How to Create a Beautiful and Highly Converting Website With WordPress.Com and Popup Maker

Thinking of starting a website for your business? Creating a website is a significant investment, so you’ll want to make sure it pays off.

For one, your website will need to make your brand look attractive and credible so that visitors will have no issues spending money with you. However, your website shouldn’t just be a pretty—looking digital shopfront for your business: it should also be capable of producing results, such as helping you generate more leads or sales. This means that your website will need to be designed to engage with your visitors and incentivize them to convert.

If this sounds daunting, don’t worry. Doing all this is possible with the right website builder platform and popup plugins—no matter whether you run an e-commerce website, blog, small business, or something else. Read on to find out more.

What Will You Need to Produce a Highly Converting Website?

Online users have no shortage of websites to visit (including those of your competitors), so your website will need to make a good first impression to encourage a visitor to stick around⏤and hopefully, convert.

To this end, you’ll need a professional-looking website that establishes your business’ brand. The website builder that you use will strongly influence your website’s look, performance, and conversion potential, so be sure to invest in a premium and reliable option.

In addition, once you have your website set up, you’ll also need to optimize it for conversions by offering:

• Relevant content. Do you know what your visitors are interested in? Then give them exactly that! If your target audience includes fitness junkies, then offer content related to sports and fitness as opposed to pets, for example.
• A pleasant overall customer experience. If visitors find your website too difficult to use, or if they just can’t find what they’re looking for, then they might not stay on your website for very long.
• Web pages with fast page load speeds. People have short attention spans these days, and may not bother to wait if your pages are loading at a snail’s pace.
• Targeted messages that make visitors sit up and take notice. Work on serving up the right messages at the right times, such as through installing countdown timer popup modals that promote limited-time offers.

Why Use the WordPress.com Business Plan for Your Website?

As you research website builders, you’ll probably have come across something called “WordPress.” However, this term can refer to not one, but two possible website builder solutions. Sounds confusing? Let us explain…

First, there is “WordPress.org”, which is usually what people are referring to when they say “WordPress.” This is an open-source software used to run websites or blogs. While the WordPress.org software is free to download and use, you’ll need to host your website or blog yourself. Doing so can involve some technical know-how, not to mention the incurring of hosting fees, so the WordPress.org software may not be suitable for everybody.

Separately, there is “WordPress.com”, which is a more beginner-friendly option for building a website. That’s because it’s a managed hosting solution that takes care of hosting for you. All you have to do is create a free account and then pick the right plan that works for you.

In particular, for businesses looking to create a high-performing, conversion-optimized website, there’s the WordPress.com Business plan. Designed with small businesses in mind, the Business plan offers:

• Flexibility: The Business plan comes with access to unlimited premium themes, and you can also upload your own custom-designed themes. You’ll also be able to install plugins to extend your website’s functionality.
• Performance and security: WordPress.com provides superior, reliable hosting and the latest security features to keep potential threats at bay. Additionally, your website will be automatically backed up every 24 hours for extra peace of mind.
• Search engine optimization (SEO) tools: You’ll be able to customize your web pages’ title formats and meta descriptions to boost your website’s search engine rankings.
• Email and live chat support: Get help from real humans if you’re having trouble with your website. If you opt for annual billing, you’ll also get access to 24/7 priority live chat support.

How To Create a Conversion-Focused Website Using the WordPress.com Business Plan

Starting a new website on the WordPress.com platform is simple. You may also install Popup Maker to optimize your website for conversions, so keep reading as we explain how.

1. Create a WordPress.com Account

Go to WordPress.com and register a free account.

Upon successful sign-up, fill out your website’s domain name. People will use it to visit your website, so pick something easy to remember.

The next step is to pick a pricing plan for your WordPress.com website. As discussed above, the Business plan is a suitable option if you’re just starting out.

2. Choose a Website Template for Your WordPress.com Website

Then here’s the fun part: selecting a template for your website!

Your website template should not only be beautifully designed but also be optimized for conversions. For example, the template could have built-in forms to capture leads or offer distraction-free checkout pages.

3. Install the Popup Maker Plugin

Next, install Popup Maker to set up popups on your website.

In the Plugins tab of the WordPress.com sidebar, click on “Add Plugins.” Then, look for and install the popup plugin that’s called “Popup Maker – Popup for opt-ins, lead gen, & more.”

Finally, install any other plugins that you may need for your website, such as any social media or email marketing plugins. With that, congratulations—you’ve got the basic structure for your website up!

Why Use Popup Maker on Your WordPress.com Website?

Ask anyone what they think of popups, and chances are that they’ll say that popups are distracting. So why should you still add a popup builder to your website? Here are three reasons:

1. Popups Can Help Push Relevant and Valuable Messages

Popups are versatile and can be used to achieve a variety of different marketing objectives. For example:

• If you’re having a sale, a popup can help alert visitors to it and inform them that they can snag a discount if they apply a certain promo code or fulfill a certain order amount.
• On the other hand, perhaps your restaurant is temporarily closed (such as due to pandemic-related reasons). You don’t want your customers to head down only to find that your restaurant is closed, and a popup can notify them of the closure before they make a wasted trip.
• Separately, a shopper might have filled their cart but is now having second thoughts about checking out. With Popup Maker, your website will be able to detect potential cart abandonment and serve up a popup that offers an extra discount to encourage the shopper to complete their purchase.

In all these situations, popups can help push relevant and valuable messages at the right times to facilitate conversions—which is exactly what you want.

2. Popups Help Generate Leads

Apart from promoting certain messages, popups are also a key tool in helping businesses collect leads.

That’s because they can contain form fields for visitors to provide their personal information, whether to receive a free download, request a call-back, or even enter a lucky draw in exchange. Your business can then follow up with such leads and nurture them into paying customers.

Being able to gather leads is especially crucial for new businesses that may not have a large existing customer base or following. Don’t miss out on the chance to gain more leads simply by placing the appropriate popups on the key pages of your website.

3. Popups Are an Effective Marketing Tool

Popups are a feature that has been around for a while, and they haven’t gone away for the simple truth that they are highly effective.

As an example, when digital agency Neuro Web Marketing helped a client install exit-intent popups on its website, the client experienced a 22% increase in conversions and a 40% increase in revenue.

With the above in mind, don’t automatically assume that using popups can cause visitors to quit your website in a huff.

A better strategy is to conduct A/B tests and track your visitors’ responses to your popups. For example, are they heeding the call to action in the popup? Or are they closing the popup without even reading it?

This data can provide valuable insights on the effectiveness of your popups. Then, armed with this data, you can experiment with improvements to get the results that you’re looking for – without being intrusive.

How Can Popup Maker Help Increase Website Conversions?

Convinced that popups are worth a go on your website? Then you’re going to need to install a popup plugin that makes creating and managing popups on your website a piece of cake.

In this regard, Popup Maker is a strong popup builder solution for these reasons:

100% WordPress-Compatibility

Popup Maker will work perfectly with not only your WordPress.com website but also with practically any contact form plugin that you add to it, such as Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms, or WPForms.

High Degree of Customization

Popup Maker comes with 7 pre-installed popup themes, which you can further customize to match your brand.

You can also create your own popup themes from scratch and trigger your popups in multiple ways to suit a whole variety of campaigns. This makes Popup Maker worthy of consideration, no matter the kind of business you operate.

Ease of Use

Popup Maker’s high level of customization doesn’t mean it’s a complicated popup plugin, however. That’s because its popup builder uses the same editor for creating posts and pages on your WordPress.com website. This lowers the learning curve for getting the hang of the plugin, helping you build popups in no time at all.

A dedicated knowledge base will also help you get up to speed with using the plugin quickly.

Good Value for Money

Popup Maker pricing starts at $87 per year, which works out to $7.25/month. Execute your conversion strategies well, and you may just be able to recoup your entire investment for the month (or even the entire year!) pretty quickly.

You can also upgrade to the higher-tiered plans to access premium features, such as popup analytics and popup scheduling, as your needs evolve.

Create a Highly Converting Website With Popup Maker and the WordPress.com Business Plan

Increasing your website’s conversion rate takes more than just sprinkling call-to-action buttons on your website. It starts with building a professionally designed website on a solid platform and then enhancing your website’s performance to provide a pleasant user experience.

Next, when you’ve secured your visitors’ attention, you’ll want to funnel them towards taking the desired actions on your website. In this regard, popups do a good job of pushing key messages and inviting visitors to convert.

If you don’t already have a website, the WordPress.com Business plan may just be the perfect platform for your needs (view its pricing here). Then, pair it with Popup Maker to strategically add popups to your website, and take your conversions to the next level!

The featured image was provided by the author.