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Advantages of a Premium WordPress Theme

Retro gas pumpWith the plethora of free themes, you probably are asking yourself whats the point of paying for a premium theme?  It is a good question.  My first experience with WordPress was searching through the large catalog of free themes.  Downloaded a bunch from various developers because I really had a tough time deciding. Then activating each theme was an another adventure, clicking back and forth through my tabs, trying to find the perfect fit.

Time to modify the theme. This is when I was presented with the problem. No standard. I’m not talking about web standards, I’m talking about how the theme was created.  This is when I hopped on the the premium theme train.

Now I want to go over the advantages of using the premium themes. I am going to use the themes offered by StudioPress and built around the Genesis Framework (affiliate link) as my base.

Theme Customization:

  • Widget Ready. Easiest way to modify the look of your site without diving into too much code.
  • 6 different layout options that can be changed within pages and posts.
  • Genesis Custom Widgets including featured page and featured post.  Both are extremely useful for setting up your homepage.

SEO:

  • Built in SEO functionality.  No need to download an extra plug-in.  SEO options can be found on the page and post downloads.

Consistency:

  • All themes are built with the same standards.  Clean CSS style sheets and well documented functionality.

Child Themes:

  • Child themes give the Genesis Framework an identity.  You can choose from the growing library of themes at StudioPress or have a custom one built to your exact form and function.  If you want to change the look of your website over time, all you need to do is activate a new child theme, make some small tweaks to your settings and your website has a new look.

What do you prefer?

Could you improve your website by switching to a premium theme and framework?

 

Filed Under: Genesis, Innovation, Studiopress, WordPress Design Tagged With: , , , ,

Your Website Needs The Human Factor

Every website needs an identity that your visitors can relate to you and interact with. Social networks may put your face and thoughts everywhere, but does it give your website the “human factor”.  Some might ask, what is the human factor and why is this important?  The digital world has left the world of static websites in the dust.  Dynamic platforms, like WordPress, have created a new way to interact with your visitors.

What is the human factor?

Your website has the ability to passively and proactively interact with the visitor.

  • Passive: Information that explains your purpose and digital presence.
  • Proactive: Dynamic content that creates and nurtures thought. (The blog)

Why is it important?

A dynamic, interactive experience helps create repeat visitors.  Investing time into thoughtful content produces a fertile environment for comments and questions.

WordPress gives you the tools needed for a “human” website.  Take advantage of the blog and constantly look for new tools that allow you to proactively interact with your viewers.

I am currently investing more time in understanding BuddyPress in combination with GenesisConnect (affiliate link).  Instead of relying solely on others to create a social platform you can embed one into your website.

 

Filed Under: Business, Business Model Innovation, Genesis, Innovation, Journey, WordPress Design Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The Cage Match Battle for Visitors

Bounce U Birthday PartyBefore beginning the ultimate cage match for visitors you must plan your strategy.  How are you going to utilize your website?  Need to make some changes before? Luckily you are using the Genesis/WordPress power combo and can take advantage of all it modular components. Now lets break down the game plan.

Have you identified your target audience?

Who are your target visitors? You want to convert, sell and get your name out there.  If you don’t know who they are you will lose the battle.  All the information on the homepage must lock them in and make them want more.  Test different content to see what creates the most page views.

How are you going to keep them?

The customer experience expands beyond your widget or service.  Its is important that they can interact beyond the “submit payment”.  Using a blog will help make you a trusted source for information and give you the opportunity to interact with your visitors.  Knowing who they are and what their needs are gives you an important edge over the competition.  Collaboration goes miles.  Another over looked tool is to create a social network WITHIN your website.  You can do this with WordPress, Genesis and GenesisConnect for BuddyPress (affiliate link).  Contact me if you want to learn more.

Now you have a solid group of visitors, but it doesn’t hurt to have a few more.

Promote yourself as a knowledge leader in your market.  Blog, and share what you know.  Humbly promote what you or your widget can do.  Bragging isn’t the answer. Solid reviews and interaction of your posts will go well beyond bragging.

It is also important your website as been optimized for search engines.  Everyone talks about “SEO”.  Yes it is probably an over used catch phrase, but it is extremely important if you want to be seen.  Genesis gives you the all the options and makes it easy to enter your meta descriptions, and keywords.  You can easily take advantage of the blog importance in search engines.

Now that we have laid out your game plan its time to take action and step in the ring.

What else do you do to get ready for the battle?

Filed Under: Business, Genesis, Innovation, WordPress Design Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Hello Bar First Impressions

HELLORecently added the “Hello Bar” by digital-telepathy and I am impressed.  Its a huge improvement from the annoying opt-in pop-ups.

Here are my first thoughts:

  • Doesn’t disrupt.  Do you want your visitor to read about your service completely through or get disrupted half-way?
  • Customization. You can easily configure it to mirror your site.
  • Send the visitor to a sign up or landing page.  It is basically a mini landing page in itself.
  • Integration. Easily and quickly integrates into WordPress (Genesis made it easier).

Do you see it helping your click through and increasing lead conversions?

Filed Under: Innovation, Weekly Innovation, WordPress Design Tagged With: , , , , ,

WordPress Adventure… Challenging but Awesome

Tungsten ScreenshotCreating a theme is fun, extremely challenging the first time around, but fun.  I am learning something new about WordPress and the Genesis Framework every time I sit down to work with it.

I activated the theme on my site while I put some of the finishing touches on it.  Building on the local host can only go so far.  Since this is my first try, I would appreciate if you can take some time to try each page out and send me some feedback.

Thanks for taking the time to check it out.

Filed Under: Innovation, Journey, Studiopress, WordPress Design Tagged With: , , , , , ,

My Latest WordPress Adventure

Path
My first thought is this new adventure of mine is not going to help my time management.  However, the greatest part is there isn’t a deadline.  Now that I have that cleared up, I’ll let you know my new latest and greatest adventure.

Building a WordPress child theme for the Genesis Framework by Studiopress (affiliate link).

I posted a preview of the theme recently and have been making some solid progress.  As I move further along more screenshots will be posted and all feedback will be greatly appreciated.  Ultimately, I want to continue this adventure beyond number (if the wife allows…)

Time for some feedback.

  • Does your specific market lack a quality theme?
  • Do you have any ideas for themes?

Genesis Framework for WordPress

Filed Under: Business, Innovation, Journey, Studiopress, WordPress Design Tagged With: , , , ,

Foundation

Part 1 of … for my “Transition to Clients” blog series.  As with any sport, hobby or activity, it always starts with the basics.  You can’t play baseball if you haven’t learned to catch and throw.  You can’t build a house without a solid foundation.

WordPress is the solid foundation to build on.  The possibilities are endless.

If you really want to take advantage it, you use the Genesis Framework by StudioPress.

Genesis Theme Settings Snapshot:

Genesis SEO Settings Snapshot:

From the two snapshots you can see the amount of options and flexibility of the Genesis Framework.  Add a custom child theme or a child theme from StudioPress and you have a premier website.  As you can see the “Basics” are simple and straight-forward.  Now what happens when you want to add and or edit pages on your new site? Part 2 coming soon.

Interested in learning more about Genesis? Do you want to utilize this powerful framework on your website? Lets talk.

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Filed Under: Innovation, Studiopress, WordPress Design Tagged With: , , , ,

Getting to Where I Want to Be

Yogi Berra

“You’ve got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going because you might not get there.” – Yogi Berra

Where do I want Next Level Innovation to take me?  This question I was pondering on my ride home from work today.  I thought about it in past, present and future.  Quickly I realized the past was not as important since my knowledge and experience has come a long way since I first bought the domain.

That brings me to the present.  I know my skills and capabilities but the path to where I want to be is more difficult then I first imagined.  With a portfolio of (drum roll please) one website, it has proved to be more of a challenge getting number two.  Taking the next few steps in this “journey” is important but I need to know where I’m going and how I plan on getting there first.

How do I bridge the gap?

What are my next steps?

I’ll look more into this in part 2 of “Getting to Where I Want to Be”.

Filed Under: Innovation, Journey Tagged With: , , ,

What was NLI created with?

I thought it would be a good idea to discuss how I created my site.  Now there is thousands of themes out there for WordPress, so my decision was largely based of functionality.  In my search for the perfect content management based theme, I stumbled upon Studiopress.  Their themes had the functionality I was looking for, but what impressed me more was how clean and professional they looked.  For the Knotts Company site it was decided to use the Corporate Classic theme (Unfortunately my web design adventure started before the Genesis Framework).

Time to fast forward…

Studiopress since then has released the Genesis Framework.  The level of functionality increased exponentially and the simplicity of WordPress did not change.  The next step was picking a simple yet effective child theme to differentiate my site from others.  I decided to use the Agency Child theme.  The child theme is impressive right out of the box but I wanted to change it to suit my views and taste.   I’m going to continue to play around with the child theme and try some different tweaks but overall I’m happy with where I’m at.

For future sites I am going to make sure I can use one of the many different child themes.  The variety helps expand my potential CMS market.  A resource of this level is an excellent means of differeniating my clients from their competition.  I will be able to give them the innovative edge that they need.

If you want to look further into Studiopress’s Genesis Framework & Agency Child Theme (affiliate link), just click.

Filed Under: Business, Innovation, Studiopress Tagged With: , , ,