WordPress site to be renewed? 5 steps to get started

WordPress site to be renewed? 5 steps to get started

Yesterday I received an email from a user asking me for advice to “revive” his site, obviously realized with WordPress.

He told me to have this WordPress site to sell his product info that until a couple of years ago had given him great satisfaction, but then, as sometimes happens, he had no more time to manage and that now appeared obsolete .

Being a site to sell info products I thought that the elements that should never have been missing are:

  1. A blog
  2. Landing page
  3. Newsletter
  4. Private area or areas to protect files for download
  5. Tools to communicate with users

Below you will find my answer to your needs.

Which WordPress Theme to choose

If you do not have a premium theme already purchased, I would recommend you to download ZERIF LITE for free .

It is a freemium WordPress template, that is, a free and a half premium medium, but you will only need the free part, because it is a fairly complete theme, if it is not enough you can buy the paid version or choose among the many child themes also available for free.

Plugin for Page builder

Long with this theme, I highly recommend you download Elementor .

Elementor is a WordPress plugin that provides you with the best freemium page builder (like the theme, but here too only the free one) that will make it much easier to create your static pages and landing pages. It’s a bit like the Visual Composer, used in many other premium themes, but in this case you do not have to pay anything.

Create a Contact Form

Obviously you will want to create a page that will show your contacts and contact details. We must pay close attention to this page, because it will be our hook to get in touch with users who surf our site. On this page, you will be sure to place a contact form so that users can send you a message. To do it the best way I suggest you install Caldera Forms , a freemium plugin, but already very complete by the free version. Caldera will help you create fantastic forms, complete with auto responders, conditions and much more.

To better discover this wonderful plugin I suggest you read my review on Caldera Forms , you will discover all the features of this wonderful and unfailing work tool for your site.

 

Create a newsletter

If you also want to create a newsletter you have 2 possibilities: an external service or send email directly from your server.

If you use an external server you have to rely on the many paid services such as Active Campaigner, aWeber, MailUp, GetResponse, etc., but there is also something free, I think you will definitely know MailChimp.com .

MailChimp gives you a free plan that allows you to have up to 2000 contacts and send up to 12,000 emails a month.

I also inform you that for some days now the automation service for free profiles is also active, which allows you to program automatic emails on the basis of actions that come to the list (for example, send one or more emails after X days to a user, after who registered for a newsletter).

So here too nothing to pay. There is a maximum threshold, but you can safely use it at least at the beginning.

In the second case, that is, if you want to send your newsletter using your server then I recommend a very complete and quite professional WordPress plugin MailPoet Newsletter .

As said, it is a fairly professional service, so if you are a server, an external SMTP service and go quiet, otherwise use MailChimp with its thousands of plugins for WordPress.

Customer service

If you also do customer service on your site WordPress I would recommend a WordPress plugin that I made myself and allows you to chat with your users through your Facebook page . It is also very useful for increasing engagement with your Facebook page. You can then respond to chats even when you are not at the computer thanks to the official Facebook application to manage the pages, all for free and without having to pay very expensive third-party services. In addition, if a user were to leave a message and then leave, you can “follow” even once away from your site, always thanks to the Facebook messaging service. Without talking about the advantage you can have at the level of engagement (audience involvement).

The plugin is located in the WordPress repository and is called Live Chat for Facebook Fanpage .

You will read that the author is ThemeintheBox , in practice it is my project where I publish free and paid HTML / CSS templates and WordPress themes that I create together with my staff.

Reserved area

Finally I wanted to give you a tip on a nice plugin to create areas reserved with WordPress: Ultimate Member .

Let’s say that even in this case is an adaptation to what could be a paid service (and certainly more complete) as aMember, but without paying keys that expire once a year, you will then have protected areas , levels for users and everything what you should use to manage users.

Obviously if you want more you can buy the extended license for each of the plugins that I have recommended, but I assure you that I have worked with all these WordPress plugins for my clients who work daily with their WordPress sites, without problems and without paying nothing.

Posted by: Web Digital Media Group