releasing new themes regularly. Elegant Themes offers its members access to a variety of themes that range from portfolio themes, to business themes, to blogging/news themes, to eCommerce themes, to personal themes. Their themes have a distinct style that combines aesthetic and function seamlessly. Elegant Themes offers 3 different membership packages: Personal, Developer and Lifetime options with access to more than 81 themes, shortcodes, and other benefits.

StudioPress

The Genesis Framework and child themes by StudioPress have been around for quite some time as well. Founded by Brian Gardner (Copyblogger), StudioPress has been churning high quality coded WordPress themes for years. StudioPress is different from Elegant Themes in that they sell themes individually in addition to the club membership. With over 86,000 members and 43 themes for a one-time fee of $349.95 which includes lifetime access to all of the current StudioPress themes, all future themes, and updates to all themes as they become available.

ThemesKingdom

Themes Kingdom offers all of their themes (currently 47 themes), plus 1 plugin (Scebo, for a customer support system) for $50 per year. Members can use the themes on an unlimited number of domains, including on client websites. Themes Kingdom members get access to attractive themes in a wide variety of categories, including portfolio themes, business themes, blog themes, news themes, and more.

Organic Themes

Organic Themes was founded in 2009 by David Morgan and Jeff Milone and was developed as an expression of their personal lifestyles. Their design approach lean towards the more professional look sans the excessive flashy effects, gradients, drop shadows and other bells and whistles commonly seen in the web design world. They are committed to clean code, with just the right amount of theme options which translate into faster load times, setup and customization. Organic Themes offers a variety of premium WordPress themes for artists, businesses and bloggers.

ThemesTown

ThemesTown is one of the new kids on the block that’s worth watching. If their impressive and creative website design is a gauge of what can be expected from them, then there is much to look forward to. Right now, they are building up their depository of homegrown exclusive premium themes but while you are waiting, you can also check out their huge list of the best free WordPress themes that have been culled from what’s out there. Membership rate is pegged at $55 one-time fee, with no monthly dues and no future charges.

Photography WordPress Themes Roundup for April 2013

Here are a few of our current picks for awesome photography themes for 2013:

Modelish

Modelish is a unique modern HTML5+LESS fully responsive WordPress theme for presenting artwork or photography. This full-width photography/portfolio styled theme is also versatile enough to be used for any type of business as well. The stylish, yet clean and professional design is optimized with mobile first techniques and retina display support. Add some style and modern flair to your website with its customizable system that makes it easy to adapt to your favorite colors, fonts and style preferences.

Keres Full Screen Photography Theme

Keres is a cool fullscreen responsive WordPress theme built for a photography or portfolio website. It comes with many cool features like multiple slideshows (fullscreen Slideshow, Ken Burns Slideshow), a unique Image Flow Gallery, Skin manager, fullscreen Contact Map, fullscreen Youtube and Vimeo Video. This theme includes customizable elements (color, font, background image) with 50+ advanced shortcodes and a Shortcode Generator support to create the portfolio style you really want.

Photojax Minimalist Ajax Photography Portfolio

Photojax is a clean and minimal, grid styled WordPress photography theme. This sleek and modern theme features two color skins, beautiful galleries using the premium Royal Slider plugin ($20 value), an audio player, and a minimal blog (all you’ll need for a great photography portfolio). Although designed for photographers it can be a great theme for graphic designers, architects, and anyone else with an image based portfolio.

Sniper Premium Photography

Sniper is a sleek and powerful premium responsive + liquid WordPress theme built for photographers, creative agencies or portfolio website. All elements of this theme are liquid which makes it ideal for smartphone and mobile devices. This modern WordPress theme’s dynamic navigation system makes it fun and interesting to explore your website – from dropdown menus to toggled pages, everything is full of surprises.

Smarald

Smarald is an incredibly unique, highly interactive, retina ready, responsive WordPress Portfolio theme, suitable for all sorts of creatives, agencies and even blogs. Whether you want to showcase your work in a beautiful way, share your articles with your readers, or just to have a great interactive website for your agency, this premium theme is the perfect solution for you.

More Traffic And Conversion Tips

Nobody wants to get stuck in traffic. People hate traffic unless it’s the kind of traffic that you get on your website. The fundamental objective of every business online is to grow and maintain their business. That’s why directing traffic to their website and building a large subscriber list of people who will eventually become loyal paying customers should be the main focus point in order to earn money online successfully.

Here are some more tips to help you achieve that:

Solo Ad Traffic:

  • There are 2 types of paid traffic: fixed cost and performance based. If you are doing fixed cost, make sure you get as much out the ad spend as possible.
  • If you have a landing page, create a curiosity headline to generate interest.
  • Buy other people’s exit pop traffic.
  • Put Solo Ad in other people’s follow up series.
  • When sending email, change the “From” line from the name the subscriber list normally expects to a new name. Be creative.

Viral Traffic:

  • Best traffic is endorsed traffic
  • Incentivized viral promotion – give something away for free, then offer them incentives (cash or kind) to give it away to their friends.
  • Viral poster

Guerilla Traffic

  • Use Facebook promoted posts
  • Test ads to find the best headlines
  • Before/after posts are great marketing tools. They should have the same offer or social proof for people to see.
  • Landing pages that are funny work.
  • Add “Report spam” / “Unsubscribe” link to the top of your emails. This gets complainers off your email listing fast.
  • If you are sending daily emails, give your subscribers the option to send them a weekly digest.

We hope you find these tips useful and that you would put them to use on your websites. If you do, let us know. We’d love to hear your success stories.

Interesting WordPress Themes April 2013

Academy (Online Education)

Turn your website into a functioning e-learning solution with Academy Learning Management Theme from ThemeForest. This premium wordpress theme takes the elegant form of an ecommerce site and tweaks it to meet the needs of the e-learning market. Share, sell and promote your knowledge online effectively. This powerful theme includes features and functions to help you manage course offerings, rate their popularity, and publish subscription plans aimed to reach your target market. This theme includes a powerful options panel that allows you to create courses and lessons.This theme provides awesome features for creating online courses, such as extended user profiles, rating system, questions system, file attachments, embedding self-hosted media, tracking course progress, WooCommerce integration and more.

Responsive Knowledge Base & FAQ WordPress Theme

For the business or website that exists to help people make the most of their computing experience, Responsive Knowledge Base is the perfect theme to use. This premium WordPress theme was built for support providers as a first line response solution for clients seeking answers to their problems, technical or otherwise. This theme acts as a knowledge base or depository where visitors can search your site for solutions to their issues. Users can browse through Q and A pages, articles and similar material or do a live search (jQuery TypeAhead powered) to help them identify their problems and find solutions.

Rescue – Animal Shelter Theme with Petfinder Support

Animal lovers unite! Rescue Premium WordPress Theme is a theme built with a specific purpose – to get animals adopted. Outstanding pet-related WordPress themes are few and far between that’s why Rescue is a special theme pet lovers can find a home in. What makes it more unique is the built in Petfinder API support that allows you to easily sync your pets from your Petfinder profile to your WordPress install. Petfinder is an online, searchable database of animals who need homes. It is also a directory of more than 13,000 animal shelters and adoption organizations across the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

GymBoom (Fitness)

If you are in the fitness business or if you own a gym, a health club, or a wellness center, check out GymBoom, a responsive fitness theme with a built in dynamic calendar to manage training schedules for those serious health buffs and fitness addicts. This responsive theme also sports a unique diagonal slider created with the slider creation tool. It’s got useful shortcodes to post lists, highlight text, create multiple columns and more. You also get two homepage option styles: one with a slider and a page styles option. Gymboom includes a google map shortcode integrated in the widgetized footer section.