5 Profitable Ways to Jumpstart Your WordPress Strategy for 2024

WordPress might be the most powerful lead generation platform available to entrepreneurs and business owners right now. If you’re using it the right way, that is.

That’s because it’s now much more than a simple blogging solution. It’s an entire content management platform. WordPress supports a wide range of features, value-generating functionalities, and more.

Getting the most out of WordPress used to mean installing the right plugins and putting up great content. Those are still incredibly important, but they’re just the beginning.

To truly leverage the capabilities that WordPress offers, you need to create a unique user experience that keeps website visitors coming back for more. You need to earn your visitor’s trust. Your website should be a full, authoritative solution to their needs.” said Jonathan Tian, founder of Mobitrix, an iPhone solution provider who focuses on user experience optimization a lot with WordPress

Of course, you’ll also need to convince them to sign up for your service, purchase your products, and share their data with you.

Today’s most successful WordPress entrepreneurs are busy preparing their websites for the challenges and opportunities of 2022. Draw from their approach to position your website for success. 

1. Streamline web page creation with a WordPress site builder

Your website can be more than a blog or an e-commerce store. It can be a complete marketing platform. It can serve users’ needs at any stage of the sales funnel.

To achieve that, you’ll need to create new pages that reflect your audience’s needs. For example, you’ll need standalone landing pages that speak directly to visitors. You may even want to host multiple distinct websites, each catering to a unique audience.

WordPress is a powerful and flexible content management tool, but it’s not always easy to use. Designing and developing an entire webpage from scratch can be difficult – not to mention an entire website. If you don’t have solid coding skills, creating tons of new pages might be a non-starter.

This is where WordPress website builders come in.

With the right WordPress website builder plugin installed, you can whip up brand new pages in mere minutes. You can even create an entirely new website, fill it with content, and publish it. Site builders enable WordPress entrepreneurs to publish conversion-ready web pages with ease quickly.

The best WordPress website builders use easy drag-and-drop interfaces to make website building easy. They offer scores of useful templates and widgets to create unique user experiences. This turns a week-long job into one you can complete in less than an hour – no coding required.

Elementor: The WordPress professionals’ website builder

Elementor is a great example of a WordPress website builder that caters to entrepreneurs’ needs. It combines a simple, intuitive drag-and-drop interface with scores of useful widgets that improve the user experience.

Best of all, making a web page with Elementor is a zero-code task. You don’t have to worry about writing HTML code or organizing CSS files. The software’s backend handles this for you. All you need to do is drag objects from your toolbar directly onto the web page and configure them. It’s fast, easy, and effective.

In fact, you can even use your existing pages as a fully configurable template for creating new ones. You can configure every aspect of your page separately or use Global Settings to make broad changes to every page on your website.

Use Elementor to create landing pages that showcase your best products and services. Create content that positions your offering to meet the needs of specific audiences. You can repeat the process for new audiences. Ensure every website visitor receives messaging that is personalized for their specific needs.

You can even create close copies of your existing pages and test their effectiveness against one another. A/B testing is one of the best ways to maximize landing page performance. To do it well, you must be able to create and publish new web pages quickly. Elementor is perfect for that.

Leverage Full Site Kits to publish entire websites

Quickly creating new web pages from templates is useful. But what if you could use the same process to create entire websites? This is exactly what Full Site Kits do. This gives WordPress entrepreneurs a powerful tool for maximizing conversions quickly and efficiently.

Unlike templates, Full Site Kits don’t just mimic the look and feel of a particular web page. They are professionally designed websites with a full suite of marketing integrations included. All you have to do is configure the website and change the content to match your business.

You can use Full Site Kits like blueprints for publishing new websites. This gives you the ability to quickly publish an entire series of websites, each with its branding and message. You could use this to reach new audiences or expand your website to new territories. The sky’s the limit.

2. Perfect the art of the non-intrusive popup

Popups in the year 2022? You might be forgiven for dismissing popups as an annoying relic of the internet past. Yes, marketers have abused popups in every way imaginable. Yes, they’ve earned a reputation for disrupting the user experience instead of enhancing it. But that doesn’t mean popups are dead, far from it. 

In fact, we’ve just barely scratched the surface of what popups can do. Deployed in an experience-enhancing, non-intrusive way, popups transform the profitability of your website.

In fact, SleekNote conducted research into more than 1 billion popups and discovered some incredible facts:

• Mobile popups are almost twice as effective as desktop popups.
• Popups with images enjoy an average conversion rate of 3.80%.
• Popups without images convert at a much lower rate of 2.07%.
• Eight seconds is the optimal time to trigger a timed popup.
• Scroll trigger popups perform best after users scroll 35% of the page.
• Popups with a countdown timer convert at an incredible rate of 8.07%!

Popups can play a vital role in securing conversions from website visitors who are almost convinced. Triggering the right message to the right users at the right time makes all the difference. This approach can significantly improve your website’s lead-generating capacity by encouraging signups and sales at just the right moment.

Use precise targeting to get the most out of your popups

Popups can play a variety of roles on your website. Optimizing the way you use popups makes all the difference.

• Lead capture. Convince web page visitors to download lead magnets. Display a highly visual popup to users who have visited your site more than once. Trigger popups for users who have scrolled past 35% of your landing page.

• Email subscription. Ask new visitors to sign up for your email newsletter. Catch blog readers after they have consumed a set number of pages—target visitors who spend more than eight seconds reading your blog posts.

• Promotional offers. Offer steep discounts to new users who are browsing your eCommerce store. Showcase high-performing items to return visitors to drive sales.

• Login messages. Encourage website visitors to register or log in to your exclusive content portal. Use a popup login screen to maximize registrations.

• Content locks. Keep minors away from adult content. Encourage website visitors to pay for access to premium content. Popups make excellent paywalls for publishers of all kinds.

• Exit intent. Minimize shopping cart abandonment rates using popups. Ask visitors with full shopping carts to confirm before letting them click away from your website. Some will stay and finish their purchase, earning you revenue you might otherwise have lost.

• Announcements. Announce major events, marketing promotions, and policy changes directly to users on your website. Popups are great for ensuring your message is heard loud and clear.

Cross-selling and upselling. Show related products to shoppers who are browsing through your selection. Pick high-performing, high-margin items that sell well so you can optimize sales.

3. Treat security seriously: Verify your SSL certificate

One of the major things that every website needs is an SSL certificate. This is the bottom line starting point for effective cybersecurity. Your WordPress website can’t succeed without it.

The easiest way to tell if a website has a valid SSL certificate is by checking the URL. 

• If the URL starts with “https://”, then it’s protected.
• If the URL starts with “http://”, then it isn’t.

Websites with valid SSL certificates offer users an important degree of security. This certificate assures users to browse the correct website – not a malicious spoof website. The SSL certificate also guarantees the security of network traffic between your servers and users’ computers.

Let’s take a minute to examine why that is so important. 

Most people think their website is “too small” to be targeted by hackers. Why would a hacker spend time and effort infiltrating a small business website when they could target a giant bank instead?

The fact is cybercriminals don’t need to spend any time or effort targeting your small web-based business. Modern cybercrime operations are almost entirely automated. Hackers won’t even know you exist until after automated tools have infiltrated your systems. By then, it’s too late.

SSL certification can’t stop every kind of automated cyberattack. It might not even stop most of them. But it is by far the easiest way to stop many of them.

Without SSL certification, a compromised router could add malicious code to network traffic between your website and its users. That router could be in Brazil, or Vietnam, or down the street from your house. If you don’t protect your traffic, you open yourself to disastrous security risks.

This isn’t hypothetical, either. It’s happening now in the real world. The criminal cryptojacking service Coinhive exploited millions of websites all across the globe for years. Apparently, there are still infected routers attempting to run Coinhive’s exploit even today, long after the service disappeared.

Websites with SSL certification are safe from this particular automated exploit. SSL shows web users that your website is the real thing.

How to obtain an SSL certificate on WordPress

Fortunately, obtaining an SSL certificate is one of the easiest cybersecurity tasks there is. WordPress users can obtain a valid certificate with one click using Really Simple SSL. Options like this can save you hours of work figuring out how to generate and deploy an SSL certificate in your hosting environment.

You can even generate a valid SSL certificate for free using Lets Encrypt. This is a non-profit certificate authority that supports 260 million websites. With solutions like these available, there’s no excuse not to have SSL certification on your website. It’s a must-have.

3 quick tips to improve security on WordPress

SSL certification is just the beginning of your cybersecurity journey. You still need to protect your data from cybercriminals in other ways. This could mean different things depending on the size and complexity of your site.

• Dual-factor authentication (2FA) offers high security with minimal impact on usability. Enable it on third-party apps and services so hackers can’t access everything with just your password.
• Disaster recovery services can help you survive cyberattacks. These services create protected backups of your critical data. If anything happens, you can revert back and potentially save your business.
• Malware detection solutions can scan your website for known attack signatures. These can range from inexpensive antivirus software to AI-enabled enterprise solutions. There’s no need to go overboard here. Even a simple detection solution is better than nothing.

4. Consider using a video hosting platform to capture leads

Video marketing is one of the major trends of the past year. The video format offers higher conversions than text or imagery. It’s positioned to become the dominant format in the next few years. Businesses that take advantage of that fact now stand to earn the most from that change.

But most WordPress website owners already know this. You’ve probably already been filming high-performance video content, publishing it on YouTube, and embedding it on your website.

But there’s something the WordPress community doesn’t know yet. YouTube isn’t the best video hosting platform to generate leads. Only a handful of digital experts have caught on to this fact and started using marketing-enabled alternatives.

What’s wrong with YouTube?

YouTube is great for exposure. There’s definitely a place for the world’s largest video platform in your marketing strategy. But you shouldn’t rely exclusively on YouTube for your video marketing campaigns.

This is because YouTube doesn’t want to share traffic with you. It doesn’t want users to stay on your website and continue interacting with your content. It wants those users to click on the video player and interact with more content on YouTube. Then it can show them more ads.

YouTube encourages this in subtle ways. For example, after your embedded video finishes, it shows a list of video suggestions. That list doesn’t contain your other videos, though. It contains a personalized list of videos unique to each user.

After a user visits your website and watches your video, they immediately see links for unrelated videos they expressed interest in. It’s no surprise they click on those links, spend the next three hours on YouTube, and forget all about your website.

Paid video hosting platforms offer a better user experience

The biggest advantage to using YouTube is the fact that it’s free. However, you end up paying for that convenience in lost website traffic.

Paid video hosting platforms will encourage users to stay on your website and continue interacting with your content. You may limit website users’ access to video content from third parties. You may even be able to direct viewers to your other videos, creating a full video sales funnel.

Many WordPress professionals prefer to pay cash rather than lose traffic to YouTube. The larger your website grows, the more conversions you may be losing with every video website visitors watch.

5. Integrate the right third-party tools

All of the suggestions so far have followed a clear theme – choosing the right partners is the best guarantee of success. A great WordPress website is more than the sum of its parts, but those parts do matter.

One of WordPress’s strengths is its support for third-party features. Integrating the right set of technologies can transform your business. Marketing plugins are particularly valuable for WordPress entrepreneurs going into a challenging new year.

Choosing a compatible set of plugins makes running and maintaining your WordPress website easier. Elementor is compatible with a wide range of plugins and marketing tools. In addition, it supports some of the most useful tools in the WordPress environment.

If your marketing strategy relies on search engine rankings, consider implementing the Yoast. This tool verifies the readability of your content as you write it. It also references the indexability of your page. When used right, it can help you significantly improve search rankings.

If you’re running an eCommerce website, WooCommerce can help you create a digital store code-free. Create product pages using highly visual drag-and-drop editing and easily run your store.

Managing customer relationships is critical for businesses of any size. CRMs like Hubspot and Agile enable you to optimize the user experience at every level. Engage with individual users and market to them on a personal level.

It’s time – create the website you’ve been dreaming of

As another year passes, WordPress entrepreneurs have a lot to look forward to in the future. But there is much to accomplish before your website’s success story is finished. Create your high-converting WordPress website using Elementor and use these tips to maximize its impact. Capitalize on the latest trends and technologies to make this year a transformative one for your business.

Tirtharaj Raman

A Backpacker with keen interest in Digital marketing. Responsible and passionate for building a digital culture at SoftwareSuggest. Grabber to implement new competitive ideas to analyze and boost online presence. Could be found in mountains and solo traveler by birth.