Step 2. Build Your Nonprofit Website Yourself

Nonprofits stand to gain a lot by going the DIY route. Instead of paying a developer to create a site that you can’t manage without their assistance, using a CMS, or content management software, such as WordPress enables you to customize the look and feel, add features, and publish content on your own. We always recommend WordPress because of it’s flexibility and the hugely supportive community that has developed around it. With free resources, plugins that build upon your site with custom features, and a continuously improving interface for editing your website without code, it’s a perfect choice for a new nonprofit, or for upgrading an existing site that needs some love.

Follow these steps to get started with WordPress.

Website Hosting and Domain Name

One of the more confusing aspects of creating your own website is hosting and domains. Essentially, your website hosting company stores your website on secure servers and connects it to the internet, to be accessed by your users. Your domain name is the address that connects users to your site. Choosing a great domain name is as important as the rest of your branding, such as your name and logo, but it also needs to be memorable and easy to type. When you set up hosting, you can typically get a discounted or free domain name with your plan.

Install WordPress to Your Domain

After securing a domain name and a hosting plan, you’ll need to install WordPress. The WordPress core software enables you to create a website and edit it through WordPress’s admin dashboard. Using a WordPress theme and plugins, you can accomplish nearly anything a developer could, including responsive design, dynamic content and animations, and look and feel changes for your brand.

To install WordPress, all you need to do is access your hosting control panel, or cPanel, and locate the one-click WordPress installation button. Your host will handle the details, and will send you an email or notification with login credentials for your website’s WordPress dashboard. To access this dashboard any time, simply type in your domain address with /wp-admin added to the end of the url. For example: yoursite.com/wp-admin. Then enter the username and password, and you’re cooking with gas!

Choose a WordPress Theme

The next step requires you to choose a WordPress theme, or template. This piece of software gives you a baseline of features, styles, and layouts to customize without writing code. It’s kind of like using a Word document template, but much more in-depth and feature-rich. There are two basic types of WordPress themes: free and premium. Free themes are great for getting started, but if your goal is to have a professional website with up-to-date technology and design practices, you need to choose a premium theme. Most premium WordPress themes run around $59, which is a one-time fee and includes support and theme updates over time.

Premium themes also tend to be more focused in their set up and design, meaning that you can find a nonprofit specific theme with some great designs and features built-in.

Here are some great examples of niche nonprofit WordPress themes.

Install Your WordPress Theme and Import a Demo

Now, when you choose a WordPress theme, the next step is to install it on your website. So log in to your WordPress admin dashboard again, and follow this guide:

• How to Install Your WordPress Theme

Most niche themes for nonprofits feature a great demo design that follows the best practices for marketing your organization. These designs can be imported, and then all you have left is customizing your brand and content, and tweaking the design to meet your specific goals.

• Guide to Import a WordPress Theme Demo
• Guide to WordPress Pages, Posts and Menus

Customize, Write, Refine

Once you’ve imported a demo, or created your own design using the theme’s features, you can now begin customizing colors, images, layouts, and writing copy for your site. Before too long, you’ll probably want to start adding some features with WordPress plugins (there are many free plugins that will help you add features and optimizations). In addition to the front-end marketing, you also need to consider the security and performance of your site, and set up some ways to track interactions. Here are some additional resources and guides to help you get started:

How to Find Quality WordPress Plugins

How to Install WordPress Plugins

How to Optimize Your Website’s Loading Speed

How to Protect Your Website and Set Up an SSL

How to Perform A/B Tests on Copy, Design, and Features

Benefits of Creating a New WordPress Site for Your Business or Creative Projects

Like a solid and targeted social media presence, a professional website is essential for your online presence and business development strategy, whether you are launching a niche product or service, marketing your own creative projects or looking to attract new clients. Think of your website as your online headquarters and central hub for your social media accounts and content marketing strategy.

Make More Money with Affiliate Marketing

If you are Kylie Jenner, or another mega influencer on social media with an established platform that reaches millions of people around the world, a choice social media account might be enough to net you a lucrative income. But for the most part, online sales and profits are driven by a well-developed and targeted inbound marketing strategy that involves offering relevant, quality content to an engaged audience on a regular basis. Building a list of subscribers and developing a loyal and dedicated following with your website can help you leverage your readership for successful affiliate marketing and sales.

Personal and Professional Enrichment

Chances are that you’ve read about at least one person in your chosen field or industry with a successful business that began as a humble blog. From honing your writing, marketing and sales to valuable content marketing skills from running your own site, one of the most effective ways to showcase your work to potential customers or employers is to show it off through a WordPress site. Think of a good WordPress site as a resume, portfolio and interview all rolled into one.

If your goal is to build a business, pursue a new hobby or skill, make more sales or land a new job, developing a website should be at the top of your to-do list for 2018.

The Benefits of Analyzing Your Digital Marketing Campaigns

The biggest benefit you get from marketing analysis is gaining actionable insights from your data. If you have a reliable way to extract value from your marketing information, then you can use it to improve over time.

Another advantage, especially if you have near-real-time reporting, is that you can quickly measure the impact of changes. If you alter a campaign while it’s running, you can see whether you’re attracting more prospects or fewer with your improvements. This rapid cycle is essential for dialing in on what your audience wants.

What Are Goals in Google Analytics?

Google Analytics, a powerful website analytics platform, can easily be integrated with your WordPress site. You can use the features from Analytics to collect and track important metrics, such as goal conversions.

When using Google Analytics, a goal is an action that you want the user to take. For example, your goal may be for someone to provide their email address for your newsletter, or to purchase a product. When you set a goal in Google Analytics, you make it possible to track user behavior that leads to this goal. The more you know about that behavior, the more you can increase that goal conversion.

Set and Track Goals

The Analytics platform makes it easy to set up goals. When you’re in the Admin section, you can select any type of view and click on the Goals header. A button appears with the label “+New Goal.”

You can use a provided template, leverage the smart goals feature, or specify the user behavior that is associated with that goal. Once you set up the goal, Google Analytics knows what to track in website traffic reporting.

When your goal is associated with a certain URL, such as a link from an email or a purchase page, you can add UTM parameters to that link to get more insight into your traffic’s behavior.

The Google Analytics Campaign URL Builder allows you to quickly add these parameters to your links. The only required parameter is the campaign source, which is the referrer. You can add the medium, name, term and content for unique URLs that provide deep insights into your traffic.

You can dive into this data by going to the Campaign section underneath Acquisition in your Google Analytics report.

Using Goals and UTM Parameters

One way you can use goals and UTM parameters is to track how many people end up purchasing your product after they engage with your email newsletter content. Your goal looks for users who go through the checkout process and reach the Thank You page, which appears after a successful transaction.

To do this, you would configure your UTM parameters for all of the links leading out from the emails sent to your newsletter list. The source would be a newsletter, the medium would be email, the campaign name should indicate when the email was sent and whether it went to a segmented list, and the campaign content should note the theme of that email or series.

Here’s how to set up a UTM URL just like in the image above:

• Enter the URL you’re sending to (such as a product or specific page on your site).
• Enter newsletter for the source.
• Email for the medium.
• And for the campaign name, make it as specific as you need to know what purpose this link served (see above).
• You can also add a term if you’re bidding on or targeting a specific keyword used in search.
• And you can even specify different delivery methods for A/B testing, such as a button vs. a text link.

When you look at your goals, you can see how many customers you acquired from your email newsletter, as well as the specific email that triggered the final conversion.

This information is invaluable for optimizing your marketing efforts and discovering areas where you can improve. Once you can quickly and conveniently access Google Analytics from WordPress, you have all the information you need right in front of you.

What Google Thinks About Automated Content

Let’s say you stumble across a nifty WordPress plugin that promises to generate meta tags automatically. It sounds like a super easy way to check off the meta tag box, especially when you’re staring down a giant chore list of digital marketing tasks for your business.

Resist the temptation to sign up. Bread comes sliced. Your website doesn’t arrive pre-packaged with content. You’re supposed to create the unique, valuable content that will benefit your audience—and not clog up Google. But don’t believe us. Let’s go to Google’s Quality Guidelines for the answer on auto-generated content:

“Automatically generated—or “auto-generated”—content is content that’s been generated programmatically. Often this will consist of paragraphs of random text that make no sense to the reader but which may contain search keywords.”

How to Start Writing Great Metadata

Let’s just say you already scooped out a giant helping of auto-generated content for your site. The great news is that you’ll probably see an improvement in rankings if you fix it. Just remove the plugin causing all those Google no-no’s, then add new meta tags writing (by a human) in its place.

The key to knowing how to write meta tags is understanding them in context. Your meta tag content is a lot like the title and dust jacket blurb on a book. That intro description and title are what people see about your site in the search engine results page.

Make Your Digital Marketing More Effective With CTAs

So, let’s get them to click. Write a call-to-action (CTA) in your Description tag that urges viewers to click through—and delivers on your page promise. The Title tag should describe the purpose of the page, for example “FAQs.” Include keywords in the meta tag content when they’re pertinent to delivering a great audience experience. Don’t stuff keywords. If you get stuck or need inspiration, look up some competitors. Test out what makes you want to click on results in the search engines.

Now, Let’s Get Those Meta Tags Up and Running

The best way to implement meta tags on your WordPress site is to get a quality plugin that will help you with formatting and word count (good automation). Google has specific guidelines for the length of two of the most important meta tags, Title and Description. Going past recommended keyword lengths is not the place to get creative. Google makes the rules when it comes to SEO. It’s up to you to know the rules and play by them if you want to compete at a high level.

Use your newfound savvy to be more competitive in Google. Remove any automated content and get fresh meta tags—just be sure the new content is written by humans.

Requirements:

• Facebook Business Account
• WordPress Website (theme installed)
• WooCommerce Installed (If you want experts to do this for you, go here)
• A “Get Sh*t Done” attitude!

Installing Your Facebook Pixel For WooCommerce

Facebook makes this process as simple as it can be. First, log into your Facebook business account. Navigate to the Pixels page.  When you create a new pixel, Facebook gives you multiple ways to set it up. Click, Create a Pixel and on the next screen choose Use an Integration or Tag Manager.

Within the Choose a Partner screen you’ll see multiple CMS options. Choose the WooCommerce option. Within this screen, you’ll be prompted to go through a 3 step process. The first step is to integrate WooCommerce to your WordPress website. Click the green Download button to download a zip file of your WooCommerce Facebook Pixel.

If you use WooCommerce, you will need the Facebook for WooCommerce extension to implement this integration.

After you install the Facebook WooCommerce Plugin, you’ll need to complete the setup process within your WordPress dashboard in order to link the pixel to your Facebook page. When you complete the installation process for the plugin, Facebook will automatically place your pixel on all pages of your WordPress site.

Step 2 & 3 walk you through creating a Facebook page, if you haven’t already, and setting up a product catalog for your online store’s products.

Once you’ve installed and activated the Facebook for WooCommerce extension a new Facebook dashboard will pop up. Go through the following steps to associate your Facebook pixel with your Facebook Business Page. In the last step, Facebook will automatically populate your existing WooCommerce products into your Facebook product catalog. Click Finish. You’re now ready to advertise your products on Facebook!

To set up a Dynamic Product Advertising Campaign navigate to the Power Editor within your ad account.  Click Create New Campaign and choose the Use Guided Creation button to begin setting up your Dynamic Product Campaign.

Choose the Catalog Sales campaign option and give your campaign a name. When you click Set Up Ad Account you’ll be prompted through the rest of your ad creation. Choose your audience targeting options. Facebook dynamic ads serve to people who have been to your website in the recent past and who have viewed products on your website that are also in your Facebook product catalog. For example, you can target people who have viewed your products and/or added them to their cart but have not purchased. Choose a daily budget for your campaign and click continue.

You’ll choose a specific ad type on the next screen. You have the options of a carousel or a single image for Dynamic ads. Go through the process of writing your headline and description for the ad and submit your ad to be reviewed before it starts serving to your audience. It’s that simple!

As always,

What you learn today lays the foundation for what you’ll learn tomorrow. 
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Why Websites Still Matter

1. Establish your authority and professionalism.
2. Impress (and rank on) search engines.
3. Give your users and customers a place to return to and a way to engage, from sharing your content to commenting and creating user generated content.
4. Don’t get Panda’d — Protect your content from algorithm changes beyond your control.
5. Detailed analytics — Along with the ability to control your content and your audience, managing your own content hub allows you to collect data and perform detailed analytics.

WP Live Plugin Features

The WP Live plugin is simple and elegant. Once it’s installed on your website, the ultimate WordPress tool is just a click away. We hope this plugin improves your overall experience with WordPress, and makes it easier to solve problems as they come up.

Quickly Access WP Live Experts

Depending on your subscription level, you’ll be able to initiate Phone Calls, Live Chats, and VIP Support Tickets directly from WordPress. With the WP Live Plugin, you can do all your work in one place.

Know When You Can Get Assistance

WP Live business hours are Monday-Friday 9-5 MST, and your dashboard will let you know when our office closes so you don’t even have to think about it.

The Journey Snapshot

With WP Live, our experts walk every user through a 4-part process called The Journey to help ensure you reach your website goals. Now, you can easily monitor your progress – and next to do’s – without leaving WordPress.

Member Perks Reminders

We want to ensure you get the most out of WP Live, and you get a number of perks with your subscription. You’ll be reminded of which perks you have available in this feed every time you reach out to a WP Live expert from your WordPress dashboard.

Installing the WP Live Plugin

The WP Live plugin works the same as any WordPress plugin—it adds functionality to your website without changing the design or current features you have in place.

Current WP Live subscribers will receive an email with additional instructions to install the plugin. You can also learn more about installing WordPress plugins, in general.

Alternatively, you can contact a WP Live agent through your account dashboard, and they’ll walk you through installing the plugin and navigating the interface for the first time. This is a great opportunity to learn some WordPress basics (such as installing a plugin) and get an overview of how WP Live works.  Give us a call, start a chat, or submit a ticket today!

If you have any questions about WP Live or the new plugin, please don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments below, or call us at (855) 464-5345.

Install Your WordPress Theme

The first step in the process requires a WordPress theme, preferably one that includes a one-click demo import. Any of the top selling themes on MOJO Marketplace should come with this feature. But, whatever WordPress theme you choose, check for that detail in the list of features before you buy.

In a way, you want to shop for your WordPress theme based on the demos if you’re going to use a demo to begin your design.

If you want to design your site completely custom (using WordPress), then check out this article on designing your site.

But if you’re going this route, pick out a theme with a demo that you like. Keep in mind that many developers create amazing demos for industry specific or niche websites.

And once you’ve settled on a theme, you can follow our guide to installing WordPress themes on your WordPress website.

Also, if you’re maybe a few steps behind, and you don’t have a domain or hosting set up yet, you can read our guide to setting up hosting and getting a domain.

Import Your WordPress Theme Demo

Next, if you found a demo that will work, you need to import it into your WordPress site. Due to the variety of themes available, I’ll run through two ways to import a demo.

1. Automatic demo import through your theme dashboard
2. Manual demo import

Auto Import that Demo!

The first option is easy, and will work if your theme offers this functionality. I’ll use the Highend Multipurpose WordPress theme for this demo because it features one-click demo imports from the theme dashboard.

via GIPHY

Here are the steps covered in the gif above:

1. Open the Highend theme options tab
2. Click Import Demos
3. Browse the demos and click Import Demo on the one you want to import
4. Choose which types of content you’d like to import, or simply select All to get the full demo
5. Wait, because it can take a little while

Then, as simple as that, you’ll have the full demo design installed on your website, ready for you to customize it and replace the content.

Now, your theme may not include this in-dashboard import feature. No big deal! You wanna choose the theme that looks right for you, so we’ll show you how to do this manually as well.

DIY that Demo Import!

Okay, so this method is still easy. In the end, doing a little legwork here saves you a ton of time in designing your own site because you get to leverage the demo.

For this tutorial, I’m going to use the Jayo minimal portfolio WordPress theme, which offers a manual demo import. Here’s how it works:

1. Once your theme is installed and active, click Tools and Import.

2. Next, locate the WordPress Importer to the right. If not already installed, click Install, and wait for it to finish.

3. When you’re ready, click Run Importer. This will open up a page that allows you to upload a demo file.

4. Now, you need to locate the demo file for your theme, usually in your theme documentation or the developer’s website, and download it. For Jayo, I simply Googled “Jayo WordPress theme demo import” to get there faster, and clicked the link to documentation.

The documentations shows me the process, and directs me to a specific file in the theme folder. The theme folder is the full package of files you received when you purchased your theme. You’ll need to find that folder first, and locate the file (in this case jayo-demo.xml).

Or, if you bought your theme through MOJO, simply log in to your account, access your purchases, click the download button, and choose Demo Data.

5. Navigate back to the importer, as described above, and upload the file as shown in this gif. Make sure to select a different author after the demo is imported to make it your own.

via GIPHY

Get Your Brand in There

After you’ve imported the demo, you probably want to start making it your own. One of the first, and most obvious ways to do that is to update your colors, fonts, and logo.

All of this can be done through the WordPress visual customizer under Appearance > Customize or from a theme options panel. Of course, this will depend completely on your theme, so you may need to reference your theme documentation or tutorials to figure out how to make specific changes.

If you need help figuring out your branding, see our article on creating an identity for your site.

And if you’re in need of a logo, check out this affordable and effective option offered on MOJO Marketplace.

Don’t Forget to Change the Filler Content!

The beauty of importing a demo is that you get a beautiful design out of the box.

The problem is, you’ll have every piece of content included in the demo to sort through. I suggest making a list of things you need, then go through your pages, posts, and menus and delete all the stuff you’re definitely not going to use.

Then, you can easily jump in to each page, post, or feature that you want from the demo, and insert your own content and images.

For more guidance on messing around with the content, check out our post on editing pages and menus in WordPress, and our post on drafting a great first blog post.

If you need help beyond that, or just some basic WordPress knowledge, look at the WordPress section on our blog, our WP Live WordPress support product, or a website like WP Beginner, which will cover the gamut of what you need to configure your site!