Welcome to another edition of Sites Weekly.
In this week’s edition, you will find links to articles about the following:
- Content. The important difference between a great headline and clickbait
- Design. Drive more sales with these proven pricing page optimizations
- Technology. 9 steps to help your site load faster
- Strategy. The profound power of saying thank you (and how to do it right online)
- Bonus. Why we crave products, but end up feeling empty inside
But first …
Last week on Sites
As an ever-evolving open source venture, WordPress changes a lot, and often, for the better. And it’s up to you to make sure you update to the latest version.
Listen: [19] 3 Massively Important Reasons to Keep WordPress Updated
Genesis tips from Brian Gardner
Brian has been asked on a number of occasions what is the best way to change the text that’s found in a site footer using the Genesis Framework.
Depending on your comfort level, there are a few ways to do this. He explains them in this blog post.
Read: How to Customize the Genesis Site Footer.
And now, on to this week’s links …
Content: The important difference between a great headline and clickbait
When you write a headline, you have one goal: to make it so irresistible that it arrests readers wherever they come across it, and then they can’t help but click.
But getting that click won’t matter if the content of the post doesn’t deliver on the promise of the headline.
And therein lies the subtle but important difference between a great headline and clickbait: both may be arresting and irresistible in what they promise, but great headlines have actual great content underneath them — content that delivers on the promise.
Clickbait headlines may get the click, but then they’ll leave readers disappointed when they find that there is precious little substance beneath the broken promise of the headline.
In this post, Stefanie Flaxman goes into more detail about the difference and also provides several outstanding resources that will make you better at writing headlines.
Clickbait or Damn Good Headline? (Copyblogger)
Design: Drive more sales with these proven pricing page optimizations
We all want more people visiting our websites. Surely more people will lead to more conversions.
But one of the best ways to improve your website’s bottom-line performance is to do a better job converting the people who are already moving through your funnel — especially when they are intrigued enough to make it all the way to your pricing page.
In this blog post, the folks at Conversion Sciences walk you through 10 proven ways to optimize your pricing page and get more people clicking through to check out.
10 Proven Ways To Immediately Optimize Your Pricing Page (Conversion Sciences)
Two of the most important decisions you will make about your WordPress website are your theme and your hosting. Wouldn’t it be great if they worked together to make your website more powerful?
Now they can.
Discover why over 213,675 website owners trust StudioPress.
Technology: 9 steps to help your site load faster
Page speed is very important. You probably know this by now. And every second — even millisecond — matters.
A site that loads faster leaves less time for your website visitor’s attention to be yanked in a different direction. And improving the on-site experience for visitors encourages them to engage more and share your site.
It also convinces Google that your website is worth sending other interested parties to.
So how do you do it? This blog post from Search Engine Journal includes nine useful tips that will help your site load faster.
Let me add a #10, which is an addendum to their #1: consider StudioPress Sites, and its award-winning performance, for your hosting. 😉
How to Improve Page Speed for More Traffic & Conversions (Search Engine Journal)
Strategy: The profound power of saying thank you (and how to do it right online)
Saying “thank you” is such a simple act, but it can have a profound impact and create important, long-lasting impressions. But delivering genuine, timely thank yous online, especially in an automated way, isn’t always easy to do well.
In this blog post, you will discover several smart ways to say thank you to subscribers and customers that will display your appreciation, build trust, and help you keep the positive feelings going even after the conversion.
How A Simple Thank You Message Can Lift Your Conversion Rate (Jeff Bullas)
Bonus article: Why we crave products, but end up feeling empty inside
This is a podcast episode based on a local radio show here in Dallas that my wife recommended for me. It’s very thought-provoking and insightful.
We probably don’t think about the difference between pleasure and happiness enough, and this can lead us to chase fulfillment in ways that, ironically, actually move us further and further away from what we think we’re seeking.
And, naturally, we have marketers to blame for this. 😉
It’s All In Your Head: How Marketers Hijack Our Brains (KERA – Think)
So …
Which of the ideas in these posts will you put to good use immediately?
I’ll be back with a new edition next week.
Keep building.