5 Ways to Customise Your Website with WordPress

You finally decided to get started on that website to-do list. Got the domain registered. The hosting providers sorted and were all set to create a WordPress website that makes you stand out of the crowd. 

But, how do you be different in a sea of similar fishes? 

To give you a perspective, WordPress powers more than one-third of the entire Internet. Yes, you read that right, THE ENTIRE INTERNET. The same one that holds anywhere around 1.8 billion websites (in 2020). That’s a lot of pressure, to begin with. Just building on a basic theme and template might not cut it anymore. 

Don’t you worry, though. We got you. Whether you hire a WordPress agency in London or decide to go solo, there are some pointers that you can’t miss. Read ahead to know five targeted ways to give your brand website that personalized appeal.

1. Select a Brand Tone 

A major part of brand recall depends upon the identity that you carve for yourself. Brand identity is the message that you deliver through your marketing and other communication channels about your core values.  

Your WordPress is the first point of contact for most of your audience; hence it should be customized in line with such identity for easy association. Take the following steps to build a tailored version –

• Customize the layout to match with a consistent style across the pages

• Install a basic or premium theme that resonates with your ideas. Choose either from the range offered by WordPress or a third party developer and alter it as per your understanding

• Use the Google Fonts Typography plugin to tweak how your visitors shall perceive the content

• Skip the traditional pagination setting and go for an infinite scroll

• Co-ordinate your Featured Images to reflect the brand palette and aesthetic

• Enhance the visual representation with out-of-the-box background and colors

2. Take the Features You and Your Audience Desires

With over 57,000 plugins, it can be tempting to add all the different nicks and knacks you want. But, that comes at a cost. Overdo the plugins, and you shall be stuck with a site that takes a lifetime to load. 

Select only the plugins that add valuable features to the website, while leveraging your audience’s requirements. Some broad concepts you could focus on are site security, data backups, image optimization, page builders, and caching tools.

Install an array of features to create an aesthetic and improve site performance simultaneously. You can even customize them further to match your brand identity. In fact, with the introduction of WordPress 5.0, you can use the block editor itself to make some significant changes. 

3. SEO All the Way

SEO is a mammoth of its own kind. While the whole point of SEO is being found on different search engines, the important part is to be ranked for the keywords you choose. You want your target audience to find you when they search for your products or services. This is where customization matters.

Figure out your strategy and optimize your pages in line with those keywords, meta tags, and descriptions that your readers use. Additionally, your content should always have the right keyword density and readability to be marked as high-quality by the algorithms.

The best way to ensure a comprehensive approach is by installing an SEO plugin that allows you to manage your content and how it is presented outside your platform. Plugins like Yoast SEO take complete care of the on-page and off-page SEO requisites along with the technical SEO part. You can even change the title, authorship, and visibility settings to include or exclude any intricacies that you’d like.

4. Take Charge of the 404 Page

When any content is deleted or moved, the visitors end up on a 404 page. Broken links lead to the same destination as well. While the end goal is to avoid this at all costs, it is bound to happen sometime or the other. But, why is an error important to you? 

Because it can effectively be turned into a conversion page for your website. A 404 page is a reflection of your brand and how it handles the mishaps that are caused. Users more often than not bounce off from the website when a 404 page appears. You, on the other hand, can customize the page with on-brand designs and intriguing copy to retain the prospects and turn them into leads.

The 404page plugin comes to the rescue here. It allows you to build a regular page using the WordPress Block Editor and then simply designates it as the error page. Unlike other plugins, it doesn’t cause any redirects, thus refraining from additional server requests. 

5. Conversion-Friendly Landing Pages

A landing page is a space on your website that is designed to convert visitors into leads. All your marketing efforts are usually focused on bringing prospects to these kinds of pages. Since the primary goal of any website is to become a lead generation machine for the creators, landing pages are what shall set you apart from the rest.

The Elementor plugin comes highly recommended for this task. Apart from having templates for landing pages and complete site kits, it also allows you to develop responsive pages from scratch with its drag-and-drop editor. Additional widgets are available to enhance your design capabilities and make the most of your webspace. 

Wrapping Up

One of the most distinguishing qualities of WordPress is that it can be moulded entirely as per your vision. Every single element can be changed. To be fair, this is only the icing on the cake. There is a range of varied options available to customize the site in a way that it looks completely personalized.

Once your website is up and running, pay close attention to how the visitors react and accumulate the data via Google Analytics. Using the reports, adapt the pages and sections that seem to have a high bounce rate. Remember, customization is not a one-time process. Keep changing little parts of the pages to keep the visitors engaged and intrigued about what shall come next.