A short video with a big huge thanks, some updates and new stuff on the horizon!
Summer Wrap Up 2011
August 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Did you know that 14 pt font is the new 12?
May 19, 2011 By 1 Comment
I recently watched an interesting video with tips on how to improve your website conversion rate. There were a lot of great tips given out in a short amount of time but the one that caught my attention and that I seem to remember the most… 14 is the new 12!
When setting up a WordPress site for my clients, I go in and play with the font size and style. Many templates seem to have a fonts that are too small and crowded for my eyes. There are some I have come across that are downright minuscule!
The font size and style on your site has to be easy to read.
How many times have you come across a site where the pages looked and felt crowded? You may not have realized it but the font size was probably too small, the space between each line of text was too tight and the font style itself did not lend itself to easy scanning. These are all important points to remember - make it easy on the eye for your visitors, help them scan your content quickly, get the highlights, and see if you are a match for what they are looking for.
Yes! Content is king but they need to stay long enough to read it!
In this interview Chris Brogan of ChrisBrogan.com interviews Derek Halpern of SocialTriggers.com about one of Chris’s websites. Here they cover quick tips on improving the website KitchenTableCompanies.com in order to improve how it converts visitors into subscribers and customers. You might find some tips that help you look at your website differently. It did for me! Even a couple small tweaks can make a huge improvement.
The video is just under 10 minutes and well worth the time. I’ll be listening to it again for sure!
5 Reasons to consider WordPress for your next website
March 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Why? What’s the big deal.
You have probably heard over and over again how great it is, and what a great website it would make for your business. But do you know why? What makes people say that on Facebook, Twitter, Blog posts, classes, marketing gurus…
I’m going to give you my take on it and why I have come to love working with WordPress.
- It’s Free – Need I say more? No expensive software to buy and learn to create a WordPress Website. Simply go to WordPress.org and the software is just sitting there for you ready to be download.
- Tons, tons, tons (and did I say tons?) of options to choose from – A crazy number of WordPress templates to choose. From free WordPress themes to Premium WordPress Themes. Plugins, yeah don’t even get me started on that one. I love plugins – plugins extend the functionality of what your WordPress website can do. Of course there is the age old warning, “Too much of a good thing…” can cause problems (will expand on that more in a later post)
- It grows with you – This is right at the top of the list for me. A WordPress website/blogsite is something that
will grow with you and your business. When set up and designed correctly, you have a tool that is easily adapted and changed to fit your business today and still in a year or 5 years from now. That is pretty cool to me. - Lots of help available – If you have questions, there is an incredible array of resources to help you out. YouTube video tutorials, blogs, books, training programs, articles, and of course virtual assistants!! … you name it, it is probably out there to answer your questions. One of the biggest resources is the WordPress.org community itself, with an active forum to ask a question or help someone else out.
- You can control your website – This is far and away the biggest reason that WordPress just rocks! Have you ever had a word or phrase on a website that just begins to bug you and you can’t get to it to fix it? With WordPress you can and that is such a relief and a time/money saver even better. Now should you have a support tech on speed-dial, absolutely! There are so many things that you do not have the time to learn and frankly shouldn’t, having someone on hand to help you with the big updates, changes and integrations is a smart move but thankfully with a WordPress website you are no longer a slave to changing that niggly little word that is bugging you.
There are more reasons… I could go on but these are the big ones on my lit of why using WordPress is a smart move for your business.
Why do you like WordPress?
Selecting the best WordPress Theme for You – Part 3
February 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Here is the long overdue- Part 3 of “Selecting the Best WordPress Theme for You”.
In Part 1 – we covered the wide variety of “Free Themes” available
In Part 2 – we covered the pros and cons of “Bulk Themes”
Here in Part 3 we cover my favorite – Premium Themes.
A Premium Theme is one where you pay for a theme that has been thoroughly tested and usually comes with great support not only from the developer but from the community that has been built around it. [Read more...]
Planning your new WordPress Website or Membership Site
January 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment
When you are ready to start a new website project or re-vamp a current site it is easy to say, let’s go, get it done and learn along the way. While I agree that there is a time to Ready, Fire, Aim, there is also something to be said for pre-planning and putting some thought behind what your end goal is.
One of the projects on my list is to develop a set of Planning FUNbooks (who wants to work 
!) for Membership Sites & Websites. To walk you through the planning stage, to the installation & set up phase to the getting ready to launch phase. With questions, checklists, charts, eventually the works to walk you through the process with options to consider and most importantly helping you nail down, “The Why” of the project.
This is an opportunity to share what I have learned and what I continue to learn with each client project I work on. Over the next few weeks I will be blogging tips and ideas to help me flesh out the steps and get some feedback from you on what questions you have when starting a project like this.
If you have questions right now, put your comment below, I would love to answer and help out if I can.
Great list of WordPress Plugins
January 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment
I’m a sucker for plugins. There are some pretty cool, fun options out there.
Want to customize your blog feed – yes there is a plugin for that.
Need an event calendar? Need a donation button? Need a directory? Wait for it… yes there is a plugin for that too!
Want to have your blog posts convert to Pirate on “Talk Like a Pirate Day”? Oh yeah, there is even a plugin for that!
This is a great list of plugins, many I am looking forward to taking a closer look at and trying:
Mind Blowing WordPress Plugins « Lorelle on WordPress.
Have fun!
Selecting the best WordPress Theme for You – Part 2
September 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment
There is another group of WordPress templates out there called, for lack of a better term – “Bulk Themes”. This is a place where you can plop down $50-75 bucks and have access to literally hundreds of themes. These are great sites to look at if you love themes. You will find just about everything under the sun.
But just like free themes… you really need to be careful. Many of these themes will work just fine out of the box, but as soon as you need to customize a little or a lot, look out. Unless you know your WordPress structure and PHP code inside and out you may be in for a headache. More than once I have had clients spend hours trying to get it to work and then contact me for help, and end up paying me to get it fixed or get it to look the way they had envisioned. As a small business owner this is a drain of your time, energy and possibly not worth the effort. [Read more...]
Selecting the best WordPress Theme for You – Part 1
September 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Selecting a theme is a dangerous proposition, at least it is for me . Themes are fun! Addicting and time consuming.
There are so many to choose from Free Themes, Premium Themes, Bulk Themes… This week we are going to take a closer took at Free Themes, where to find them, what to look for and what to consider.
First things first… Free Themes are fun – looking at all the options, the creativity of designers and incredible array of features. And even better, they are everywhere, you would be hard pressed to not find something that would work for you. The best place to start is to look at WordPress itself: http://wordpress.com/extend/themes, here you probably could find just about anything you might need.
If you go to Google and type in the keywords “free WordPress Themes”:
About 66,200,000 results (0.20 seconds). That should do it don’t you think?
If you are new to WordPress, just learning and getting comfortable with using it. And especially if your budget is tight and not a ton of $$ to invest, a Free Theme is a great way to get started.
Having said all that, there are definitely things to be aware of. [Read more...]
WordPress Wednesday: Press This Tool
August 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment
The more I learn about WordPress the more I realize I have to learn. The “Press This” tool is quite a tool, to not have to think about logging into your site in order to do a quick post may be exactly what is needed to get your blogging habit back on track.
For my bookmarks toolbar I use Xmarks which you can sync across computers and different browsers. Hmm, I”m sensing another tutorial….
Thanks to Andy Traub for introducing me to this cool little tool!
Mistakes Coaches Make When Setting Up A Website – Part 3
May 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment
In the first 2 parts of this series we covered the pros & cons of the All-In-One Package for coaches and the awesome pawesome custom designed WordPress site… until it isn’t so awesome.
The missing piece, not thinking long term
Now I don’t want to target coaches only with this problem, just about every entrepreneur out there when they are getting started, have this issue. It’s also perfectly natural.
You are getting started in your coaching practice, you have a million things to consider, organize and set up. You are most likely bootstrapping your business and every dollar counts. So you look at the very short term and set up only what is absolutely essential right here, right now to get you up and running.
In many areas this will work, you do what you can then, add features plus all the bells and whistles you need, as you need them. But are you looking ahead 1, 3, 6, even 12 months down the road? Have you laid out an action plan of steps and needs as you grow your coaching practice? This is essential for your online presence: Website, Social Media, eCommerce.
When you don’t take that peek down the road a bit it is very easy to get caught in a trap of a solution that “Will work for now”. I can’t tell you how many times that has come back to haunt many entrepreneurs… and yes I’m including myself in that statement. Of course watching the $$ is vital but when you skimp in important areas such as shopping cart, list management and website it will hurt you in the end more then it helps up front.
Your website will become your home base on the internet and it needs to have a strong foundation in order for you to grow and expand, without needing to re-do the entire thing in a few months time. As mentioned before, a self hosted WordPress site is my favorite foundation to get started with.
There are many who think a WordPress site is too “bloggy” looking and I can see that point. You want your site to stand out, be noticed and not look like everyone else’s. But you also want and NEED a site that can be up and running in a short period of time, is something that you can be comfortable working with and does not cost you an arm and a leg in the process. A WordPress site can do that for you… can your current site do all this:
- Easily change the look by installing a new theme
- Let you easily update the site
- Allow you to easily add new marketing mediums, blogging, video, podcasting & social media
- Expandable and adaptable website to allow you to add to new products, programs & features as you add them
- Need a membership site? No problem WordPress can handle that with WishList Member or Digital Access Pass
- Easily integrate your shopping cart and/or list building into the site
- Add a forum in a matter of a couple hours… at most!
So make sure to plan
Take some time to look down the road and review the goals you have in place for your business. What areas of the business will you be developing in the next few months, what role does your website need to play? Will you be venturing into new forms of marketing? What features will you be needing with the new products and/or programs coming up in the next 12 – 18 months?
Do you feel you have a strong foundation in place to get started and grow with? If not contact me today for your FREE consultation and we can see if WordPress might be a good solution for you.
