WordPress Questions & Answers
Last week I released a free training on how to set up an eCommerce website using WordPress in 6 simple steps. Before that free WordPress training video was sent out I received hundreds of questions about how WordPress works that I thought I would take the time to answer below. After reviewing all the great questions asked, many of them were duplicates and some not so relevant, so what you see below consist of the major WordPress questions asked and my answers to them. If you don’t see your questions addressed below then be sure to leave a comment at the bottom of this page telling me what you need help with and I’ll respond.
Here Are The Top WordPress Questions You Asked and My Responses…
Sonja’s Question: How do I “Choose the right theme…” for WordPress?
My Answer: I’ll address the question about the “right” WordPress theme to choose since that’s more related to what we’re discussing and then I’ll share some tips about logo creation and images, cool? So, first…when it comes to choosing the right WordPress theme I look at these 3 major factors:
- Is the WordPress theme actively developed? If so, that means that the developer of the theme cares about the quality of the theme and may provide support (usually paid) for the theme. For newbies to WordPress it’s okay to get your feet wet and play around with the free WordPress themes, but in the long term, if you want your WordPress site to stay updated and current with the evolving and ever expanding ecommerce world, then purchasing a premium WordPress theme is definitely the way to go in my experience. If you don’t go the premium route then plan on spending extra time and money either fixing the free theme, or updating it yourself or hiring help. It’s better and more cost effective to go the premium theme route and fork out the minimal one time cost in the range of $10 to $99. Here are some examples of Top Selling premium eCommece themes to consider.
- Does the theme developer offer quality support? The support offered by premium WordPress theme developers is not created equal, so what I do is first look at the website that offers the theme and see how responsive the developer/team is to the customers asking questions. If they respond usually within 24hrs or less then I move on with considering the purchase.
- Does the theme fit your needs? This is a subjective question which means it really depends on your unique circumstances of your business. I recommend writing out a “dream list” of items you want your website to do for you, and how you want it to perform and then search out a premium theme that matches that list as close as possible. If you are not sure what you want, then it’s best to find an example or model website in your industry that is successful and then pick apart their site to identify what their website is specifically doing to contribute toward their online success and then match that list up with what you want your site to do. Some major things I usually need and want on my dream list for a WordPress theme are:
- does the theme loading fast? This means it’s usually been coded well and it’s light weight which influences how fast your website will load or be presented to people who visit it. One of the best examples of this are the quality and light weight themes developed by StudioPress who develop the premium Genesis framework and themes.
- it’s easy to use to adjust the site the way I want. This usually means the WordPress theme comes with a “builder” of sorts that you can use to build the site you want upon the WordPress framework/software.
- is it easy to optimize the theme for search engines (aka SEO).
Suzette’s Question: “Most of my Banners disappeared on my Blog overnight and it is a paid WordPress Blog (.org) Does a website have fewer problems? How can I set Paypal up on it and how much does it cost. I know that some Plug Ins cost money”
My Answer: First, just know that WordPress can be used for a website not just a blog. And if your banners disappeared on your blog there could be a number of reasons. I’d recommend setting up a WordPress management account here to have us look at it in more depth for you. There could be a plugin conflict, or you just deleted the banners on accident in which case you could restore them, or the theme could be faulty, or the banner code could be faulty or corrupt, etc.
And setting up PayPal on your WordPress site is very easy to do. Just set up a free business PayPal account and then create a button and add the code or hyperlink to your website page or blog post. And the plugins to add are normally free just depending on what you’re looking for. At the time of this article there are over 44,365 free WordPress plugins that you can choose from…all of which do different things. So I’d start there and see if there’s a free plugin that will server your needs.
Tony’s and Tertia’s Question: “Transitioning from BigCommerce over to WordPress? How to do so without much of a struggle?” “I have a shopify account, how do I export the site & settings to wordpress. Can I do it? I have no or little site building or PC experience but is fine with already set up sites to work with. I also need dropship suppliers that can be trusted, I would like to know where to find ones that will drop ship to South Africa.”
My Answer: Yes. There is a free WordPress plugin called Shopify Importer that you could check out that let’s you do this transfer from Shopify to WordPress. In general though, WordPress makes it very easy to import content from other major platforms into your WordPress site such as from Blogger, Tumblr, and other WordPress sites. And as far as finding dropship suppliers I would recommend going here to set up your account to find dropship suppliers that ship to South Africa.
Denise’s Question: “common mistakes novice word press designers make and how to correct them or do it right”
My Answer: The 2 most common mistakes novice WordPress designers make that I’ve seen in the past 9 years include:
- they fail to update the code of the theme to stay current with the WordPress core software and overall ecommerce environment.
- the designer tries to put every bell and whistle they could possibly imagine into the theme causing the theme to super heavy and clunky which usually causes all types of conflicts with other plugins and WordPress updates in the future. It’s best to simply use a separate plugin instead of having that functionality built into a theme in my experience.
Kim’s Question: “What specifically needs to be done on each page of the website to make sure the site shows up in searches done by potential customers (or existing customers) using any search engine.”
My Answer: You would need to optimize the page if you want the page to show up for people in search engines such as with Google and Bing (the top 2 search engines on the planet at this time). You’d need to learn how to do SEO properly.
Gary’s Question: “I’m interested in learning how I could use an eCommerce site to expand and maximize my commercial and investment real estate brokerage activities, including attracting new clients (sellers) and customers (buyers) … and if that can actually be accomplished through this type of marketing activity; and, being able to accomplish that in areas away from my current geographical location.”
My Answer: This is more of a marketing question than for WordPress. I’d recommend setting up a phone consultation with me here to get a more in depth marketing strategy built for you that can be implemented to help you reach your audience better and more consistently.
Thor’s Question: “I have a WP blog. What can I do to be able to sell books, ebooks, pictures (artwork) from that blog site –or do I have to start a new page altogether?”
My Answer: If you have a WordPress.com blog you can either pay them directly to include a shop on your WordPress system, or you can set up your own WordPress hosting account here by following this free training video tutorial for about $5.50 a month and then you can install your own version of WordPress that you control 100%. From there you’d simply install WooCommerce shopping plugin and create your store!
Radica’s Question: “Everything about starting an online store”
My Answer: Start by following this free training tutorial for setting up your WordPress eCommerce site. From there you can subscribe to additional trainings we have to help you to build your online business. If you would rather receive step by step assistance with this you can contact Trent by going here.
Valerie’s Question: “How to maintain a CSV for the inventory availability: is it possible to merge all inventory from different dropship suppliers into 1 file?”
My Answer: Yes, you can create a CSV file that merges all of your supplier products and data. From there you can upload that CSV into your WordPress store by using the WooCommerce Bulk CSV import plugin.
Judith’s Question: “How can I make sure that my site is safe?”
My Answer: There are a number of steps you can take to help make your WordPress site more safe. First is to make sure you have created a solid username and password for your site instead of using the default username of admin. Use a more challenging, hard to guess, username and password. From there you can install different plugins that can help reduce brute force attacks to your WordPress site. Click here to see some of the WordPress security plugins that you can install on your site.
Travis’ Question: “what plugins to use for ecommerce and how to set them up. How to protect against hackers.”
My Answer: See the question above regarding how to protect against hackers. And the plugin I recommend using to build your ecommerce store at this time on your WordPress site is called WooCommerce.
Paul M’s Question: “How to find drop ship suppliers and products”
My Answer: To find drop ship suppliers and products simply set up a supplier account here to immediately find companies you can start working with that will give you the products to start selling on your WordPress site, eBay, Amazon, and elsewhere if you so choose.
Aatou’s Question: “How to build a website for a drop ship business”
My Answer: Follow this free training video here to learn the exact steps to take.
Antonio’s Question: “I am not sure if my niche ideas are good to market. Do you have a guide to pick a niche?”
My Answer: There are so many niche ideas that are good to market to if you think in terms of what you want to help people with? And are their enough people out there willing to pay money to have you solve their problem for them? A niche is simply a need or a passionate want that someone has. Choose an audience, or need (doesn’t really matter what order you go in) but at the end of the day, you are helping people solve problems. So what specific problem or need are you interested in helping people solve or make easier to achieve? If you’d like to guidance in this process feel welcome to set up a phone consultation with me here.
Christian’s Question: “Website building and where to begin with the layout”
My Answer: It’s best to pattern the layout of your WordPress site using best practices for website design. Here is a great article about the 5 principles of persuasive web design to check out. And here is a video training to watch that will guide you through the journey of building your website using WordPress
Adetutu’s Question: “How to market an ecommerce site and where to promote them?”
My Answer: Marketing an ecommerce site is a loaded question, but the basics of marketing comes down to simply getting your products in front of your caring, hungry, targeted audience every day. If you don’t know who is really caring enough, or hungry (interested) enough to want to see and buy your products you’ll need to research it out and then engage with your audience more using approaches such as: calling them, emailing, asking specific questions, doing customer survey’s, webinars, teleconferences, using your analytic systems to measure behaviors on your site and landing pages, etc.
There are a number of marketing tools and systems you can use on a daily or weekly basis to consistently and effectively reach your targeted audience such as: marketing automation systems like Infusionsoft, email marketing, facebook, and other social marketing platforms YouTube, guest blogging, partnering with affiliate and JV partners, , paid advertising and free marketing methods such as SEO and so on. There are literally hundreds of online and offline marketing methods to consider using to market your business. I’d recommend choosing email marketing and one other marketing approach such as facebook, or YouTube for example to start with and then master that platform and then continue adding another marketing approaches or channels thereafter to broaden your reach.
Ermina’s Question: “Learn to make opt-in pages as well as learning to work with WordPress from scratch… thank you”
My Answer: The best lead page creation software I found and continue to use today is with leadpage here. They make it super easy and affordable comparably speaking instead of hiring a designer and programmer to do it for you. And to get started working with WordPress from scratch watch this video here.
Frankie: “How to optimize Effectively!”
My Answer: There are a number of steps to implement to optimize your WordPress site, or any site for that matter. Some of those steps would include: hosting your site on a powerful enough server as you can find here. Next, use a CDN (content delivery network) system to deliver your content faster to your website visitors such as MaxCDN (see their site here) , and then resize your images so they are more light weight and rename them before uploading them to your site.
Kari’s Question: “Creating e-commerce dropship website on wordpress”
My Answer: Check out this video training here to get step by step help on that.
Will’s Question: “How to sell digital products and physical products from your wordpress site.”
My Answer: The WooCommerce plugin easily allows you to sell any product you want including digital products.
Paul O’s Question: “How to effectively set up a profitable relationship with the dropshipper…”
My Answer: First I’d set up a dropship supplier account here to access suppliers. And then I’d contact the suppliers that have already been verified and let them know you are interested in working with their dropship program. You’d want to discuss the profit margin of the products, best practices working with them, shipping & refund policies, who your point of contact would be, if any, how they prefer to receive orders from you once you start making them.
Dawn’s Question: “Thank you for your help and support . I’ve been working on building my on website now for a few months. And was looking to use dropshipping, but every Supplier I find is either Fraud, (like through Alibaba) or there products are way to high to make any profit off of. It would not be worth it.. Which I was considering buying products to, but cannot find the right suppliers as well.. So if in the training, you could please tell or mention where we could get these products to resell ? Thank you so much. As I so appreciate your help”
My Answer: I’d recommend setting up an account with DropshipXL here to access the verified drop shipping suppliers. Find a company that gives you access to products you know sell well and give you a profit margin of at least $100 or more which means you’d sell products that have a retail price of usually at least $300 or more.
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