All Digital Contents

Category: Website Templates

  • Dreamstime Review

    Dreamstime Review

    Dreamstime is a stock photo agency with almost 15 years in the industry. Being one of the early players in the microstock business, they forged a great reputation and are amongst the top companies in the space. Offering a library of over 85 million royalty free stock images, they have affordable prices and quality of service.

    Dreamstime sells photos on demand with credits for $0,88 – $22,50 each depending on size and level, and credit pack used. Best prices are with subscription plans. You can choose your plan duration from one month up to one year and your download volume, getting photos for between $0,22 and $5 the unit. Dreamstime is a very valid option to buy cheap stock photos from a reliable outlet.

    Check out their collections easily: use the Dreamstime search feature below to enter your keywords and get lots of images in return!

    We bring you the top 10 most downloaded photos in 2018 by Dreamstime and another 5 top stock photo agencies compared! Do check out this great resource to see what photos are most popular in Dreamstime right now and get inspiration for your upcoming stock photo downloads and further designs!

     

    Dreamstime Review Basics

    • Over 11 million images
    • Dreamstime has been online since 2000
    • File types sold on Dreamstime are ordinary photos, vector files, TIFF files and exclusive photos. Vector files are available in JPG, AI and EPS formats.  RAW files are available for purchase.
    • Accepts payment by PayPal, Visa, American Express and MasterCard, JBC, Discovery Card

    Dreamstime Particulars

    • Searchable by keywords, categories, collections, file type, orientation, license type. They enlist their community as Dream Team members to work on the search and keyword functions to ensure that the images and files can be searched in-depth.
    • Free weekly images and free image gallery
    • Active Blog (over 5 posts per day and member generated), forums and message boards for buyers and photographers alike, offering: tips,discussions, help and tools
    • Languages including: English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Polish, Italian, Portuguese
    • Their FAQ is extensive and is for members and contributors. The FAQ sections are designed to find answers.
    • Dreamstime has their corporate headquarters in Brentwood, USA

    Dreamstime Credit-and Subscription Based Currency Options

    The Dreamstime credit and subscription template is one of the easiest to use. They clearly outline what options are available, enable multiple currencies (that automatically know your geographical location), and are very transparent in the pricing per credit.

    An exclusive process to Dreamstime, is their pricing system that is based on the popularity (number of downloads) of photos. The price of a photo, or the amount of credits needed to purchase an image or file could be 3 to 5 credits more in a few months if it is a downloaded more than 5 times by the membership database.  This affects both the credit and subscription payments.

    Credit buying options:

    • Credits can be purchased in predetermined packages or through a custom selection option.
    • Credits start as low as 93¢ with a maximum price of $1.25 per credit with the credit package plan.
    • Custom selection has a minimum credit purchase of 110 credits at .93¢. The more you buy the less per credit you spend.
    • Minimum of 8 credits to start in their pre-bundled credit packages, which costs $9.99 (equal to $1.23 per credit).
    • Extended licenses can be purchased with credits starting at 50 Credits

    Credit Pros

    • Custom and pre-packaged options
    • Extended licenses can be purchased with credits
    • Credit-based service allows you to purchase just one image at a time
    • An extensive Image Terms FAQ outlines credit cost of images and files for members
    • Multi-seat licenses can be purchased with credits

    Credit Cons

    • Credits are pricey (starting at $1.23)
    • Photo’s pricing is based on the amount of downloads which can greatly raise the cost of purchasing the pictures. There is not a guaranteed image price for all images.

    Subscription Services

    Dreamstime offers subscription buying options that are defined by image purchases but use a confusing download calculation system based on image levels and download quantity:

    • Flexible subscription options
    • Minimum of 10 images per day to a maximum of 50 images per day
    • One week, One month, 3 month, 6 month and annual subscriptions

    Here is an example of the subscription description of image pricing:

    Level 1 & 2 images = 1 download
    Level 3 & 4 images = 2 downloads
    Level 5 images = 3 downloads

    Subscription Pros

    • Flexibility in subscription options
    • Subscription services are cheap

    Subscription Cons

    • Unclear which images or files can be downloaded on the subscription plan
    • Alternative licensing options require the purchase of credits for payment
    • Little information on subscription plans
    • Very confusing pricing of cost per downloads so it is difficult to figure out how much images really cost

    Image Searching Tools

    Keymasters from the Dreamstime Dream Team work tirelessly to improve the searchability of stock photos and files. Involving members in the process has proven a success model for Dreamstime.

    Basic search options are extensive and include licensing options. Their Dreams Finder provides even further in-depth search parameters. They also include well defined categories, have member picked collections, and enable image display options that include image properties, model properties and record latest searches.

    Some things to keep in mind:

    • Their use of icons to save space in the search engines can be confusing but not unmanageable.
    • A search can become too overwhelming for new members who are not familiar with all the licensing definitions

    Licensing Options

    Dreamstime has some of the most extensive licensing options out of any of the stock photo agencies.  This includes the purchase of an image copyright. The licensing options include royalty free, extended, editorial, and full copyright.

    What they have done is segmented the extended licensing into categories, unlimted seats, unlimited copies, print usage and web usage and created their own codes for each of these extended licenses. It is confusing, but it does clarify for the buyer (once they study their segments) exactly how they can use the images.

    Add-ons and Special Features

    Dreamstime Blog-Their blog is worth mentioning as it is the only member driven and member written blog seen in stock photography agencies. It is active and answers questions that new and more seasoned users can benefit from.

    Stock Photo Utilities-This is for designers and includes information, books and suggestions. This is useful for new and seasoned members and I would guarantee that this is also membership driven from the Dream Team

    Photo Map-If you require geographical images and photos, Dreamstime just introduced their photo map that allows members to search by country.

    Merchandise Store-For their members, Dreamstime has created a retail store of Dreamstime merchandise.  It lends to their community based model and assists in creating their tribe.

    Our Dreamstime Special Deal can be found here.

    Dreamstime Review Summary

    Using their community based model to drive their website that engages their members and contributors, Dreamstime is a great stock photography agency to get involved with and learn from the members. Their extensive licensing options, copyright purchasing option and RAW file inventory is well worth a free membership so you can utilize these features.

    Their searching tools provide in-depth file searches, where a member can find photos easily and with the right licensing options. It would be nice to see a less confusing subscription buying option that is more transparent and would require no studying of their terms and conditions and use of in-house definitions of image downloads. Additionally the price increase on popular files makes it difficult to gauge prices over time.

    Dreamstime has been a leader in the stock photography business for over 11 years and will continue to be an innovator in the industry.

  • Unbounce Review and Pricing – Build and Test Custom Landing Pages

    Unbounce Review and Pricing – Build and Test Custom Landing Pages

    This Unbounce review explores its primary features, the corresponding functionalities, overall pricing plans, plus the type of users the platform is built for.

    If you’re reading this, you’ve probably tried out landing pages before. And so have many marketers and most ecommerce businesses.

    Now get this- only about 22% of businesses are happy with their consequent conversion rates.

    What about the rest? Well, let’s just agree that they are struggling to find a footing in this seemingly complicated engagement.

    Admittedly, building an effective landing page sounds simple. But it isn’t. That’s why the average conversion rates range from 1% to 3%.

    So, evidently, it takes much more than setting up a page with a couple of flowery words and offers to trigger conversions.

    For starters, one, two or three landing pages are significantly insufficient. Businesses with 10 to 15 landing pages are now generating 55% more leads.

    The media used also plays a substantial role in the subsequent engagement process. Introducing videos, for example, can boost conversion rates by 86%.

    Then comes the strategy that many marketers are seemingly overlooking- testing. And that’s despite the fact that companies whose conversion rates have improved recently leveraged 47% more engagement tactics, and ran 50% more tests.

    My point?

    Well, going by these dynamically complex requirements, it’s pretty clear that it takes an equally dynamic landing page builder to set up and sustain a good campaign.

    And that’s why I decided to check out Unbounce.

    Unbounce Review: Overview

    Unbounce has been in the landing page business since 2009, and has managed to establish a solid footing in this space over the years.

    Today, this service is much more than just a landing page builder. It not only facilitates creating, publishing and testing of multiple landing pages, but also continues to provide a wide range of tools for optimizing engagement and subsequent conversion.

    Through the years, it has consistently refined its functionalities to accommodate the ever-changing market needs, and the correspondingly fluid user behaviors. As a result, it has managed to attract more than 10,000 customers, who’ve subsequently used its tools to drive over 250 million successful conversions.

    Well, it’s understandable that its fans argue that Unbounce is a revolutionary platform that supports all there is to landing pages. But, I’ve always been a bit skeptical about this.

    So, I decided to see it for myself, through a comprehensive evaluation and assessment of all its tools.

    And these are the findings.

    This Unbounce review explores its primary features, the corresponding functionalities, overall pricing plans, plus the type of users the platform is built for. I’m also going to let you in on its notable drawbacks if you stick around.

    So, here we go…

    Unbounce Review: Features

    Landing Page Builder

    The first thing you’ll possibly notice as soon as start building a landing page is that Unbounce is quite different compared to other page builders. While the bulk of other dominant builders focus on simplicity, Unbounce is seemingly attempting to combine everything on one platform.

    Well, of course, the drag-and-drop function makes the whole designing process simple and straightforward- even for non-coders. But, let’s face it- the wide range of functionalities makes it a bit sophisticated.

    On the bright side, however, at least you can work with it comfortably. And when you finally learn the ropes, you’ll be able to tie everything together and customize the page quite extensively.

    How, you ask?

    It turns out that the entire landing page building process is centered on the templates. And Unbounce provides quite a wide array of them, each of which is universally customizable. You can edit various elements to align the entire layout and outlook to your specific brand.

    And you don’t have to worry about building a separate landing page for mobile users. All the templates have been optimized for both mobile and PC by default. So you should be able to shift between the two views.

    Now, that pretty much covers the outline of your landing page. Figuring this part out is relatively easy. But things start becoming more intense when it comes to the precise page elements.

    The text editing process itself is pleasantly dynamic. Thanks to the built-in Google Fonts, you can select a unique and suitable typeface from over 840 different options.

    Then to make your landing page stand out, consider blending that with Unbounce’s graphical features.

    You can, for instance, tweak the entire page to achieve a full-screen background, complete with attractive images. And to engage visitors further, you could take advantage of the video widgets to embed relevant clips that would be auto-played in the background.

    And that’s not all. Unbounce also offers parallax scrolling to further optimize user experience. This is basically what you leverage to set up a smooth 3D-like experience on the entire layout.

    Other than that, you can add custom forms to collect relevant information from your visitors. Then capitalize on Unbounce’s API to introduce specialized integrations.

    Well, with all these features, you might be tempted to combine numerous elements on one page. I’ve done that before. And I admit that the whole thing is understandable from a marketing point of view. Because leads are best engaged via multiple channels.

    But, here’s the kicker- many elements on a single page create clutter, which translates to a poor user experience.

    Fortunately, Unbounce has thought this through. You can now use declutter your landing page by grouping the elements and moving them into a lightbox. Consequently, you’re able to maintain critical elements and information while enhancing the overall user experience at the same time.

    Conversion Tools

    All things considered, the one thing that makes all the difference between typical web pages and landing pages is conversion.

    And Unbounce seemingly takes this very seriously- going by the conversion tools it offers.

    One of the primary ones is pop-ups, which can be set to appear anywhere on your website. Creating them is as simple as dragging and dropping a couple of elements, throwing in some edits, and voila!

    In addition to that, Unbounce comes with sticky bars to further supplement your campaign. While pop-ups are understandably flashy, sticky bars are usually subtle- and are mostly used for engaging mobile users.

    Just as popups, they can be created in minutes thanks to Unbounce’s conversion-centered templates, plus its intuitive drag and drop builder. Then the resultant sticky bars are set to display on the top or bottom part of the screen like banners.

    Now, of course, both popups and sticky bars are hard to miss. They are bound to get noticed by most of your site’s visitors.

    However, when you come to think of it, that’s not the objective here. Getting noticed is one thing- engaging and converting, on the other hand, is a completely different thing altogether.

    So, guess what? To boost engagement, Unbounce goes ahead to facilitate specialized targeting. This is essentially what you use to ensure that the right elements are displayed to the right audience at the right time with the right message.

    The system allows you set custom rules for triggering popups and sticky bars based on visitor activity, URL, location, referring URL, and cookies. You can also set display frequencies, and schedule the elements in line with your campaign period.

    In addition to these two, you also get lightbox forms, customizable confirmation pages, lead generation forms, and dynamic text replacement.

    And guess what? They come with accompanying builders and real-time analytics.

    A/B Testing with Unbounce

    Even with these tools, running conversion campaigns is still a delicate process. It might seem promising on paper, but the practical bit is rather complicated- with numerous variables coming into play.

    Like, for example, a campaign that works for your team may turn out to be disastrous when it’s rolled out to the actual leads.

    Hence, Unbounce provides A/B testing to help you analyze different campaigns critically- and subsequently make informed decisions on what to proceed with.

    The testing process is quite simple. You basically create two different versions of the same landing page, with varying elements. The system then helps you separate the site traffic between the two- directing one half of the audience to one version, and the other to the second version.

    After tracking the leads, Unbounce generates the corresponding numbers applicable to each of the versions. Assessing how your visitors responded to both instances eventually helps you determine the most effectual conversion strategies.

    Landing Page Analyzer

    A/B testing is only reliable when you’re comparing two different instances of the same landing page. It will give you the winner alright- but you’ll never be completely sure about the best possible landing page campaign variables.

    Well, until Unbounce introduced the landing page analyzer late last year.

    As the name suggests, this tool crawls through your landing page, picking out potential problems, before it finally generates a comprehensive report.

    Among the details in the report is a comparative summary of your landing page compared to others in the same industry. Consequently, you’ll be able to establish best practices that have been proven to be effective with your type of audience.

    The report also provides crucial performance insights on page requests, loading times, and overall speed. Plus the corresponding SEO status, and content engagement.

    And you know what? You also get special suggestions on how you can resolve the problems, and consequently boost your conversion rates.

    Overview of Features

    • Full-screen backgrounds
    • Widgets
    • Videos
    • Blank pages
    • Mobile responsive templates
    • Confirmation pages
    • Dynamic text replacement
    • Real-time data
    • Unlimited a/b testing
    • Multiple client management
    • Account transferring
    • Campaign grouping
    • P filters
    • Fast page loading
    • Third-party integrations

    Unbounce Pricing

    Here’s the good news- you can start off with a free trial. And it’s relatively generous since it runs for thirty days.

    But, here’s the bad news- although thirty sounds like a great deal, the free trial only accesses two of Unbounce’s three plans. The most advanced plan, unfortunately, is only open to paid subscriptions.

    And paying doesn’t take a few dollars. Compared to other renowned landing page builders, Unbounce is not cheap at all.

    Here are the details:

    Essential – $99 per month or $79 per month billed yearly

    • Infusionsoft integration
    • High-converting templates
    • Popups and sticky bars
    • Drag and drop builder
    • Hubspot integration
    • WordPress integration
    • Zapier integration
    • A/b testing
    • Google single sign-on (SSO)
    • SSL encryption
    • Dynamic text replacement
    • Unlimited domains
    • Unlimited users
    • 8 published popups and sticky bars
    • 75 published landing pages

    Premium – $199 per month or $159 per month billed yearly

    • High-converting templates
    • Popups and sticky bars
    • Drag and drop builder
    • Popup and sticky bar scheduling
    • Advanced popup and sticky bar targeting
    • Salesforce integration
    • Marketo integration
    • 5 client sub-accounts
    • 16 published popups and sticky bars
    • 150 published landing pages
    • All Essential features

    Enterprise – From $499 per month or $399 per month billed yearly

    • High-converting templates
    • Popups and sticky bars
    • Drag and drop builder
    • All Premium features
    • Template Migration Service
    • CTAConf Ticket Included
    • Dedicated Launch Specialist
    • Customer Success Manager
    • Audit Logs
    • Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)
    • Full Feature Access
    • 15+ Client Sub-accounts
    • 40+ Published Popups and Sticky Bars
    • 375+ Published Landing Pages

    Who Should Consider Using Unbounce?

    All in all, the main drawback here is the learning curve. Figuring everything out takes time, especially if you’re a novice marketer. Only experienced marketers, I assume, would be able to hit the ground running.

    Other than that, I find Unbounce a bit overpriced for a landing page builder. Of course, I understand that it combines page building and marketing capabilities, but $99 per month for the base package is relatively high. Especially considering the fact that its on-site marketing features are limited.

    That said, I’ll admit that Unbounce is a fairly solid landing page solution. It delivers what it promises, as long as you know how to work with its tools. But only experienced marketers and marketing agencies have been able to do that.

  • Wix Review

    Wix Review

    Wix’s drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to create a professional website – without having to know a line of code! With hundreds of templates and great tools Wix lets you build and sell through your site. Beginner-friendly and scalable, Wix is suitable for anything from personal online portfolios to small business websites.

    What Are the Pros and Cons of Wix?

    Pros

    • Easy-to-use editor, with a side menu for adding images and apps
    • Great help features, including a searchable knowledge base
    • Automatic website backups keep your work safe

    Cons

    • Can’t switch templates after a site is live
    • May have to spend more on third party apps for scalability

    Full Overview of  Wix

    Wix is used by over 100 million people across 190 different countries. It’s an affordable, easy and hassle-free way of creating your own website in a matter of minutes.

    Building your own website used to be something only whizkid coders could do. Or people who were rich enough to pay whizkid coders to do it for them!

    But thanks to Wix, now everyone can create a website of their own. Whatever your skill level, Wix’s powerful template editor gives you full creative control – without needing to know a word of code.

    If you have a look at some of the website examples that are created by Wix, they’re beautiful and professional.

    Wix isn’t the only drag-and-drop website builder, of course. But it’s the best in the world today.

    Why do we think that? First off, it covers hundreds of industries – many more than any other website builder. Just check out what it’s got for…

    • Small businesses
    • Cafes and restaurants
    • Hotels and hospitality
    • Musicians
    • Photographers
    • Graphic designers

    No matter what your niche is, you’ll find Wix templates, tools and apps to match. Dog walkers? Success coaches? Internet stars?? It’s easier to say what industries Wix doesn’t cover!

    Since launching in 2006, Wix has swiftly established itself as the market’s leading website builder. Before we get our teeth into this review of Wix, though, let’s take a step back and explain what a website builder actually is:

    A website builder is an online platform that helps you create your own website, without coding.

    There are two main types of website builders – the classic template-based platforms, and the more modern AI (Artificial Intelligence) platforms.

    A classic website builder lets you pick from a vast range of pre-designed templates. You can then easily customize the template and populate it with all your own content, adding in useful features as you go.

    AI website builders work by asking you a series of questions, like the type of website you’d like, and your design preferences. After that, it creates a website for you. You can still make some tweaks to the design, but this approach is really for people who need a simple website up fast.

    Wix is a classic template website builder and an AI platform rolled into one. You can choose from over 500 industry-specific templates and make use of its incredible drag-and-drop editor. Or if you’d prefer, use Wix ADI and let Wix design a website for you!

    Wix comes with a big reputation, but here at Website Builder Expert, it’s our job to scratch beneath the surface and tell you exactly how good it is. Unlike many Wix reviews, we conduct our own thorough research and testing to bring you expert analysis.

    Throughout this review of Wix, you’ll learn about its strengths and weaknesses, how suitable Wix is for different types of websites, and how it fared when we put it through its paces.

    Is Wix Safe?

    Yes – Wix is safe to use. Wix is a publicly-traded company that operates globally with well-established legal, privacy, payments, and product standards. There are plenty of fly-by-night or amateur-run website builders. But Wix is not one of them. They have downsides & tradeoffs, but a solid upside is their safety & reputation.

    Is Wix Free?

    Wix has a free plan, but only if you use a Wix subdomain (e.g., yourwebsite.wix.com). You also have to display Wix ads and have limited functionality.

    To use a custom domain and have full functionality, you have to pay for a premium plan. It’s great for a short-term or temporary project…or to simply try Wix out before upgrading.

    If you are looking for a free website builder option, you could also explore these free website options. This review will explore Wix’s full product suite with a focus on anyone building a full, public-facing website.

    Make sense? Awesome, let’s dive into the Wix review.

    Is Wix Good for SEO?

    That depends on what you need. Wix has fixed a lot of their past SEO issues and offers a good toolkit for websites that generate most of their organic traffic with “brand” terms and good content. Read more about the nuances under technical SEO limitations.

    Is WordPress Better Than Wix?

    That depends on your experience, budget, and goals. WordPress has a steeper learning curve and requires more maintenance. But over the long-term, it offers much more versatility and options to grow. If you self-host WordPress (rather than use WordPress.com), it can also be much cheaper than Wix. Wix focuses on onboarding and pure ease of use for someone who wants a solid, maintenance-free website without the frustration of a web designer or figuring out HTML issues.

    How Does Wix Compare to Other Platforms?

    First, I’d encourage you to try Wix’s free option yourself, just to get a sense of the platform and how it fits with you. Second, you can browse my site to explore other website builder options with a bunch of Wix’s competition.

    Is Wix Good for Blogging?

    Wix has blogging options, but they aren’t as good as platforms originally built for blogging. Wix is better as a website builder with a small blog add-on, not as a blog-focused builder.

    Pricing

    Wix offers a free plan if you don’t mind having your site address structured http://yourwebsite.wix.com/yourwebsite. Their only caps are around file storage and features – not around pages or page types. Their paid plans aren’t outstanding on pricing (they are actually a disadvantage listed here shortly), but they are competitive enough for many businesses who care more about the done for you part over counting a dollar here and there.

    Wix Pricing

    Their plans allow you to get a site up quickly with no technical fuss and everything bundled and provided for you.

    Their tiers are reasonable – though it is worth paying close attention to the caps and whether you actually need the bonus features (ie, more Video Hours vs using YouTube or Wistia).

    All plans have tiered discounts for the longer that you sign up.

    Helpfully, they give you the “true” price upfront and show the discount after you select the plan.

    Combo plan ($13 per month)

    The ‘Combo’ plan is billed as ‘for personal use.’

    Crucially, it removes Wix brand advertising from your website. This advertising is fairly intrusive, inserting a noticeable Wix call-to-action at the top of your site.

    The plan also allows you to connect a domain to your website (i.e., your site can live at www.yourdomain.com rather than a Wix address), and provides free domain registration for the first year.

    On this plan, you get 3GB storage and 2GB bandwidth.

    You also get 30 ‘video minutes’ on this plan — as the feature’s name suggests, this means you can upload 30 minutes of video to Wix.

    The benefit of Wix’s ‘video minutes’ feature is that you can use it to sell or rent streamable video content — this contrasts positively with many other website building platforms (which only allow you to embed videos from Youtube, Vimeo etc. — and not charge people to watch them).

    Unlimited plan ($17 per month)

    The Unlimited plan is pretty similar in basic functionality to the ‘Combo’ one, but gives you $300 of ‘Ad Vouchers’. These can be used to pay for advertising with Google Adwords, Bing Ads, and Local Listing.

    The plan also provides access to the ‘site booster’ app — a third party app by AppSharp that submits your website to search engines — and an analytics app (which lets you measure site traffic).

    Finally, the Wix ‘Unlimited’ plan comes with 10GB storage, unlimited bandwidth and 1 hour worth of video minutes.

    Pro plan ($22 per month)

    This plan gives you more storage and video hours than the ‘Unlimited’ plan; it also gives you access to a logo making tool, the ability to customize social icons and a calendar tool which allows you to provide event listings on your site.

    VIP plan ($39 per month)

    The VIP plan is basically the same as the Pro plan, but gives you higher priority for user support.

    Unless you plan to be in very regular contact with Wix’s support team, I’d be inclined to go with one of the other plans.

    Business Basic ($23 per month)

    The ‘Business Basic’ plan is the cheapest Wix plan available that facilitates e-commerce.

    It’s similar in features to the $17 ‘Unlimited’ plan, but gives you more storage (20GB vs 10GB) and provides more generous video hours (5 vs 1).

    For me, this Wix plan probably represents the ‘sweet spot’ in the line-up, because it is relatively feature-rich and facilitates e-commerce without breaking the bank. Its generous video minutes allowance is good for users wishing to sell video content too.

    Business Unlimited ($27 per month)

    The ‘Business Unlimited’ plan is the same as the ‘Business Basic’ one, but adds logo making tools, social icon tools and more generous storage (35GB) and more video hours (10).

    Business VIP ($35 per month)

    The ‘Business VIP’ package is described by Wix as constituting ‘the full suite’ and provides more generous limits on storage and video (50GB and unlimited hours respectively) than the ‘Unlimited’ plan. You also get priority support.

    Unless you’re in the video selling or renting business and need to avail of the unlimited video minutes, I’d probably be inclined to go for one of the cheaper plans over this one.

    Enterprise ($500 per month)

    As is increasingly the way with subscription products like Wix, there’s now an “Enterprise” version of the platform available. This costs $500 per month and basically gives you the functionality available on the $49 ‘VIP’ plan but a lot of hand-holding during and after the build (for example, you can consult with experts on design and code issues; avail of security audits; and get access to a dedicated VIP support line).

    For me, whether Wix is genuinely an Enterprise-grade solution is moot; I haven’t come across any big corporations using Wix to date (in my experience, Shopify Plus or Bigcommerce Enterprise tend to be the hosted solutions that big businesses opt for).

    Customer Satisfaction

    After everyone finished testing Wix, we asked them if they’d recommend it.. Well, the results are in – and they’re glowing.

    A massive 88% of people who used it would highly recommend Wix to a friend.

    To put that score into some context for you, that recommendation is:

    • 24% higher than Weebly’s
    • 20% higher than Squarespace’s
    • 12% higher than GoDaddy’s.

    People loved the freedom Wix gave them when editing, and just how easy it was to drag and drop things around their website. They were also amazed at just how quickly they could create something they’d be happy to publish online.

    The only criticism people had was that to begin with, Wix can feel overwhelming. There’s so much choice – in templates, features and customization – that it takes a few minutes to settle into the platform.

    Wix templates

    Wix gives you a choice of over 500 templates. This is considerably more than key competitor Squarespace, which offers around 110, and all of the Wix templates are free, which is not the case with online store builders like Shopify and Bigcommerce.

    The templates look professional and are visually appealing — so long as you populate them carefully, Wix websites certainly don’t have to look like a do-it-yourself creation. The templates make good use of spacing and typefaces to create impact, and are particularly effective when used with high-quality photographs.

    Wix templates

    And speaking of photography, Wix also provides a large library of professionally shot images that you can use for free; and on top of that, you can access Shutterstock directly from Wix Editor.

    The templates are organised into intuitive categories, which means you should be able to find a template which meets your needs fairly easily.

    And the large number of templates means you can get very specific: for example, in the online stores category, there is a category for fashion and clothing, with 20 different templates. The ‘Music’ templates have different options for solo artists, bands and DJs.

    Compare this (for example) to Jimdo’s four categories — with only a few templates in each — and you can see that this large range of templates represents a major strength for Wix.

    Once you pick your template, you’ll find that Wix has provided good-quality sample text, pictures, and layouts. These get you started, give you a sanity check about what to include, and help avoid writer’s block.

    One big caveat is that if you’re using the main version of Wix (Wix Editor — more on the different versions below), you need to find the right template and stick with it, because you can’t change templates.

    That’s right — if you change templates part way through your website creation, you will need to start again from scratch. Not fun. Many of Wix’s competitors are more flexible — Jimdo, for example, allows you to switch templates part way through without losing any content, and the same goes for Shopify and Bigcommerce.

    Animations

    Wix makes it easy to add functions like parallax scrolling, animations, and video backgrounds to your website. These functions are automatically disabled in mobile view to improve performance.

    Design Customization

    Wix’s templates are ready-made websites in their own right. You can keep the dummy content and publish right away if you want, but to make a site your own, you’ll need to do some editing.

    Wix makes basic tweaks very easy. For example, to edit text, just click the dummy text and type away. Changing its size is also a simple matter of dragging a slider:

    design

    It’s also simple to upload content from your laptop or other online accounts, such as Facebook or Instagram.

    When you start getting more creative, Wix really comes into its own. You’ll soon find you can really turn that template into something special.

    The animation button is a great example. You can bring almost any feature to life – heading, photo, menu or whatever – by making it zoom, fade out, or even spin onto the page.

    animation button

    Wix also has hundreds of additional site features, which you can add by dragging them onto the template.

    You can add blogs, restaurant menus, contact forms, music players, maps, interactive slideshows, video backgrounds… much more than we have room to list here!

    Once you’ve added extra features, most can be customized by changing their size and behavior, or adding effects like animation.

    site features

    Wix offers a huge library of professional photos, graphics and videos, all free to use on your site. Wix’s free media content can save you tons of time and decision-making.

    Wix’s Tools and Features

    While its templates and features steal the show, it’s Wix’s tools that keep things ticking over behind the scenes – in fact, Wix earns a 4.0/5 in our research for features.

    We’d be here all day if we wanted to list every single one of Wix’s tools. So, we’ve picked out some of the most important ones for you to consider.

    Wix Editor

    Start from scratch or choose from over 500 designer-made templates. With the world’s most innovative drag and drop website builder, you can design any website you want.

    Wix Editor

    Wix ADI

    You’ll love how fast you can get online and look amazing! Answer a few simple questions and Wix ADI will instantly design a stunning website just for you.

    Wix ADI

    Corvid by Wix

    Corvid is an open development platform for building advanced web applications. Get serverless computing, hassle-free coding and total design freedom to create, manage and deploy your next web project.

    Corvid by Wix

    Professional Features for Your Website at WIX

    Custom Domain Name

    Look professional with a custom domain or connect one you already own.

    Analytics

    See how well your website is doing. Track your site’s performance and stats.

    Wix Chat

    Be there for your visitors when they need you most with a live chat.

    Professional Mailbox

    Get a personalized email that matches your website domain and brand.

    Contact Management

    Manage your contacts and collect subscribers in one organized place.

    Social Tools

    Connect all your social accounts in one place with customizable icons.

    Free Hosting

    We take care of web hosting to make sure your site is safe and secure.

    Member Login

    Create password protected pages that only your members can access.

    SSL Certified

    Secure your website and boost your SEO with an SSL Certified site.

    Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and analytics

    Wix SEO

    Wix SEO functionality is generally good — it allows you to easily perform key SEO tasks, including:

    • adding alt text

    • adding meta descriptions

    • editing page URLs

    • creating 301 redirects

    One SEO feature which may particularly appeal to SEO novices is Wix’s ‘SEO Wiz’ tool. This walks you through the key steps for optimizing your website for search engines, helping you to to update your page titles, meta descriptions, alt text, and so on. If you have no idea what all these SEO terms are, not to worry — Wix’s SEO Wiz explains what you are doing, and more importantly, why.

    Wix SEO

    (If you are new to SEO, you might find our post on increasing site visibility in Google and our SEO e-book, ‘Super Simple SEO’, helpful.)

    If you’re on a premium plan, the SEO Wiz can also help you register your site with Google Search Console.

    There are a couple of areas where I feel Wix could perform better in the SEO department however.

    My main gripe involves how mobile versions of its site display — as discussed earlier in this comparison, Wix creates separate views of your site for desktop and mobile, rather than using responsive design.

    And responsive design — where you are dealing with one template that adapts its size automatically to the device it’s being viewed on — is preferred by Google to Wix’s ‘absolute positioning’ approach.

    Another omission in the SEO department is Wix’s lack of full support for Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). AMP pages load extremely quickly on mobile devices and can bring some SEO benefits when used (as well as improved conversion rates). Although you can create AMP versions of your blog posts in Wix, you can’t currently display products in AMP format (something that contrasts negatively with the likes of Bigcommerce and Shopify).

    These SEO issues are not showstoppers, and despite these omissions, Google’s John Mueller is on record as saying Wix websites ‘work fine’ in search.

    Generally speaking, the main things that will affect a Wix’s site performance in search results will be the keyword research you’ve carried out (check out our SEMrush review for more about that), the quality of content it contains, and the number of quality links pointing to it; but as something of an SEO purist I would still prefer it if Wix sites were fully AMP-enabled and fully responsive.

    Analytics and conversion tracking

    Wix has good support for analytics tools, providing built-in integrations for:

    • Google Analytics

    • Google AdWords

    • Google Tag Manager

    • Facebook Pixel

    • Yandex Metrica

    You can use Google tag manager to implement any other third party code or pixels, or add custom code directly to your Wix site to track conversions.

    Help & Support

    When using Wix, I was able to find answers to almost everything I wanted to know by searching in Wix’s Help Centre, which contains a large library of articles and good search functionality. There is also excellent contextual help provided throughout the site.

    If you can’t find what you need in the Help Centre, then you can contact support by clicking ‘No’ in response to ‘Did this answer your question?’ at the bottom of each support page. (It would be better to provide a simple ‘contact us’ link).

    In terms of the kind of support that’s available from Wix, the company provides support over the phone and via email, but there’s no live chat.

    Phone support is available 24/7 for English-language users; or office hours, Monday-Friday in French, Spanish, Italian, Russian and Portuguese. You will need to request a callback, which at least means you don’t need to wait on hold.

    You can also submit an email ticket. Wix doesn’t commit to a timeline for answering these, simply promising to get back to you ‘as soon as possible’.  When I submitted a question, a member of the Wix support team got back to me at the start of the next business day.

    If you are paying extra for VIP support, then you will jump the queue — so long as you use the email address associated with the account.

    Wix Has All the Tricks

    For ease of site building and breadth of options, you can’t beat Wix. If the ability to export site code and a need for true responsive design are priorities for you, you may want to go with Weebly or Squarespace instead. But Wix offers the most when it comes to building your site the way you want it.

    You get online storage of your media, a large third-party gallery of site additions, and a clear, well-thought-out interface. Its optional Wix Code feature, while adding a degree of difficulty, also enables more powerful, modern, dynamic site creation. Wix Ascend brings together useful web business tools.

  • iThemes Review

    iThemes Review

    Are you a web designer who uses WordPress? Are you looking for a platform where you can download themes and other tools needed to improve your website? Look no further – iThemes is here to help you out!

    iThemes is an online website where you can download themes. You can also use the tools that are available within the website to gain more traffic or to optimize the speed of loading your page. Many web designers stated that iThemes changed their website for the better, and now they gain more traffic as a result of the changes that were implemented.

    Visit the website of iThemes today and discover a lot of features that can enhance your website. We listed down the features below, and discover how it can help you create a reliable website for your clients.

    TARGET MARKET

    The target market of iThemes is web designers who create websites for their clients. The industry has become more competitive, with clients becoming more selective when it comes to the web designer that they will hire to create their pages. If you are a web designer who wanted to land on a good-paying client, you need to use platforms like iThemes to create a good-looking website.

    Without iThemes, you will have a hard time creating a good website because clients can be picky. Another thing that you should watch out for would be the endless coding that will be required to keep a website from developing bugs.

    iThemes continues to release new developments to help web designers. They stated that several changes will be rolled out in the future to enhance their tools or to update the themes that they offer. iThemes is a great choice, according to web designers, so you should give it a try.

    OVERVIEW OF THE PRODUCT

    iThemes is a website where you can download a collection of themes and plugins. The website has a simple design, making it easier for you to find the things that you would like to download. The themes and plugins are located on their own pages, and you can download it anytime.

    When the themes or plugins have been downloaded, you can immediately use it on your website. Installing the theme or the plugin on your website does not require a lot of skill – it can be activated after a few clicks.

    RESULTS TO EXPECT

    You should expect positive results after using iThemes. One thing that the manufacturers guarantee is the creation of an attractive website that displays all of the information needed by the visitors. iThemes also encourage web designers to put a lot of visuals on the website that they create to make it more appealing.

    Many web designers who resorted to iThemes reported satisfaction with the results. They stated that the people who keep on visiting their pages are delighted to see the designs that were used. It also made the website look more professional, raking in more traffic and generating more profit for the owner.

    FEATURES

    • WordPress Hosting.
    • Backup Buddy.
    • Security.
    • Sync.
    • Plugin Suite.
    • Tool Kit.
    • Training.
    • Blog.
    • Contact.

    WORDPRESS HOSTING

    Using iThemes will automatically make your website applicable for WordPress Hosting. WordPress has become one of the best platforms used by web designers to create a website, and when the page that you create becomes available for WordPress Hosting, a lot of opportunities will start to come.

    WORDPRESS HOSTING

    This feature will give you the ability to control the iThemes Sync Dashboard. This will also improve the performance of your WordPress website to make it more appealing to the public. On top of that, you are entitled to receive a storage space of up to 20 GB, which makes it an ideal place to store important files used by the webpage your created.

    Another benefit of WordPress Hosting is the amount of page views that can be generated in a short span of time, and the free and automatic SSL certificate that will be awarded to your website, making it a highly secured one that can deter hackers and other forms of cyberattacks.

    BACKUP BUDDY

    Web designers who do not have a reliable backup plans tend to lose their website when something bad happens. This should not be the case – you should still be able to retrieve your files even when problems start to happen. With the Backup Buddy feature from iThemes, you can restore your website even if the whole system has been compromised.

    BACKUP BUDDY

    Many experts stated that the Backup Buddy feature of iThemes is one of the most reliable in the industry today. This was created in 2010, and it was the company’s answer to the growing number of web designers who request for a backup feature to be added.

    Server crashes are common, and they can happen anytime without warning. If your website runs with backup buddy activated, you should not worry about server crashes deleting your files because it can be restored.

    Some of the things that can affect the performance of your website are malware viruses, bad commands, deleted files, errors from the users, hacking incidents, and server crashes. With backup buddy, you can be confident that any of these issues will never have a severe impact on the website that you created.

    SECURITY

    When it comes to security, iThemes wanted to protect their clients by developing tools that can detect security issues. Tools like the WordPress Brute Force Protection, File Change Detection, 404 Detection, Strong Password Enforcement, Lock Out Bad Users, Away Mode, Hide Login and Admin, Database Backups, and Email Notifications helped website creators to feel more secured.

    SECURITY

    The WordPress Brute Force Protection will set a limit on the number of login attempt that can be made by an individual. After a few attempts of accessing the system with an incorrect password, a user will be locked out. The File Change Detection, on the other hand, will notify you if any changes on the files stored on your website were made. This will help you know if you have been hacked.

    404 Detection is helpful because it will notify you if someone is trying to use a bot to search your website for vulnerabilities. Strong passwords will also be required for admins, editors, and other members of the team who have full access to the most important features of the website.

    Bad users, or those who have many failed login attempts, will also be locked out when the Security feature of iThemes has been activated. Away mode will help you protect the website by locking all of the features needed to edit it if you are away.

    Hiding the login and admin will change the default URL on your website, making it harder for hackers to look for vulnerability. Database backups and email notification will help you restore your website when problems start to appear.

    Pricing and Packages

    The iThemes pricing structure is incredibly reasonable. Charging just $15 a month for a hosting plan means any business can afford this kind of service. Customers are billed annually for their hosting plans, and that includes all the extras that are thrown into your plan bundle (i.e., iThemes Sync, iThemes Security Pro, and iThemes BackupBuddy plugins).

    The standard plan (the only one available currently) is for hosting 2 websites. If you have more than 2 sites that you want hosted by iThemes, get in touch with a customer service rep. They’ll help you create a tailored hosting plan to suit your business needs. We like that iThemes is basic, easy to use, and has simple pricing, yet also provides additional options for expanding outwards and upwards if the need arises.

    SYNC

    With the sync feature, you can manage updates that will be displayed on your WordPress websites. You don’t have to switch from one place to another to post updates because you can do it in a single location. This will save you a lot of time.

    Other highlights of Sync include:

    • daily email notifications of available updates
    • the ability to ignore updates for specific themes and plugins
    • the installation of updates en masse or selectively
    • bulk installation of themes and plugins on multiple sites
    • the ability to manage comments and users on multiple sites
    • the ability to hide Sync on sites you manage for clients
    • custom client dashboards to restrict access to WordPress features
    • a mobile app to manage multiple WordPress sites on the go
    • integration with other iThemes products for improved security and smoother backups
    • site uptime, downtime, and performance monitoring and reporting (pro feature)
    • instant email notifications if something goes wrong (pro feature).

    The free version of Sync will let you manage up to 10 sites, while the premium version includes additional pro features and support for more sites.

    PLUGIN SUITE

    PLUGIN SUITE

    This will give you unlimited licenses to the premium WordPress plugins that were developed by iThemes. This comes in an affordable bundle, and you can use it immediately after the payment has been made.

    TOOL KIT

    TOOL KIT

    The tool kit will provide you access to more than 20 WordPress plugins, more than 200 customizable WordPress themes, more than 900 hours of video tutorials, and more than 10 iThemes Sync websites.

    TRAINING

    TRAINING

    Accessing this feature will enable you to read the instruction manuals on how to use iThemes. This will also help you create a website using all of the tools available from the platform. Video tutorials can also be found under this feature, making it easier for you to create the website that you want.

    Pros

    • Budget-friendly option for WordPress users wanting a simple hosting option
    • Comes with tools to make WordPress site management easy
    • Lots of training/self-help/education resources

    Cons

    • The support offering is lacking
    • Hosting plans aren’t the cheapest on the market, yet you’re still required to do some of the tasks typically covered in plans offered by premium, managed WordPress-oriented hosts

    CONCLUSION

    iThemes is a good website to visit if you are looking for themes and tools that will enhance your page. You can also score good discounts if you visited their page during the holidays.

    USING THE WEBSITE

    Users who visit the website of iThemes will immediately notice the active promotions given away by the company. The options and features that are used by web designers are located conveniently on the header. You can select these essential tools and you will be redirected to a page where you can download them.

    There are also tutorials uploaded on the website that you can access to increase your knowledge about web design. This website is highly recommended for bloggers, freelancers, website administrators, and agencies.

    Help and Support

    iThemes has a friendly and knowledgeable customer support staff. The team is based in Oklahoma, so you always get someone who speaks your language and understands the issues you are having. Support can be reached via the online contact form. Messages are generally answered within 24 hours during normal business hours Monday thru Friday 8am – 5pm CT.

    Final Thoughts

    It’s clear that iThemes have begun to shift their focus more towards plugins. There are still some very good themes in their collection, but, if you’re looking for a great value theme club with a large and growing selection of modern and feature-packed themes, there are some other great options to consider too.

    However, the iThemes WordPress plugins, such as BackupBuddy, Sync, and iThemes Security Pro, are undoubtedly some of the very best around. If you’re looking for a professional solution to cover the backup, security, and maintenance aspects of your website, the iThemes plugin portfolio is hard to beat!

  • HubSpot CRM review 2021

    HubSpot CRM review 2021

    Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and at no additional cost to you, we’ll earn a commission

    When HubSpot released their free CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and Sales Tools in 2014, they added a whole new dimension to the company’s offerings and value.

    They expanded its effects beyond just marketing into sales, and now even customer service — all at no additional cost to start.

    In this article, we’ll take an unbiased (as much as we can!) look at the HubSpot CRM and Sales Tools and share the pros and cons of each.

    Pros and cons of the HubSpot CRM

    The HubSpot CRM makes it easy to organize, track, and grow your contact list and sales pipeline, but like everything, it has both its pros and cons.

    Pro: It’s FREE

    According to HubSpot, the CRM will be free to use forever — even if you’re not a paying HubSpot customer.

    Not only is it free, but it includes unlimited users – meaning you can add your ENTIRE team – Marketing, Sales, whoever!

    Pro (Released in 2018): Live chat

    HubSpot released their Live Chat tool (Conversations) this year to all users, free or paid.

    It’s super simple to set up and manage, and you even get basic chat bot functionality to take your online visitor and customer experience to the next level.

    With paid levels of the HubSpot tools, you get even more robust functionality to be able to customize and manage live chat and incoming inquiries in a way that makes sense for your team.

    Pro: Better insights

    The HubSpot CRM tracks customer interactions automatically, providing valuable insights into customer behavior and making it easier to know when to follow up.

    With the Gmail and Outlook extensions, you’re able to track email opens and clicks to see how users are interacting with your emails in real-time.

    Note: for the free CRM, you’ll be able to see the first 7 days of tracked website activity on a contact. With HubSpot’s paid Marketing Hub tools, you’ll be able to see ANY tracked data.

    Pro: No customisation limits

    Most CRMs have annoying customization limits, but HubSpot allows you to customize everything to your brand and your specific sales process.

    (We saved an IMPACT client thousands a year with a customized HubSpot CRM. Learn all about it here!)

    Pro: Uses the same database as marketing platform (no integration needed)
    Both marketing and sales perform best when they’re in alignment. The HubSpot CRM is natively connected with the HubSpot marketing tools, allowing a smooth transition of leads from marketing to sales in your funnel and far easier communication of data.

    As you grow with HubSpot, all of your data will remain in the same place — upgrading your subscription will simply give you added functionalities and features.

    Pro: can be used with other CRMs

    At IMPACT, we often find that many of our clients enjoy using the HubSpot CRM for prospecting due to its simplicity and functionality (and integration with HubSpot’s other sales tools), but find Salesforce (or another legacy system) is still useful for other needs.

    Luckily, the HubSpot CRM doesn’t affect anything your organization is doing in other CRM platforms, such as SFDC or Microsoft Dynamics.

    They can be used simultaneously — and both can be integrated into HubSpot as well.

    Con: relatively new

    Since HubSpot CRM is still relatively new compared to other major CRM players, there are some feature limitations.

    However, HubSpot’s emphasis on research and development has alleviated many former qualms about the platform and there are updates being made to regularly.

    Con: Lightweight

    Although HubSpot CRM is great for growing businesses, organizations with large sales teams might find that HubSpot CRM isn’t advanced enough just yet.

    Con: Lack of flexibility

    Compared to other CRMs, HubSpot’s platform is relatively inflexible. While there are certainly features you can customize around your team’s processes and needs, we’ve found that organizations with very complex sales processes aren’t able to find the flexibility they’re looking for in the HubSpot CRM.

    Virtual Selling Summit

    HubSpot CRM vs Salesforce
    As with any business decision, deciding which CRM is right for your business comes down to the current state of your business, sales team, and goals.

    According to HubSpot, the CRM was not designed to compete with that of Salesforce (in fact, they have an integration for it.)

    Rather, it is for companies that have never used a CRM before and want to start or those that find Salesforce is too robust for their needs.

    If you’re a growing company looking to implement a lightweight CRM that improves organization and efficiency for sales reps and creates closed-loop reporting on sales and marketing initiatives, then HubSpot CRM is for you.

    If you need an enterprise-wide ecosystem in one platform, however, Salesforce may be a better option.

    HubSpot sales tools

    While the HubSpot CRM has many basic tools to get you started, it’s rarely ever used in a silo. If you’re going to start using the CRM, you’re likely going to eventually start using the Sales Tools as well.

    Here’s a brief overview of the Sales Tools pros and cons to get you started:

    HubSpot’s Sales Tools have come a long way in last year.

    They now have several sales tools available, including Email Templates, Snippets, Meetings, Prospects, Sequences, Documents, Tasks, and a tool for email tracking.

    Not only have the tools come a long way, but at INBOUND 2018 HubSpot announced the new Sales Hub Enterprise — making their sales tools much more appealing to the mid-market.

    Pro: You can start using free, and scale up as you grow
    HubSpot is making a big push to help businesses improve their inbound sales by providing several sales tools, in addition to their CRM, free of charge.

    Most of the tools are available for free (with monthly usage limits), but for $50 per user/month, you can get a Starter account with higher limits and premium tools like Meetings, Sequences, and Prospects.

    As you get into Professional and Enterprise level accounts, you start to unlock features like the native Salesforce integration, multiple pipelines, teams, and even 1:1 video for sales.

    Pro: Work from inside your inbox, OR HubSpot

    HubSpot’s sales tools live in your inbox (Gmail or Outlook), so you don’t have to go back and forth between various windows and you can get more work done faster.

    Not only that, but HubSpot’s CRM and Sales tools could effectively replace your inbox altogether.

    By connecting your email account to HubSpot, you can send and receive emails to and from any of your contacts right within their HubSpot contact record.

    Pro: Automatically syncs with other HubSpot hubs

    Similar to HubSpot’s CRM, their sales tools work perfectly with HubSpot Marketing, your contacts, and all of their other software.

    If you’re familiar with HubSpot, you’ll be able to jump right in and use these tools.

    Con: Not as robust as HubSpot Marketing (yet)

    HubSpot’s marketing software is a true all-in-one platform, whereas their sales tools make up a new collection of convenient and useful tools.

    They make an excellent addition but historically have lacked the advanced functionality to be the exclusive sales tools for most large sales teams.

    However, with Sales Enterprise, HubSpot is working hard to make that issue a thing of the past.

  • AppSumo Review

    AppSumo Review

    Attention all web geeks! Are you always looking for deals on digital tools? After all, there are so many of them on the market that can do amazing things for your website. Have you heard of AppSumo but not sure what they’re all about? So, what is AppSumo? AppSumo is a niche online retailer that delivers mega-discounted prices on software geared toward developers, programmers, web and graphic designers and more. Or, in the words of the former Facebook, Mint, and Google employees who launched AppSumo, they “promote great products to help you kick ass at work.”

    This Austin, Texas-based company has been around a few years and has 700,000+ faithful followers who know a steal of a deal when they see it. And the AppSumo team also promotes carefully selected software products created by burgeoning entrepreneurs. Interested in learning more? Check out our AppSumo review to see how we rate their marketplace.

    AppSum Overview

    PROS

    • Excellent deals on high-quality products
    • They use and test every single tool before selling them
    • 100% money-back guarantee within 60 days
    • They partner with up-and-coming developers to promote and sell products
    • No spam mail

    CONS

    • Most deals are available for a limited time and can sell out
    • Extremely stringent approval process to promote products for those looking to sell

    Key Features

    • AppSumo deals range from 50 to 95% off of regular pricing
    • Excellent deals for lifetime sign-ups on digital tools
    • Major discounts on web-related and other courses
    • Owned and run by tech experts
    • Sign up for AppSumo’s newsletter, which gives you special access to their latest deals
    • Featured in the Washington Post, Lifehacker, TechCrunch and more

    What Can You Get With AppSumo Deals?

    AppSumo Deals

    Here’s a list of some of AppSumo’s more popular deals to give you an idea of what they’ve offered in the past.

    • Webinar Ninja: $49 for lifetime signup (normally starts at $45/mth)
    • Landingi landing page designer: $49 for lifetime signup (regular pricing is $29/mth)
    • ClickMinded SEO training course: $149 (regular fee is $479)
    • Serpstat SEO platform: $39 for lifetime signup (normally at least $300 per year)
    • Kernest Konstellations premium font packages: $125 (normally $540)

    What are AppSumo Plus and AppSumo Briefcase?

    Ok let’s talk about AppSumo Plus first.

    For $99 a year you get 10% off each and every deal on AppSumo and you get early access to new deals, additional training on featured apps and also a Pro license to AppSumo’s KingSumo giveaways product. (More on KingSumo and other AppSumo ventures like Sendfox below)

    Now I will be blunt, AppSumo is not impressive to me firstly because I have KingSumo already from a previous deal anyway and because to make your money back (through the 10% off coupon code) on that $99 per year you will need to buy at least 2 AppSumo deals per month.

    Granted for many of you who are just starting to build your software stack this can be really easy with all the great deals they featured but for me it’s not a great value proposition. If AppSumo included some type of deal on their new email marketing platform SendFox, believe me I would quickly change my tune. But for now AppSumo briefcase is a way more compelling offer than Plus.

    Pay $49 per month and get access to some of the best apps to growth hack your business. Everything is covered from design tools, productivity, sales and business development, video creation, social media marketing and even client management for freelancers and invoicing.

    If you had the assurance that all the business tools your startup needed to scale quick would only cost you $49 per month that would be a comforting thought in terms of financial planning and with AppSumo Briefcase it’s possible.

    Concluding this AppSumo Review

    Phew this AppSumo review has been comprehensive but I hope it helps you to feel confident in doing business with these Sumos. Being a client of theirs has been one of the smartest buy-ins I have ever made in my business career. The thing that separates them from competing sites is the quality and due diligence they take with every company they feature.

    So it’s a no-brainer on the buyer side.

    But If you are interested in featuring your company on AppSumo you need to be ready for an avalanche of traffic and have done your own due diligence on whether the 70% fee you have to pay AppSumo is worth the cash injection you get upfront into your startup.

    View the latest deals from AppSumo and don’t forget to claim your bonus here if you do.

  • Leadpages Review

    Leadpages Review

    Welcome to my UPDATED Leadpages review for 2020. The majority of reviews around the web are outdated (2016 or earlier), sugar-coated, or misleading.

    This is not one of them….

    I’m going to be brutally honest, analytical, and, I hope, helpful to you in making this decision. By the end, you’ll know everything necessary to make an informed decision. Personally, I think you’ll understand why Leadpages is the best landing page editor for business, even if it’s a bit pricey.

    Let’s get started…

    What I Cover in My 2020 Leadpages Review

    I’ve built my fair share of landing pages, and in my Leadpages review, I’ll cover all the important details:

    What is Leadpages?
    Features – Templates, SMS, links, pop-ups, landing pages, and more
    How to use Leadpages – A quick, very basic tutorial so you get a feel for the UX
    Usability – My overall thoughts on usability and UX
    Pricing – Leadpages’ somewhat “controversial” pricing
    Customer support – A major bonus in my opinion
    Important Note: No other landing page builder comes close to rivaling Leadpages usability, templates, and advanced features. You can design awesome landing pages with literally 0 experience. But it’s not for everyone, and there are some very important things you should know before starting your free trial.

    Ⅰ: What is Leadpages?

    Leadpages is a suite of tools that facilitates business growth by helping your company capture more leads and convert those leads into paying customers. They’re mostly known for their landing page builder and highly effective (yet slightly annoying) pop-ups.

    Since you’ve probably heard of how the internet works, I won’t waste time explaining why you need landing pages.

    You should just know that Leadpages’ Leadpage Editor is a simple, drag-and-drop tool that lets you create effective landing pages that convert with no design or development experience.

    I discovered Leadpages when I was still a digital marketing newbie. All I had to do was choose a template and edit a few details—that was it. They did the rest.

    Wow, that sounds great! Leadpages must be the best landing page tool out there, right?

    Well, yes. Kind of. In my opinion, it is, but it might not be for everyone. There are a lot of landing page builders out there, and some are less than Leadpages.

    You should know what the tool is capable of first.

    Ⅱ: Features

    Leadpages claims to be the #1 landing page tool out there, and honestly, they’re probably right. It’s hard not to be impressed with the features.

    They’ve somehow managed to make this one of the most powerful business growth tools on the market and still not overcomplicate to the point where you need a Ph.D. just to get the thing live. If you’re looking to make high-converting landing pages with email-capture pop-ups, opt-in forms, and other cool features, you’ll have a lot of fun with Leadpages.

    Here are a few of my favorite features:

    2.1: Leadpages Templates

    Leadpages templates are hands-down the best in the industry. They have 150+ templates broken down by purpose and industry.

    And, as far as I’ve seen, nearly all of them are mobile responsive so they’ll render well on any device.

    Need a lead capture template or a landing page for a special giveaway? You got it.

    Are you a startup or tech firm that needs a landing page for a free guide or product pricing page?

    The work has already been done for you. Just click, edit your details, and you’re pretty much set.

    Maybe I’m just nostalgic about how helpful Leadpages’ templates were to me, but I love how easy it is to create a professional landing page in basically every industry for any purpose in minutes.

    WARNING: Leadpages’ templates ARE NOT PERFECT

    Leadpages’ templates come in two forms: Standard and Drag-n-Drop. The standard templates have very few customization options (if any).

    I’ll get into more detail further down in the pros and cons section, but there are a few things you have to know. The templates are a great feature for businesses, but there are some flaws that you need to know about.

    2.2: Pop-Ups (Leadboxes) – Grab a visitor’s attention at just the right time

    You’ve most likely encountered a Leadpages pop-up (Leadbox). They’re ubiquitous.

    Leadboxes are crisp, professional-looking pop-ups that help you capture more leads at just the right time.

    Leadpages lets you create a high-converting Leadbox in a matter of minutes and comes with automatic settings to pop up at the height of your visitor’s interest.

    That’s right, as soon as the visitor is engaged in your landing page, you can forcibly invade their eyesight with an offer they can’t refuse.

    You can set your pop-up to appear:

    When a user clicks a button or link
    On a timer
    As they’re about to exit in a last-ditch effort to keep their attention
    Leadpages lets you design your Leadboxes in a few minutes with a simple drag-n-drop editor.

    You can even connect your email service provider so new subscribers automatically go to your preferred email list.

    Pro Tip: Enable Leadbox Tracking

    Leadbox is a highly effective feature that lets you track every visitor’s interaction with your pop-up. You can track how long visitors keep the pop-up open and whether or not it accomplishes its goal of getting a sign-up or click.

    You can evaluate the performance of a Leadbox by tracking it with Google Analytics. That way, you can see what’s performing up to speed and what’s not working and reevaluate accordingly.

    2.3: Alert Bars – Increase conversions by making the most of screen real estate

    You know those little bars at the top of your screen that offer a free product or alert you to a sale/giveaway?

    Those annoying little things are alert bars, and Leadpages scores a 9 out of 10 in that department. I actually had no idea these were even a thing when I first discovered Leadpages, but they helped big time.

    Hey, screen real estate is more valuable than a Manhattan penthouse, so any time you can make extra use out of what you’ve got, it’s a win. Leadpages lets you create non-intrusive (kind of) alert bars that scream for attention until your audience is forced to notice.

    Like this:


    And designing them doesn’t get much easier. Even if you’re a complete rookie, Leadpages walks you through the process step-by-step, including colors, text, and theme. You’ll have a custom alert bar in 2 minutes.

    Pat yourself on the back, big boy.

    2.3: Leadlinks – Sign up in 1 click (no extra info)

    Leadlinks (email trigger links) is a cool feature that lets your prospects sign up for promotions (for example, a webinar) in 1 easy click.

    Say you’re running a webinar called “how to make the perfect caviar taco.”

    Normally, you’d send a broadcast email to your entire email list with a signup button that transports the reader to a landing page for that webinar (probably made with Leadpages, too).

    If they wanted to learn more, they’d have to click that link and enter more personal information to sign up for your webinar.

    Not anymore…

    With Leadlinks, you—or an affiliate working with you—insert the link into the email, and when the prospect clicks it, they’re instantly signed up. No extra info needed.

    All they do is click the link and they are auto-registered.

    2.4: LeadDigits – Grow your email list via text

    Leadpages’ “LeadDigits” feature is another useful tool that helps you reach out to prospects where they spend the vast majority of their time…

    …their mobile phones.

    Check this stat out from Mobilexco:

    Text messages have a 209% higher response rate than phone, email, or Facebook. [1]

    It makes sense though, right? We spend our entire lives glued to our phones, and it’s way easier to reply to a number with a short text rather than an email. LeadDigits lets you collect phone numbers (far more effective than email, but harder to get) and get email signups, send coupons, or promote your business via text.

    2.5: A/B Testing: Make calculated changes based on data

    Neo was the first visitor to ever take an A/B test

    Theory gets you nowhere in this business.

    It’s not enough to just slap a landing page up and hope for the best. The only way to know what truly works is to test, test, test.

    Leadpages make it easy to A/B test right from your dashboard.

    From there, you set the control page, make a copy, and implement your tweaks (for example, changing the CTA). If you’re feeling extra frisky, you can direct traffic. No, seriously, Leadpages lets you control how much traffic goes to each variation, but this is a bit advanced.

    Still, it’s a neat feature to have.

    2.6: Integrations

    I just want to mention quickly how good Leadpages’ integrations are.

    Not many landing page editors integrate with this many social media, payment, video, and CRM programs.

    You can connect it with basically any email, webinar tool, payment processor, analytics program, social media platform, or scheduling program you want. That’s a huge plus.

    2.7: Customer Service – Real people answering real questions… or so they say

    Unlike most companies, Leadpages has real human beings behind those avatars and not some chatbot that’s only programmed to answer the top 10 FAQs.

    That, and they’ve got a huge library of resources or “knowledge base” as they call it to help solve your problems.

    I’ve had nothing but good experiences with customer service. That might not be a big deal to most people, and it shouldn’t make or break your decision here. But trust me, when you just want to run an A/B test and can’t figure out how to change the font color, you want a fast response.

    Next up, a quick “how-to” section…

    I could go on all day about features, but it’s best to leave SOMETHING to the imagination.

    Let me give you a quick step-by-step “how-to” just to show you how easy the basics are.

    Ⅲ: How to Use Leadpages

    OK, I want to show you how to use Leadpages quickly so you get a feel for it.

    That way, you’ll know if you can pull it off or not.

    Step 1) Fire up Leadpages and click “Create New Leadpage”

    This is REALLY EASY.

    From your account dashboard, you can navigate to the Landing Pages tab within templates:

    Notice you can choose Drag & Drop or Standard.

    Step 2) Choose a template and edit

    Alright, Picasso. Now’s your time to shine. Let’s make a landing page!

    Each template contains pre-built sections. This makes it insanely easy to rearrange, modify, add, or delete to your liking.

    NOTE: There is a big negative to the simplicity of Leadpages’ pre-built sections that I’ll cover at the end. It’s not the end of the world, but you should know about it.

    All of the content on your new landing page is held in “widgets.” Each section of content has its own widget. Basically, that means your:

    Title
    Subtitle
    Call to action
    Images
    All are held in predetermined areas. To edit, you just click on that widget.

    Editing Widgets

    If you’re using a Drag & Drop template, you can click the widgets tab on the left, then drag and drop elements onto your page for editing. Including:

    Images
    Videos
    Text
    Countdown
    Progress bar
    But that’s not all! Leadpages gives you full control over the look and feel of your page.

    Aside from adding widgets, you can edit the actual dimensions and structure of your page too.

    Editing page layout

    You can edit your page’s layout using the section titled—you guessed it—Page Layout.

    You can add or remove sections, rename sections, or do anything else you want with them. It’s your landing page, after all.

    From there, you can get into even further detail and customize everything from colors to font sizes using the Page Styles tab.

    Customizing page style

    The paintbrush below Page Layout is Page Styles. This is where you can edit:

    Font
    Background
    Width
    Custom CSS
    Favicon
    That’s pretty easy considering you just made a totally functional landing page from scratch just by clicking a few buttons.

    Now, it’s time to publish your page.

    Step 3) Publish your page

    I recommend previewing your page before publishing. You don’t want any screw-ups going live (TRUST ME).

    Just click the Preview button like so:

    From there, click Publish and you’re all set.

    TIP: Always publish on your own domain

    Leadpages allows you to publish to your own website or theirs (but they require you to use a subdomain, e.g. Store.Yourdomain.com). That will put people off big time. Don’t do it.

    Ⅳ: Leadpages Pricing

    Now for the million-dollar question.

    Or, in this case, the $25 – $199/month question.

    How much does Leadpages cost?

    In my opinion, Leadpages is worth the price. But I won’t sugarcoat: it’s not cheap.

    Leadapages’ pricing is one of the most common gripes with the tool, especially since most of the high-value features aren’t available with the Standard plan.

    The price starts at $25/month (billed annually).

    $300 a year doesn’t sound too bad for a tool that basically makes landing page creation a matter of a few clicks and a bit of dragging here and there.

    But, once you see the details, you realize the bad news. The Standard plan doesn’t include:

    Unlimited A/B testing
    Leadlinks
    LeadDigits
    Sub accounts
    Online sales and payments
    If you want that, you have to upgrade to either:

    Pro – $48/mo
    Advanced – $199/mo

    But wait!

    All is not lost. I want to make this really clear:

    THE STANDARD PLAN HAS EVERYTHING A BUSINESS NEEDS TO MAKE AWESOME, HIGH-CONVERTING LANDING PAGES!

    If you need a suped-up suite of marketing tools to scale your agency to space, then yeah Leadpages gets really expensive.

    But the Standard plan includes:

    Unlimited landing pages
    Unlimited pop-ups
    Unlimited alert bars
    200+ templates
    Facebook and IG ads builder
    Group coaching
    What else do you really need?

    If you’re a small business with the Standard plan, you can make a landing page, add a pop-up, add an alert banner, and create social media ads.

    That’s plenty if you ask me. Sure, you won’t get the most advanced features, but to be brutally honest, if you can’t afford $2,400 a year, then you probably aren’t at the level where any of that is important.

    Pricing Verdict: Yes, Leadpages is pricey if you want all of the juiciest features, but the Standard plan has more than enough to build high-converting landing pages, and it’s not that expensive.

    Ⅴ: Pros and Cons of Leadpages

    I know this was a lot to take in, so let me summarize the pros and cons of Leadpages here:

    Pros

    Usability: It doesn’t get any easier than Leadpages’ drag-n-drop editor and intuitive widget system. I created some killer landing pages back when I had 0 clue what I was doing. No experience. No nothing. In a few clicks, you can have a professional level lander.
    Feature Rich Without Complexity: Leadpages has awesome features like SMS marketing, Leadlinks, pop-ups, alert banners, in-depth analytics, and social ads, but it’s still super easy to use.
    Templates: Leadpages has a template for nearly every function and most business niches. Just find a template to match your goals or search through options custom made for your industry. Leadpages has done all of the hard work for you.
    Integration: Leadpages is the UN of landing page tools. It comes with 40+ standard integrations like Google Analytics, Facebook ads, and live chat software.
    Cons

    Pricing: It’s not cheap, but it shouldn’t be. It’ll cost you $300/year minimum, and that’s without the advanced features.
    The drag & drop editor is wonky: This is the flaw that I mentioned before and you should be prepared for it. The editor is great, but it is flawed. A lot of the widget boundaries are a bit off, and often an element snaps into the wrong place or doesn’t end up exactly where you want it. Also, you can delete elements if you’d like, but then you just have awkward spaces that are impossible to fill in. I ran into some issues with it, but nothing that ruined campaigns for me. Just be prepared to fight a bit with the editor from time to time.
    You can’t customize standard templates: The standard templates really can’t be edited at all even though they claim they can. You’re better off using a drag-n-drop one.

    Ⅶ: Verdict – Is Leadpages worth it?

    In my opinion, Leadpages is 100% worth the price. It’s the best landing page builder available in 2019.

    If you’re a business that needs to create landing pages for lead magnets, special giveaways, regular promotions, or basically any other purpose, Leadpages is the best choice.

    You can create specialized landing pages complete with banners and pop-ups in minutes and then publish them live with no coding or design knowledge. That will drastically increase your conversion rates. From there, no other landing page creator rivals its extended features and analytics integrations.

    Yes, the editor has some quirks, and yes, the tool is pricey for the advanced features. But what do you expect for an entire suite of marketing tools? If it were cheap, it wouldn’t be good.

    My advice: If you need great landing pages and have the funds, sign up for Leadpages’ free trial and you’ll have landing pages that are conversion machines in no time.

  • Unbounce Review

    Unbounce Review

    Landing pages have always been tricky for us here at bestschemes. Our developers are busy building new products and optimising our existing ones but our marketing team needs landing pages built regularly and quickly. They don’t want to be waiting around for weeks at a time while each new landing page is designed and developed for them.

    Sound familiar?

    Building landing pages is only half of the battle, too. Running split tests and optimising each page on an ongoing basis is a real challenge and we’ve tried multiple landing page builders to solve this problem for us.

    Most recently, we’ve been using Unbounce to aid the release of our latest bestschemes, Serene, and we feel like the latest version of Unbounce is the best all-round landing page builder on the market right now.

    So we thought it might be helpful to share our experiences with an in-depth review looking at what makes Unbounce such a good tool and where we think it could still be improved.

    What are we looking at in this Unbounce review?

    Our main goal with this review is to give you a real impression of what it’s like to use Unbounce as a landing page builder and optimisation tool.

    So, in the first half of this article, I’m going to focus on why we started using Unbounce in the first place and explore the pros and cons we experienced along the way. I’ll also take a good look at the features on offer and the different pricing plans available so you have a good idea of what you’re getting for your money.

    The second half of this review is going to be more like a case study, showing you how we’ve actually used Unbounce, the problems it’s solved for us and where we feel the platform could be improved.

    To do this, I’ll run you through the following five tasks:

    1. Creating our first landing page
    2. Publishing a landing page on our WordPress site
    3. Integrating Unbounce with our CRM
    4. Running our first A/B test in Unbounce
    5. Using popups & sticky bars

    This will give you working examples of what Unbounce can do for your business and an idea of any potential issues you come across. No marketing tool is perfect and this review aims to give you a completely balanced account of our experience – only you can decide what the deal breakers are for your needs.

    This review will help you decide whether Unbounce is the landing page builder for you.

    Why did we start using Unbounce?

    It all comes down to the time it takes to design and develop new pages.

    Basically, landing pages were holding back our efforts to release and promote new products. With our development team pumping all of its resources into getting ready for launch, they can’t hit the pause button every time our marketing team needs a new landing page.

    At the same time, though, we can’t launch a new product effectively until we’ve got all of the landing pages we need to promote it – a classic catch-22.

    So we wanted a landing page builder that would allow our marketing team to create the landing pages while our developers focus their efforts on building the best products.

    We need landing pages, fast

    Once our marketing team comes up with a new campaign idea, it needs landing pages quickly – it can’t wait weeks for them to be designed and developed, one by one.

    We often need multiple landing pages at any one time, too, for different products, new websites, PPC campaigns and email marketing campaigns. We can’t allow this demand to interrupt our developers who are busy working on products but we also can’t let our marketing strategies fall behind.

    Giving our marketing team the power to create landing pages quickly is the key benefit of a tool like Unbounce.

    We need to test & personalise landing pages

    Your first landing page design never gets the best results. To maximise performance, you need to optimise/test on an ongoing basis and this means you’re essentially creating multiple variations for every landing page you build.

    This only makes development and time constraints more difficult.

    We knew that Unbounce comes with unlimited A/B testing on all of its plans and we wanted to see if this, combined with its landing page builder, would be enough for us to create and optimise our pages using a single platform.

    Another feature that caught our attention was Dynamic Text Replacement, which promises to make personalisation fast and easy to implement.

    Unbounce is a conversion-driven platform

    There are plenty of landing page builders on the market in 2020 but one of the standout things about Unbounce is that it’s a purely conversion-driven platform. The whole point of building landing pages is to convert visitors into leads and paying customers – and Unbounce is built specifically for this purpose.

    I’ve already mentioned that Unbounce comes with unlimited A/B testing, which is a crucial tool for optimising for conversions. But it also comes with built-in tools designed to capture more leads, including popups and sticky bars and AI optimisation features.

    We’ll look at these features in more detail later but the important thing this tells us about Unbounce is that it’s a platform designed to maximise ROI.

    We’d tried other options and came back to Unbounce

    Leadpages and Instapage also caught our attention in the quest for a landing page builder but neither option quite worked out for us and the feedback we were getting from Unbounce users was consistently better than the other options.

    You can read our Leadpages review here but the quick answer is Unbounce’s landing page builder is more powerful and flexible while it also continues to innovate features you won’t find on alternative platforms.

    Unbounce pros & cons

    Overall, Unbounce is a great piece of software and there are plenty of good things to say about. There’s always room for improvement, though, and here are the pros and cons we’ve experienced while using the platform.

    Unbounce pros

    • Quickly build and publish landing pages
    • Quickly create variants for testing
    • Excellent templates and third-party sources like ThemeForest for more templates
    • Highly customisable
    • Great landing page builder
    • Split testing functionality is good

    Unbounce cons

    • Form builder lacks some key features
    • You can’t split test existing landing pages created outside of Unbounce (something you can do with platforms like VWO and Google Optimize)
    • Our Unbounce landing pages were lost as a data source in Google Analytics – we found a workaround but it wasn’t ideal
    • You can’t add custom classes to buttons so we had to rebuild them in HTML, which prevented us from tracking goals in Unbounce

    I’m not going to lie – some of those cons added a lot of initial extra work but you’ll end up with the same problems on most landing page builders like Instapage and Leadpages.

    If Unbounce opens up the platform to split test landing pages previously built outside of the software, this would be a huge win and the ability to add custom classes to buttons would save a lot of time as well.

    Overall, Unbounce is going to save you way more time than it costs and, once you’re up and running with the platform, it’s pretty hard to do without. The landing page builder is great, the templates available are excellent and you get a lot of freedom to customise your pages.

    Unbounce’s split testing features are solid, too. Sure, they’re not as extensive as a dedicated piece of A/B testing software but it’s a strong offering for a landing page builder and more than you’ll get from most alternatives.

    Unbounce features: More than a landing page builder

    Unbounce is primarily a landing page builder so this is ultimately what we’ve judged it on. That said, the platform offers a wide set of features beyond its builder and many of these are really important when it comes to creating and optimising landing pages, such as A/B testing.

    Here’s a quick preview of the features we’ll be looking at in this section:

    • Landing pages: Unbounce landing page builder and other tools at your disposal.
    • Popups & sticky bars: Easily create popups and sticky bars to generate leads.
    • A/B testing: Test and improve your landing pages.
    • Reports & analytics: Measure your landing pages’ performance.
    • Dynamic Text Replacement: Match the content in your landing page to the search queries visitors typed in to maximise relevance and increase conversions.
    • Smart Traffic™: An AI-powered conversion tool that automatically sends traffic to the most relevant landing page.
    • AMP landing pages: Create AMP landing pages that load up to 85% faster than standard mobile pages.
    • Lead form builder: Create and add forms to your landing pages.

    Let’s start by taking a look at the most important feature in Unbounce: its landing page builder.

    Landing pages

    Unbounce’s drag-and-drop landing page builder means anyone can pick up the tool and start creating pages without writing any code or using specialist design software.

    • Drag-and-drop builder: Add, remove or customise any part of your landing pages with just a few clicks.
    • 100+ templates: Build pages in minutes from a template or create your own from scratch.
    • Clone & edit: Save time by duplicating and editing your most successful landing pages for new campaigns.
    • Copy and paste: Simply copy and paste these elements from one landing page to another—no need to recreate from scratch.
    • Full control: Customise every detail to the pixel and add your branding without limitations.
    • Quick publishing: Publish landing pages straight to your WordPress site with Unbounce’s WP landing page plugin or to your own custom domain.

    You can choose from hundreds of templates to get started and customise them to meet your own needs. To speed up the design process even further, you can clone and edit entire pages, copy and paste between pages and save your own templates for future use.

    In terms of performance, Unbounce’s landing page builder is one of the smoothest I’ve ever used. While a lot of page builders lag and restrict your freedoms, Unbounce gives you complete freedom over your design choices and I can’t say I’ve ever noticed any lag.

    You can try it out for yourself right here.

    Popups and sticky bars

    Aside from landing pages, Unbounce also comes with its own popup and sticky bar builder, which you can use to boost conversions. While I’ve talked about the pros and cons of popups before on this blog, there’s no denying that they can increase conversion rates when used effectively.

    • Drag-and-drop builder: Once again, you get a fast, robust builder to create your popups and sticky bars.
    • Templates: You can also start from a template and customise to your needs or build your popups from scratch.
    • Targeting & triggers: Choose who sees your popups, how/when they’re triggered and dynamically swap content based on visitors’ keywords (Dynamic Text Replacement).
    • Schedule: Schedule campaigns that run automatically so you’re always showing your most relevant promotions.
    • A/B testing: Test different messages and offers to maximise the impact of your popups and sticky bars.

    My best advice would be to stick to exit-intent popups for desktop visitors and use sticky bars for mobile visitors, as this will protect the mobile experience and avoid any Google search penalties.

    As a final tip, make sure visitors who have already converted don’t keep seeing the same popup if they come back to visit again.

    A/B testing

    Unbounce provides extensive A/B testing features on all of its plans, allowing you to optimise your landing pages and popups for maximum performance.

    You can set up A/B testing campaigns within a matter of clicks to test entirely different pages, smaller variations – such as the same page with and without a lead gen form – or specific elements like your calls to action.

    This is such an important feature for pages that are designed to convert and it’s always frustrating to find out a landing page builder doesn’t provide A/B testing features or restricts them to its more expensive plans.

    You don’t have to worry about this with Unbounce.

    Report & analytics

    Unbounce provides insights into how your landing pages are performing and how your A/B tests are going. You can access all of this in the Unbounce dashboard but you’ll get the best results by integrating with Google Analytics.

    You can find documentation on how to do this here but all you really need to do is get website tracking Id from Google Analytics and enter it into Script Manager, which you’ll find under settings in the Unbounce interface.

    Once you’ve integrated with Google Analytics, you can set up event measurement to track users actions, such as clicks on your CTAs and other important conversion goals.

    I should make the point of saying that our Unbounce landing pages were lost as a data source in Google Analytics. We did find a workaround for this but integrating with GA didn’t go quite as smoothly for us as the documentation suggests.

    You may have better luck.

    Dynamic Text Replacement

    Dynamic Text Replacement is Unbounce’s answer to landing page personalisation. The feature matches the copy on your landing page, based on the keywords users type in before clicking on your PPC ads.

    Combine this with dynamic keyword insertion in Google Ads and you can create paid search campaigns that match user intent at every interaction. By boosting relevance, your messages will have more impact on users and encourage them to convert in greater numbers.

    To set up Dynamic Text Replacement in Unbounce, you simply select the text you want to apply it to and then click the Dynamic Text button. Then, you define the dynamic text that will replace your default and confirm the default text that will show when Dynamic Text isn’t active.

    Repeat this for your campaign’s target keywords and Unbounce will take care of the rest.

    Smart Traffic™

    Smart Traffic™ is an AI-powered conversion tool that automagically looks at each visitor’s attributes and directs them to the most relevant landing page. The algorithm looks at attributes like user location and their device to determine which variation of your landing page will be most effective.

    • AI optimisation: Unbounce’s AI algorithm starts optimising in as few as 50 visits.
    • Automated CRO: Increase conversions without waiting for tests to reach statistical significance.
    • Fast results: Use Smart Traffic™ to test landing page variations faster.

    Unbounce says Smart Traffic™ boosts conversion rates by 20% on average and this would be an incredible return for a feature that does all the work for you.

    I can’t confirm whether Smart Traffic™ delivers on this promise as it’s a new feature and it’s still in beta. We haven’t tried the feature but it’s another illustration of how Unbounce continues to innovate.

    AMP landing pages

    Unbounce was also the first landing page builder, to my knowledge, to support AMP landing pages. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are designed to make the web a faster place for mobile users, which reduces loading times to an average of just one second.

    • Create AMP landing pages: Without the usual development hassle.
    • AMP templates: Unbounce also provides mobile optimised AMP templates that you can customise or start from scratch.
    • Up-to-date: Unbounce will keep your pages and code up-to-date with the latest AMP standards.

    AMP does have its pros and cons and one of them is that the learning curve can be steep. Unbounce removes this problem altogether by making it easy to create, test and optimise AMP landing pages in the same way you would with any other page built on the platform.

    Lead form builder

    Unbounce also comes with its own form builder that allows you to add lead-gen forms to any page. While it’s great to see this feature included in a landing page builder, they never really provide the functionality you need to create high-converting forms.

    You’ll get better results from a dedicated form builder and optimisation tool like Leadformly that operates in a similar way to Unbounce, except for the fact it specialises in forms. And this is one area where you really need a specialist tool to maximise conversions.

    It also helps that Leadformly integrates with Unbounce so you can embed your forms on landing pages (and any other web page outside of Unbounce).

    Much like Unbounce, you can use Leadformly to use a form template and customise it to your needs or build your own from scratch using the drag-and-drop editor. One thing that sets this form builder apart is its focus on multi-step form designs that reduce friction and increase conversions by as much as 743%.

    Perhaps more importantly, Leadformly has some of the most advanced form analytics and reporting capabilities you’ll find. You can use it to see how long users are taking to complete your forms and even specific form fields to see where they might be running into problems. You’ll also see which form field users interact with last before quitting sessions to further pinpoint troubling fields.

    With these advanced insights, you can kiss goodbye to average conversion rates (or worse) and start pushing the top end of benchmarks for your industry. Who knows, you might even be able to set some new ones.

    How much does Unbounce cost?

    Unbounce has three core plans and you get access to most of its features across all of them. While most software providers throttle features on their cheaper plans, Unbounce doesn’t really engage in this – although there are a few differences, which I’ll explain in a moment.

    First up, let’s look at some pricing.

    • Essential: $79/month
    • Premium: $159/month
    • Enterprise: $399+/month

    As you can see, pricing starts from $79 per month and the key difference is how many landing pages and popups you expect to create. Even on the Essential plan, you get a healthy limit of 75 landing pages and eight popups/sticky bars, which will be all some smaller businesses need.

    I should also point out that both the Essential and Premium plans set a limit on 500,000 monthly unique visitors.

    Also, the Essential plan doesn’t support AMP landing pages or some of the more advanced popup targeting settings. There are some technical features reserved for the Enterprise plan, too, such as audit logs, dedicated support and page migration.

    All in all, though, Unbounce makes the vast majority of its features available to customers on every plan and it’s always great to see this from a software provider.

    How we use Unbounce at Bestschemes

    Now, as promised, let’s take a look at how we’ve been using Unbounce here at bestschemes. In this section, I’ll show you how we used the tool to complete the following tasks:

    1. Creating our first landing page
    2. Publishing a landing page on our WordPress site
    3. Integrating Unbounce with our CRM
    4. Running our first A/B test in Unbounce
    5. Using popups & sticky bars

    This should give you a good idea of what it’s actually like to use Unbounce and a working preview of its most important features.

    Creating our first landing page in Unbounce

    Our first task with Unbounce was to create a “coming soon” page for the Serene app. You can either start with a blank page and build your own landing page from scratch, use the Training Template as a general guide or choose a template and customise it to your needs.

    We wanted to generate leads for Serene before we launched the product live so we chose a minimal template with an email signup form and adjusted the design to suit the concept of a productivity app.

    In colour psychology, orange is associated with energy and this is the feeling we want to leave our users with, so we opted for a gradient from red to yellow – a combination that draws attention (think traffic signs), signifies importance and gets people excited.

    Unbounce’s landing page builder makes it incredibly easy to put your own designs on its templates with a lot more freedom than you may be used to with other platforms.

    In terms of actually building our first landing page, we were done in a matter of minutes – and there’s no reason it should take you ay longer, as long as you know what you want to create before starting.

    Publishing a landing page onto our WordPress site

    If you’re running a WordPress website, the first integration you’ll need to think about is publishing your pages through the CMS.

    This was actually a lot easier than we anticipated and the only prep work you need to do is download the Unbounce plugin to verify your site.

    Once this is done, head back to the Unbounce dashboard and the landing page you want to publish. Simply define your URL (and make sure it is the correct URL) you want to publish to and that’s it.

    Simple.

    Integrating Unbounce with our CRM

    Unlike WordPress, integrating Unbounce with our CMS ActiveCampaign wasn’t as straightforward as we had hoped. It turned out this was because ActiveCampaign has updated its interface and Unbounce hasn’t updated its documentation to match.

    In the end, we ended up using Zapier to integrate the platforms and this actually worked out better for us. Unbounce’s native integration with ActiveCampaign only sends over the name and email of users but we created a Zap to send over additional data.

    I have to say, I would recommend this approach if you’re using Unbounce and ActiveCampaign.

    Running our first A/B test in Unbounce

    Unbounce offers unlimited A/B testing on all versions of its platform and this was a key feature that drew us to its software. Otherwise known as split testing, this allows you to create multiple versions of the same landing page and pit them against each other.

    Traffic will be split between each version and you can keep track of progress in the Unbounce dashboard.

    All in all, A/B testing on Unbounce works really well and it simplifies the entire process nicely. You don’t need any technical expertise whatsoever and our marketing team is able to create variations and run tests without any input from our development team whatsoever.

    The only problem we had with A/B testing on Unbounce is that we couldn’t apply it to existing landing pages we’d already created outside of Unbounce. This is quite common with landing page builders like Unbounce but some of the more extensive optimisation platforms like VWO and Google Optimize do allow you to optimise pages previously built elsewhere.

    Using Popups & sticky bars with Unbounce

    We’ve experimented quite a lot with popups and sticky bars over the years and this is something we wanted to continue with our Serene landing pages.

    Once again, Unbounce’s drag and drop editor makes it a breeze to create and customise these. Once you’ve designed your popup or sticky bar, you can choose when to trigger them, add them to any page on your website (not only Unbounce landing pages), set custom frequencies and schedule them to only appear at certain times.

    That gives you a lot of deliverability options and you can monitor performance from your Unbounce dashboard to see how they’re impacting conversion rates.

    Compared to dedicated popup platforms like OptinMonster, Unbounce doesn’t give you a dozen different types of popups to work with but I’m not convinced this is an issue.

    More important for us was Unbounce’s Dynamic Text Replacement feature that allows us to adapt the content of our popups and landing pages to match the search terms users type into Google before landing on our site.

    Conclusion

    During the course of this Unbounce review, the one question that we’ve aimed to answer throughout is if this is a landing page builder worth our money or your money for that matter?

    That is a tricky question to answer in a market that’s flooded with some very good landing page and webpage builders. Drag-and-drop builders seem to have improved their game over the past two years, and there seem to be fewer so-called exclusive features.

    In our opinion, Unbounce does have its fair share of drawbacks as mentioned above, but the benefits Unbounce offers far outweigh those drawbacks.

    While it isn’t the most competitively priced landing page builder, its excellent integration, relatively simple interface and a laundry list of useful features make it worth the price.

    However, before you decide to signup and pay the price of admission, it is worth signing up for the 14-day trial.

    Sure, the trial has a couple of features disabled but it should give you some sense of what to expect. If you see conversion rates go up, then it is well worth your money.

  • Explanation On Why HubSpot Is Important

    Explanation On Why HubSpot Is Important

    Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and at no additional cost to you, we’ll earn a commission

    What is HubSpot CRM

    HubSpot CRM is one of the leading CRM apps currently available on the market and a winner of our Best CRM Software Award for 2019.

    Free and simple, HubSpot CRM is built to be a platform that allows sales teams to get started quickly without making much of a change in their existing workflow. It is a solution ideal for companies that are still starting to recognize the value of CRM and want to try it out or for enterprises that are not using their existing CRM systems to their fullest potential.

    HubSpot CRM is a smart and easy option that carries all the necessary basic features but without the often confusing complexity many other CRM platforms have. Beginners and mid-market companies will also appreciate the fact that HubSpot CRM is currently a certified, premier Google partner, and is a solution that suits well all niches and industries.

    HubSpot will help you easily create beautiful contact and company profiles, as it can neatly organize every single detail from your customers’ communication with you. It effectively assigns and tracks your deals, controls the performance of your agents, and offers a single, detailed dashboard where all team members can keep track of the company’s activities. If you are already a HubsSpot Sales user you can also use HubSpot CRM for more effective inbound sales.

    At the same time, HubSpot is one of the best-integrated CRM platforms on the market and no other free CRM solution can offer the same level of integration. Some of the popular apps it integrates with are Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, Zapier, Shopify and many other tools.

    Interested users can also take a look at HubSpot Marketing – an advanced system from the HubSpot suite that will align their CRM and marketing efforts in the service of improved traffic and conversion rates. The system helps develop successful lead generation strategies, primarily by enabling users to optimize their website content and distribute it among the right influencers and audiences.

    Overview of HubSpot CRM Benefits

    It’s free and available to you regardless of budget

    What makes HubSpot CRM a better solution than most CRMs today? First of all, it’s available completely for free. Any business, regardless of budget, can use HubSpot CRM at no cost and integrate it with just as many business systems and applications as necessary.

    You can link it to all locations of your sales processes

    The first and most important advantage of HubSpot CRM is that you can link it to all places and locations where your modernized sales processes are taking place, including your websites, email service providers, social media profiles, phone calls, and more.

    It’s a flexible and powerful solution

    HubSpot CRM will help you close more deals with less work involved, because it organizes and tracks each aspect of your sales pipeline, and helps you grow it and develop in the right direction. The data insights it provides are simply unparalleled, and will certainly help your agents save time they usually spend on research. You can enjoy as much as 1,000,000 contacts and users, and unlimited storage, all available for free. Unlike what you’d normally expect from a free software system, HubSpot actually responds to effectiveness criteria even better than a variety of paid tools. On top of that, it is also flexible enough to meet the needs of individuals, B2B and B2C businesses, those operating in retail, accounting, real estate, construction, or any other industry.

    It blends easily with all your ongoing sales processes

    Once installed, HubSpot CRM will run in the background of all tools you are already using, and you will be able to trigger it whenever you need it. The list of available integrations is very long, and includes products such as Pipedrive CRM, SugarCRM, Bigcommerce, Gravity Forms, Base CRM, Google Chrome, Google Dynamics, Snapengage, Dropbox, and many more (see the integrations tab above for a full list). Basically, HubSpot is applicable in any software ecosystem, and blends easily in all processes and operations instead of asking you to modify those to its benefit.

    Intuitive interface and lead importing

    As our experts like to call it, HubSpot CRM is a restless and powerful automation system, which will eventually help businesses close deals faster and cut the time they are spending on arranging customer documentation. It also offers some of the most powerful data enrichment functionalities, thanks to which you can import leads from your emails with a single click. Another way in which HubSpot CRM perfects the art of efficient customer relationship management is with fast leads backlog, and the intuitive interface that doesn’t require any training or complex installations to master.

    Overview of HubSpot CRM Features

    Customize views
    Deal and Task Board
    Hubspot Marketing Synchronization
    Drag and Drop Communicator
    Email Integration
    Phone Integration
    Website Integration
    Enrichment
    Social Media
    Company Database
    Website Visitors
    Email Connections
    Sidekick Integration
    CRM Details
    Templates, Tracking, and Scheduling

  • Thrive Themes Review – Conversion Focused WordPress Themes

    Thrive Themes Review – Conversion Focused WordPress Themes

    If you ask me about my Thrive themes review and why I changed from Genesis, first I should ask how much you love my new site design? For those who are already using Thrive Themes, I am sure that you are a huge fan because of the advanced features and how easy it is to use.

    The fact is that I am not a programmer, but in just a few hours after a few glasses of wine late on the weekend was a changeover to the new theme without any coding skills. I understand that WordPress may not be the easiest thing to learn, but their content builder and plugins worked so well it was really easy to change. You can easily control all the additional style layouts, performance features, moderate comments, blog controls, or decide which related posts show up where.

    thrivethemes

    However, there are a few cons to go with the many pros and wanted to give you the list of my Thrive Themes Review. It is meant for bloggers who are looking to be able to make the changes themselves while focusing on conversions. Divi is the only theme that I found comparable, and with this cost more as the plugins like Thrives Lead Box was not included.

    Thrive Themes Review​​​​

    There are multiple aspects of Thrive Themes that you need to know about. It isn’t just a single plug-in that you use for themes, it’s an all in one plug-in to transform your website into a money-making-machine.

    The Thrive Architect WordPress Page Builder

    As I mentioned above, the best feature of Thrive is how easy it is to use and is because of the Thrive Architect Page Builder. Previously called the “content builder” thrive has updated their previous plugging and made this compatible with no all Thrive Themes, but all WordPress themes.WordPress themes

    The click and drag page builder has around 40 different elements that give you control over almost everything in the design. This includes changing the color, height, width, background, text without just a few clicks of the button. You can also edit or delete any elements or sections if you want.

    A few other notable important things to note include:

    Having a live preview so you can see how it looks on different devices so you can customize the user experience.
    Being able to hide or enable elements depending on if the users are visiting via a mobile, desktop, or tablet
    Adjusting the width (margins) and padding without actually entering the size and manually editing the settings.
    And one of the very important features of the Thrive Architect that many others will not do, is that even if you deactivate the deactivate Thrive Architect plugin, the HTML content remains intact so you can change one day if you want to switch platforms. This means that the CSS modifications may not be working, but will not be lost.

    Other Thrive Plugins Available:

    There are 8 Thrive WordPress plugins available, and I can say that I use almost all of them. All of these are created with optimization and conversion tactics in mind and include Thrive Architect, Thrive Leads, Thrive Clever Widgets, Thrive Headline Optimizer, Thrive Ultimatum, Thrive Ovation, Thrive Quiz Builder, Thrive Comments.

    Thrive Quiz Builder

    The Thrive Leads form is the plugin that I use the most. It is similar to Opt-In Monster (premium) but has far more features and does not lock you into a monthly plan. You can choose exactly what pages you want them to display on, split test results, and show different forms based on new visitors versus current subscribers, and much more.

    There are a lot of different forms to choose from that have been specifically designed to maximize your conversions. As you can see from my pages, I normally use Post Footer, Slide-in, and Screen Filler. You have super prevised targeting features, with time-based trigger options and smart exit popups. Thanks to the dozens of professionally designed templates you will never have to worry about designing anything.

    Landing Page Optimized Templates:

    Choose from over 220 full in templates designed for creating beautiful landing pages in record time. I choose the Rise theme for my website, but use individual landing pages for specific funnels and targeted campaigns. As we showed you above with the Thrive Architect, everything is so customizable that you will never have to pay for another web designer again.

    Plans & Thrive Pricing:

    Thrive themes is not only good at optimizing your website, but they optimize their plans as well. You can get a single license for $67 that you can use for up to 5 websites, but odds are that you will at least want Thrive Lead and Thrive, Architect, making it pretty much the same price as the full membership.

    Thrive Membership – $19/month (annually) or $25/month (quarterly)

    Use all of the plugins and themes on all of your own sites
    Agency Membership – $49/month (annually) or $59/month (quarterly)
    Use all of the plugins and themes on your sites and clients’
    Note: If you decide to purchase one of the individual plugins now and want to become a member later, the individual licenses you bought will NOT be credited towards your membership. See full fine print here.

    Are you still planning about making your website? or are you planning to change your hosting? You can use this coupon for Bluehost and get it for less than $3.00 per month!

    Things Thrive Can Work On (Cons)

    I had planned to write pros and cons at the bottom, but my excitement for Thrive lead me to say more about the pros than cons. Thrive may lack some of the custom designs such as magazine theme of something more specific to your niche, but something you can fully customize. A few other things to point out include:

    Can be more expensive then a typical theme if you have a small budget
    It will not allow you to change the custom color of the header, footer, and sidebar beside their 6 options without copying a custom code in it. By the time you read this, hopefully, it is changed as Thrive is always improving and upgrading.
    As the sidebar is responsive, you can not control the size of it. Some ad networks or publishers want specific sizes, so it will auto size it and may cause a few moments of anger.
    The support forum needs a better search function and for users to categorize correctly.

    Final Recommendations

    In my opinion, the Thrive Themes provides the best conversion-focused websites for internet entrepreneurs. It may be more expensive then your typical “Theme Forrest template” but I believe it is excellent value for its money. You will save hundreds of dollars not buying additional plugins and save thousands from not hiring developers to do these easy changes for you.

    There is the 30-day money back guarantee, so if you are not happy just ask for a refund with no questions asked. Interested? What are you waiting for, go ahead and purchase Thrive Themes!