20+ Tips To Optimize Your WordPress Lead Capture Forms

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Underestimating the influence of lead capture forms can result in lower conversion rates.

Although a form seems like a non-issue, it is crucial when it comes to turning visitors into customers. That being said, applying optimization techniques to your WordPress lead capture form can also optimize your conversions.

Here are some tips on how to optimize your WordPress lead capture forms:

  • Place your form at the top of the page;
  • Distract with a purpose;
  • Align a copy;
  • Ensure strong call to action;
  • Keep the form short;
  • Consider the number of fields;
  • Stop asking too many questions;
  • Mark the required fields;
  • Be transparent;
  • Have a clear message;
  • Make the form mobile-friendly;
  • Do thank;
  • Ensure privacy;
  • Split test;
  • Aim for design quality;
  • Add a personal touch;
  • Make your form interactive;
  • Insert visuals;
  • Offer something in exchange;
  • Create popup forms;
  • Use captchas to block spam;
  • Include social proof;
  • Create a multistep process.

Place Your Form At The Top

According to the research, people spend 74% of the viewing time above the fold. When a page first loads, this refers to the part of your site that visitors can see without scrolling. Therefore any crucial action you want your audience to take should be placed right there (your WordPress lead generation form included).

Distract With A Purpose

Another good practice is to embed a form in the middle of the article so you double benefit: readers have a chance to get themselves familiar with your content and you still collect data without irritation.

Align The Copy

One of the key components of effective lead generation form is an alignment with the rest of the content, like keeping design and language (also the use of keywords) consistent. In that case, your form will achieve a greater impact on visitors with a persuasive message that creates a sense of moving forward (without interrupting the flow).

When in synergy, relevant call-to-action, body text, and a headline are aligned not only with your audience’s expectations but also with best search engine optimization (SEO) practices.

Ensure Strong (And Persuasive) CTA’s text

If your form is the cornerstone of the lead generation process, your CTA (call to action) is the cornerstone of your form. Your CTA should instruct people on how to complete an action you want them to take. Think of a CTA as a specific campaign with a single purpose.

A tip here: the text of your button should tell what will happen next once a visitor clicks. A small (yet creative) tweak in the copy can massively impact the click-through rate.

Keep It Short

Don’t indulge in long forms to achieve the primary goal of the form. You want your form to convert, that is why so crucial is to keep it short, engaging, and concise. The less you ask, the more likely visitors give away their personal information.

Put it simply, you need to ‘kill your darlings’ – eliminate any unnecessary fields (like an alternative phone number, etc.).

Consider The Number Of Fields

The number of fields included in your form depends on multiple things. You need to define at what stage of your sales funnel you are going to reach out to your potential leads and what is the main goal of the particular form as a part of your conversion rate optimization efforts.

After that, the remaining is to consider what personal data is absolutely necessary to ask.

But still, the shorter the form, the more likely visitors won’t resist it.

Stop Asking Too Many Questions

Long forms irritate because they create a feeling that a brand is asking for too much. When time and attention are the most valuable resources, you should keep people engaged throughout the process of filling the form.

Mark The Required Fields

Optional fields will make it easy to leave data even for those who are not very motivated while you will still collect the desired information. If you have both required and optional fields, you can either mark required fields with an asterisk or name optional ones right inside the field.

Be Transparent

If your form still requires to be a long one, introduce transparency into it. Show your potential leads how much time they need to invest in and display a progress bar to stimulate the process.

People are more likely to give up the task if they haven’t made any progress there.

Have A Clear Message

Clear communication doesn’t end with a straightforward copy and a strong what-will-happen next call to action. It also requires to align the form and the rest of the landing page and display users’ mistakes when misentering information or skipping fields.

To get more clicks and stimulate the right decision, your form should be simple and easy to understand.

Make The Form Mobile-Friendly

According to the recent data, half of all people who have access to the Internet use mobile devices to view websites. That’s why creating a site (and a form) optimized for mobiles is the rule of thumb, so you convert mobile users as well. To achieve these two aims at once, go for a website builder that ensures built-in auto responsiveness.

Because having an unresponsive form can hurt your conversion rate optimization efforts, you can also prevent it by sticking to a one-column layout, and skipping captchas for those using mobile devices.

Do Thank

Include a ‘Thank you’ message after visitors fill out the form. Thanking is a great way to show you value everyone who comes across your page – not only existing customers.

Because strong long-lasting relationships with your audience should be built as early as possible, let them know you appreciate their time and attention they have spent answering.

Ensure Privacy

It’s crucial to inform your visitors about how you are going to use their personal information to convince them to share one. Being transparent can reduce visitors’ hesitation, gain trust and credibility in your brand.

You can link to your privacy policy either at the very bottom of your form or include a checkbox asking for permission to use given data.

Split Test

Do test your forms. This is a great practice to keep abreast of whether your form (and its optimization) works or not.

You can perform split tests (also called A/B tests) by using a free Google Optimize tool by Google. It can help you to determine if and how you can optimize the conversion rate of your form by changing its position, the color of your CTA button, and more.

Aim For Design Quality

A well-polished form can increase your brands’ credibility because people associate the quality of the design with your company’s trustworthiness.
Some of the best practices to enhance the appearance of your form is to allow white spaces, follow color psychology principles, and use relevant eye movement patterns (visual hierarchy) when designing the form.

Add A Personal Touch

Decisions are often empowered by emotions that guide thinking and actions. Personalizing the design and the copy of your web form humanizes your brand. Human language and authentic appearance are what makes a form stand out and increase peoples’ willingness to come back to your website.

For example, instead of presenting an empty name field, include ‘Hi, my name is *your name*, what’s yours?’ in there.

Make Your Form Interactive

Making your form as interactive as possible will create a positive user experience and add a human touch to your form. An ability to interact and engage with a form increases its value to users which results in a higher probability for you to convert valuable leads.

Insert Visuals

The psychology behind successful UX of web forms states that pairing textual information and visuals makes it easier to recall the form (and therefore your brand) and also attract more visitors by being perceived as easier to use.

Offer Something In Exchange

One of the best ways to reinforce people’s desire to fill out a lead capture form is to present a statement of benefits or create a giveaway. Offering something in exchange, for example, a checklist or a free ebook, can boost form submissions and result in higher conversions.

Create Popup Forms Instead

Popup forms are another controversial strategy to capture leads. While it’s proven they do work, some people abandon and ignore information presented that way. To avoid it, you need to create a user-friendly popup form. This can be done by studying the behavior of your audience to set the right popup trigger and an appropriate format.

Use Captchas To Block Spam

Captchas can either drag down the conversion rate or increase it. Yet people are easily getting frustrated when encountering long forms or captchas, these security services prevent robots from completing your form.

You can put captchas at the very end of your lead capture form to eliminate spam submissions and make your subscribers feel safer while interacting with your site.

Include Social Proof

The behavior of an individual is often influenced by other people. The same can be applied when it comes to building trust in your brand and engaging people to share their data. The phenomenon of social proof is a very powerful marketing approach to motivate your audience – people are more likely to act if others are doing so.

Illustrate the benefits of your product via customers’ quotes or highlight a number of people who have already filled out the form.

Create A Two-Step (Or More) Process

There are two required components for people to give away their personal information: permission and trust in your brand.

To gain credibility, avoid scaring visitors with one large signup form and create a multi-step process instead (break up the form into several stages). Start by asking very basic questions and aim for more in further steps.

Conclusion

Not optimizing your WordPress lead capture forms could hurt your conversion rate optimization efforts.

To get the best out of it, use a simple formula: minimize all that can irritate visitors and maximize the perceived value by turning peoples’ decision-making process into an effortless and easy-to-accomplish task.

When applied, these proven strategies help your potential leads to build trust in your brand and remove any doubts about giving out their personal information. In exchange, you will get a stream of high-quality leads and enhance your conversion experience.

 

 


Author:
Paula is a passionate content creator & marketing specialist at Visual Composer. She believes that words can empower like nothing else.

Top Tips for Building and Nurturing an Online Community

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Community spaces don’t just exist in our local areas anymore. The birth of the internet has meant that we are able to interact with like-minded people all over the world and come together to create our own communities. This can be on a full site, or it could be on a small section like the many Reddit subforums. If you want to create your own online community, here are some tips to help you make it the best it can possibly be.

Choose a Niche

Most people form a community online because they want to discuss a certain hobby or find people who might be in the same position as them. You can go as general or as specialised as you like here. Want to have a very generalised website that discusses some of the various techniques for home-schooling that exist? You can do  that, and with you can create a platform where parents can come together to talk about what they have found really works – and what should be avoided – for each of their children’s individual needs.

That is very general, but you can also find very specialised groups too. You might want to celebrate a certain TV show or band, or you could even just want to set up an online support network for a remote community. There are so many options to choose from, but you should be able to find the one that works the best for you.

Find a Platform

With a niche established for your community, you then need to find the right platform. Part of this will come down to the style of the community that you want to have. If you want to build a co-operative space where you are an admin but not necessarily a leader, something like a Facebook group might be best. Everyone will be able to make their own posts and announcements, and you can monitor things as you see fit.

However, if you want to actively step into a leadership role, you need to create a brand around yourself with room for an online community within that. Platforms like Instagram and YouTube as well as blogging sites like WordPress are fantastic options here that will allow you to do so.

You will be able to create your ideal space and pitch yourself as the guiding hand within the community. If you want to not just have the community as a hobby on the side but as a full-time job, this is going to be something that you need to do. The sooner you can find the right platform to work from, the quicker you are going to be able to start building those all-important community links.

Build Connections

With the community established, it is time to network! There are two main factors you need to target here. On one side, you should look at ensuring that your fellow community members feel welcome and at home. On the other, you can start to reach out to other communities to begin to build links.

Let’s start within the community. In addition to forums, chats, and other ways to keep in touch, you might want to think about sending out a newsletter. This can be a great way to round things up each month, and can feature news and contributions from members themselves. Checking out how to build an email list to get started. It might be easier than you think to create something that the whole community is proud of.

You also need to start building connections with others where you can. Again, this is easier than you might first think. Is there something that the community wants to branch out to? You could arrange a talk from an expert as a fun activity to do. You could also arrange joint meetings between other like-minded groups. When it comes to expanding the reach of your own little community, the sky is truly the limit!

Accept Change as It Happens

The little community that you first found one day is not going to remain that way forever. It is always going to change in some way, be it the faces coming and going over the years or even the concepts at the core of the group. However, one of the worst things you can do is fight this change in any way.

Change is completely natural and it is something that always needs to be addressed. You might find that something new comes to your community very quickly, or it might be a whole range of very slow and steady alterations that happen over time. Whatever form the change might take, embrace and make it part of the community.

Listen to Your Members

Your members are always going to be the heart and soul of the community you are creating. Even if you are the face and figurehead of the community as a whole, they are going to be the ones who dictate much about it. As a result, you need to listen to them and their views.

If you feel like the community is not where it should be, they might have some excellent ideas to help get you back on track. They might also be able to suggest new concepts that could be introduced, or even a totally new direction for the community as a whole. Never doubt what these members might be able to offer you. With the right leadership and nurturing, you should see the value in each and every one of them.

An online community can be a fabulous place for people to come together in this busy world of ours to learn and interact with each other. Creating this safe space is a wonderful thing to do, but you need to make sure that you are nurturing it in just the right way. Do so, and you should hopefully have an online community that is dedicated to you and ready to offer friendship and companionship no matter what you might face.

 

Contact Form 7 Multi-Step Pro Documentation

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Hello WordPress Users,

Here is the documentation of  Multi Step for Contact Form 7 Pro plugin.

Once Contact Form 7 Multi-Step Plugin activated, the Contact Forms dashboard has a new look. You can see additional separate tabs represent Step 1, Step 2, Step 3…

Contact Form 7 Multi Step Settings

  1. Add a new step

  2. Show an answer from a previous step

  3. Preview the full form before submit it

  4. Animation options and button colour settings 

  5. Enable and set progress bar feature

—

  1. Add a new step

  • Click the plus icon to add a step (1)
  • Fill in Step name and Back, Next button titles (2) (3)
  • Add form fields (4)

Note: By default, in the last step, the submit button is located on the left side. To make it float to the right, please add a submit button like this:

<p style=”float:right”>
[submit “Submit”]
</p>

  1. Show an answer from a previous step

Contact form 7 Multi Step Recall

  • You can enter only one field name here (1)
  • Enter an ID or Class attribute for adding CSS rules later (optional) (2)

Note: If you use checkbox, please add”-cbmls” into checkbox name (e.g: checkbox-123-cbmls)  so that Njt Answer can recognize and display it.

  1. Preview the full form before submit it

  • Enter a title for the preview button (1)
  • Enter an ID or Class attribute for adding CSS rules later (optional) (2)

  1. Animation options and button colour settings

  • Back button background colour and title colour (1) (2)
  • Next button background colour and title colour (3) (4)
  • Toggle this ON if you want the form to scroll to top of the page when Next button is clicked (5)
  • Toggle this ON and select from the dropdown options if you want appearance animation for the Back and Next buttons (6)

  1. Enable progress bar feature

  • Toggle ON progress bar if you choose to have it shown (1)
  • Watch the form preview on the right side (2)
  • Set colour for the progress bar (3)
  • Choose your preferred style for the progress bar (4)
  • Choose progress bar arrangement style (5)
  • Activate or deactivate form progress percentage (6)
  • Set colour for the form progress percentage (7)
  • Tick this option if you want users to be able to click on each steps to see its contents without filling it first (8)
  • Save the form!

Your form is now done!

I hope you can easily find how to customize Contact form 7 multi step plugin after reading this tutorial.

In case you have any question or need support, please submit a ticket at Our Support Portal or feel free to chat with our support team at Our Official Facebook Page

Many thanks for coming with us!

Ninja Team

How to Start as an At-Home WordPress Developer

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There are many perks to being an at-home web developer. You get the chance to work on a lot of different projects, often very interesting ones, and you also have the opportunity to set your own hours and live a much more flexible life than those who have to commute into an office.

However, because this job has these perks, you’re not alone in wanting to make a living doing it. This means there’s a bit of an entry barrier, and competition is tough. But since the whole world essentially exists online, once you make it, there’s plenty of work to go around. 

Knowing it’s a long road ahead can make it difficult to know how to even start, which we’re going to outline here. 

The first step is to commit to being a WordPress developer, as this is the number one content management system on the web, which you’ve already done. Here are the remaining things you need to do:

Get the Right Setup

Before you go ahead and invest a bunch of your time in becoming a WordPress developer. It’s important that you first get yourself properly set up to do the job you’re setting out to do. This means having a good computer that can handle everything you’re going to use it for. 

Make sure it has a solid processor — at least an i5 or equivalent — and plenty of RAM so that you won’t be slowed down when you have multiple windows and programs running at the same time. 

Also, equip yourself with a quality internet connection, and when you’re looking at different networks, make sure to look at upload speeds. 

You’re going to be sending a lot of information “up” towards web servers. If you have to pause and wait even just a few extra seconds every time you do this, you’ll slowly get frustrated, which will make the experience of learning to be and working as a WordPress developer much more unpleasant. 

Get Educated

Once you’ve got the right setup, it’s time to sit down and actually learn how to become a WordPress developer. You can do that by:

  • Teaching yourself by watching tutorial videos, reading blogs, and learning skills through trial and error. For those with the discipline and background to do it, this will save you a lot of money and may help you advance faster, but it’s likely going to be a bit more of an adventure.
  • Enrolling in an online tutorial. There are lots of web developers out there with courses and tutorials they’ve designed to help teach other developers and give them the tools they need to work in the field. They provide a nice mix between self-teaching and a more structured learning approach.
  • Taking a course/degree program. You probably won’t find many degrees in just WordPress development, but lots of universities, community colleges, and technical schools offer courses or certificate programs that give you a much more traditional path to becoming a developer. And depending on your interests, this approach can allow you to learn other areas of programming and coding, which could be useful for those with ambitions beyond WordPress and web development.

However, no matter which path you take, it’s important to remember that your learning never really stops. WordPress is an evolving platform that’s being updated and improved upon every day, and the community is constantly working on and distributing new and exciting plugins that improve the functionality of the platform and the sites that use it. 

Knowing what these are, as well as being able to understand broader issues in the WordPress world, will make you much more valuable as a developer and will make it easier for you to win and secure the best jobs. 

Start a Project and Build a Portfolio

Even while you’re still learning, it’s important you work to build a portfolio — a collection of your past work you can show to clients to prove to them you can do the job they’re offering. One of the best ways to do this is to just start a website early on in your training. 

As you go and learn more stuff, keep working on it so that by the time you finish whatever education program you’re in, you’ve got a finished product you can use to convince others of your skills. 

Another good thing to do is to start taking smaller, less complicated jobs early on by using one of the many sites freelancers use to find clients. 

Don’t shy away from offers that don’t fit your ideal image of a job because, until you have more of a portfolio, you probably won’t win these jobs anyway. It’s better to start doing projects, building relationships, and adding to your portfolio as soon as possible, as this is how you will start to win better clients who are offering more exciting, better paying work. 

Work Hard

If you’re starting from the very beginning, just know that you have a long road ahead of you. However, don’t let that scare you away. 

Working as a WordPress developer is interesting, rewarding work. Many of your clients will be entrepreneurs and small business owners looking for ways to make their dreams become reality, and this can be a ton of fun. Not to mention the perks of living such a flexible lifestyle. 

So, work hard, follow these steps, and stick with it. You’ll be glad you did!

How to submit App Review for Facebook Auto Reply plugin (Jan.2020)

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Permissions needed:

  • publish_pages
  • manage_pages
  • pages_messaging

Step 1. Publish_pages and manage_pages (APP IN DEVELOPMENT MODE)

You need record a screencast like this first

Then follow this guide to submit the screencast and enter the content

Step 2. Pages_messaging (APP IN LIVE MODE)

 

 

 

You need record a screencast like this

Then follow this guide to submit the screencast and enter the content

How to get Personal Token for CartBack plugin

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How to get Personal Token for CartBack plugin

Review DoopChat – An automated tool for your Facebook page comments

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You definitely do not have enough time to answer the same constant questions raised by customers, right?

To free up your time, while still giving customers support and enough information in an organized way, you might consider using an automated solution.

Say hello to DoopChat, and don’t be surprised when it automatically sends a message to those who comment on any of your Facebook page posts or ads.

Exciting yet?

Additionally, DoopChat also supports live chat feature that is useful for helping your business deal with everday queries related to services or products.

With the great help of the DoopChat, it has now become possible for your company to provide full customer support 24/7.

Thus, DoopChat plays a critical role in a variety of daily tasks such as collecting email address, phone numbers or any other important details.

DoopChat is the official tool developed by Ninja Team. It was born to help you overcome the obstacle and take your customer support service to the next level.

In today’s article, I’ll take you through exactly how this tool works to help customers, then I’ll go further into all DoopChat’s features to let you manage your Facebook page a whole lot easier and less time consuming.

Configuration

First, you need to create your own campaign by choosing one of two below packages, namely $39 per month and $295 per year.

doopchat price

Next, you have to connect your Facebook account to DoopChat and then set up your new campaign.

connect facebook

After connected, all of your Facebook pages are listed. You just choose the page you want to set up the automated reply.

setup new campaign

When everything is on the right track, you will see a list of your page posts displayed on the left corner. Choose one post and click Enable Private Replies button, you can set specific key words for each particular comment by choosing Reply if option. For example, when customers want to ask the price of your product, set the key word “how much” in the box.

Conversely, if you want to reply automatically no matter what the queries are, just click on Reply anytime option and type appropriate answers for their questions.

products

Things are the same for the remaining sections. Finally, click Save Changes.

Voilà. Done. Easy enough, right?

Live Chat Feature

A customer live chat is a small floating icon that usually appears in the bottom-right corner of a website. Like traditional live chat software, you can install a Messenger customer chat plugin on your website.

This plugin makes it easy for any website visitors with a Messenger account to have a live conversation with a human, leave a message, and interact with your Messenger bot.

test livechat

When I tested this feature, it seems to me that this is greatly useful for those who want to keep contact with customers and beneficial for dealing with all queries from clients.

Benefits for enterprises

In addition to the striking feature that replies automatically and privately customers’ queries on any Facebook page posts and ads, DoopChat is also greatly beneficial for businesses to increase Facebook engagement and boost sales in a number of following areas:

  • E-commerce

This is my go-to business category in using DoopChat. I’m running an e-commerce shop selling street fashion items, specifically sneakers and T-shirts that are wildly popular in teenagers’ taste today. For example, if customers comment which types of sneaker they prefer and tag their friends who also feel interested in this, they’ll get a coupon for 20% off right into their inbox. Yay, super excited!

ecommerce

  • Education/ Courses

In addition to the above online boutique, the other section I’m running is the online French course for those who love learning another language besides English.

As demonstrated below, I can create a post asking people to tag someone who also has an interest in leanring French. Then, I will send the link forwarding to the sample lesson through Messenger or my website for further information about the courses as well as instructors.

french course

  • Real estate

This is another interesting and fast-growing area that DoopChat aims at.

If you are a real estate agent, you can create a post containing a number of images or an album of a house or apartment and ask customers to write down their thoughts about the property as well as the price in the comment section. If possible, you can strike up a conversation and negotiate the price with them via Messenger.

You could compose a post with Yes No question to ask those who are inclined to seek or rent an apartment in a month. If possible, you can send the website for them to learn more about this. If no, you can ask them what type of real estate they wish to own?

real estate

  • Services like restaurant

Another fascinating type of business sector you can use DoopChat to explore is restaurant. If you are using social network to operate a BBQ restaurant, just ask customers to comment or tag friends who have the same taste. You could set the private auto-reply with a coupon “Buy Two get One Free” to gift them. That way helps increase the chance of them coming to visit your store.

bbq

Other ways to increase Facebook page engagement

The following ideas are quite handy to help increase Facebook page engagement and boost sales for your business. As a result, you can attract and build up your potential and loyal clients.

  • Comment to receive a coupon or discount code.
  • Comment to get access to a webinar
  • Comment to get access to a case study or ebook, document
  • Comment to receive message containing secret link

coupon

Final thoughts

DoopChat is such an amazing lifesaver with a great help of increasing Facebook page response rate and sharing custom coupons, promotions in conversations. With a massive support of live chat function, you are cultivating strong relationships with visitors and converting them into profitable clients.

It’s obvious to say that DoopChat cannot be a full replacement for human interaction, they can be a reliable customer assistant to provide support and information instantly to customers.

So let’s give DoopChat a shot today and see how it can help you handle your Facebook pages’ comments.

Thank y’all and warm welcome from Ninja Team! 😊

5 Challenges in Creating a Membership Site on WordPress

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No website development projects occur without friction, especially something as complex as a membership site. You might think of using WordPress’s built-in user levels as a starting point for creating membership features. While you can go down that path, it’s much faster, cheaper and easier to configure an off-the-shelf WordPress membership plugin to meet your client’s needs. To help you know what you are getting yourself into as a developer or designer, let’s look at some usual membership website requirements and challenges.

What do most membership websites need to do? 

  1. Sell renewable memberships

    Chambers of commerce, nonprofit organizations, clubs, professional groups, trade associations, and arts cooperatives all need membership tracking software. People who are subject matter experts, coaches and bloggers also sell memberships to their website content.

Challenges
Membership tracking and billing is complicated. You don’t want to try to code custom membership software from scratch. Some of the system requirements can include:

  • Accommodating multiple membership levels at billing intervals and prices that may need to be edited in the future.
  • Offering payment options such as offline payments, one time credit card and auto recurring card payments.
  • Creating an interface for members to login and update their credit card information and contact information (perhaps for a member directory).
  • Flexibility to handle fixed renewal dates or rolling renewals.
  • Compliance with GDPR and other emerging privacy laws.

Solution

Use a WordPress membership plugin such as MembershipWorks with a payment gateway like Authorize.net, PayPal Pro or Stripe that accommodates both one-time and auto recurring payments. 

  1. Restrict content to members only

Challenges
A chamber of commerce may want to have board documents hidden from everyone except its board members. A trade association may want a years-in-the-making research report restricted to members only. Some organizations will want to restrict content on a tiered basis depending upon membership level. For example, a fitness coach may have bonus training content that only premium members can access.

Solution

Install a membership plugin to restrict content. A plugin could accomplish content restriction by providing a shortcode to drop onto member only pages.

  1. Offer event registration, an online member directory, forms, shopping carts and other features

Challenge

Example: A networking group wants to sell tickets to its monthly meeting, but members should pay less than other attendees. They will need their event registration plugin to verify membership.

Example: A newcomers club wants to stop publishing a printed directory as members often move, causing the directory to be out of date almost from the day it’s printed. As a 100% volunteer-run group, the membership chair wants to get out of the business keeping member contact information current.

 Example: A coach wants to sell an advanced training package to her clients, but only those who have already purchased another product are eligible to purchase it.

Solution

While you can find separate WordPress plugins to handle any of these needs, a robust membership plugin will handle these challenges in a much more elegant and efficient way than stand alone event, directory or shopping cart plugins can. A member’s activity in registering for an event can be tied to their record in the member database. While not every organization, especially those run by volunteers, has the bandwidth to take advantage of this kind of data, membership software that has CRM features can help the organization identify their more engaged members.

  1. Deliver reports on transactions, membership growth and retention

    Nonprofit membership organizations have an obligation to disclose membership activity and finances to their board of directors. Savvy coaches and bloggers will want to track membership growth and retention to see how their business is doing.

Challenge

Nonprofits need to present a unified report to their board. Don’t be tempted to install separate plugins for event registration, the online member directory, member billing, or shopping cart. Then the bookkeeper, accountant or executive director will have to manually have to pull data from each plugin.

Solution
Look for a membership plugin with most or all of the must-have features your organization or client needs. Consider what software the organization already uses such as Xero, Quickbooks, MailChimp and others and see if the membership plugin can integrate with them. Volunteers and staff are more likely to be successful when they can continue to use software that they are already familiar with.

  1. Provide a way to access support

Challenge

The last thing you want to deal with as a developer are large or small questions related to a project you built in the distant past. Organizations don’t necessarily want to pay for this kind of support in advance or on an ongoing basis. Some nonprofits may have struggled to come up with the money to build a membership site in the first place. Wouldn’t it be nice to stay out of the support loop (unless of course that’s how you make your money)?

Solution

A good membership plugin will offer support. While support may be an anomaly in the world of WordPress plugins, you have probably seen that the highest quality and most robust plugins are ones that charge an initial or ongoing fee. With an ongoing fee, you or your client will be able to access ongoing support.

Do your research and use a Google doc or spreadsheet to document how each plugin meets the features your organization or client needs; be sure to include a column for support. It’s important to consider:

  • Is there a setup fee to get started?
  • Is training offered, and is it one-time or unlimited? Is it in a group setting or is it one-on-one?
  • Does support come at a cost?
  • What types of support are offered? Some organizations will need phone support while others will prefer to email for answers.

Have you experienced other challenges when building a membership site in WordPress? Let us know in the comments!

Author Bio:

Amy Hufford is a Technologist at MembershipWorks. She has worked in nonprofit technology for more than 20 years and has experience with a variety of donor and membership software platforms.

19 Proven Formulas for Writing Headlines & Direct Message Teasers

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If you create a good headline, your task is more than half completed. It will be a relatively easy matter to write the copy. On the other hand, if you use a poor headline, it doesn’t matter how hard you labor over your copy because your copy will not be read.

So, practice your headline writing with these formulas for a good headline.

Each formula comes with several practical examples.

writing-headline-newsletter

1. Begin your headline with the word “Introducing”

Introducing a new way to bridge the gap between…

Introducing [Brand Name]. A new generation of affordable [Service] for…

Introducing a new plugin for making your WordPress more secure

 

2. Begin your headline with the word “Announcing”

Announcing a new selection of…

An important announcement to homeowners

3. Use words that have an announcement quality

Finally, an exciting new look that isn’t retro anything

Just published…

4. Begin your headline with the word “Now”

Now on home video

Now… learn both ways to…

5. Begin your headline with the word “At last”

At last—You can drive all over Europe with…

Finally professional flea control at a fair price

6. Put a date into your headline

Beginning May 1, incredibly low summer rates at the Miami resort

One day only. Sunday, August 8th. 10:00AM to 6:00PM

7. Feature reduced price

With up to $1,000 in options savings, it’s more attainable than ever [Auto]

Tank top. Now with the price of a coffee

8. Feature an easy payment plan

Order now… Pay after March 20

Only $2 a week buys this [New Product]

9. Feature a free offer

Free to brides… $200 to anyone else

Free plans for a clever Valentine’s Day party

10. Tell a story

They laughed when I sat down at the piano

How a fool stunt made me a star salesman

11. Begin your headline with the words “How To”

How to turn 40 without turning to biffocals

How to keep your husband home, and happy

12. Begin your headline with the words “Why”, “Which”, “Who Else”

Why these vitamins can make you feel peppier?

Which of these five skin troubles would you like to end?

Who else wants a kissable complexion within 30 days?

13. Begin your headline with the word “This”

This holiday season, stay away from your relatives

14. Begin your headline with the word “Because”

Because your pet’s quality of life is important to you

15. Begin your headline with the word “If”

If you savor growth and security, we give an edge

16. Use a testimonial-style headline

I was going broke—So I started…

17. Offer the reader a test

Can your kitchen pass the guest test?

Can your scalp pass the fingernail test?

18. Address your headline to a specific person or group

To a $25,000 man or woman who would like to be making $50,000

To car owners who want to cut gasoline bills

You too can beat the market

Your knee will thank you

19. Offer benefits through facts and figures

[Your-Brand] burns up to 79% more calories than ordinary treadmills

To conclude

I hope you can find from the above list some inspirational ideas to start your headlines with. Can’t wait to see how you apply these formulas into your blog content creation!