Welcome to Video #8 – Making your website look professional

This video is designed to help you understand how to create or re-produce a correct layout by using WordPress themes. I’m going to give you an option of a free theme and a theme that cost money but both have and follow the layout that we’re looking for.

What we did was we tested the different layouts and we figured out which layouts actually work the best in terms of lead generation.

In order to make your website for the purpose of lead generation, to get somebody to take action, you need to choose the correct theme and the correct design.

There are 2 themes that we found that work really well:

1. The first one is called GoPress; and that’s free
2. com, which is a theme that does cost a little bit of money but it is the correct layout that we’re looking for here

I’ll show you what that layout looks like right now. We got a lot go cover in this video so let’s go ahead and get rockin’!

Here’s a mockup design that I created of a layout that is great specifically for lead generation. This really follows a lot of WordPress themes but what you’re looking for is basically a 2-column WordPress theme where you have the ability to have:

• the company logo or text here
• the call-out number
• the tag line here
• a slider or video
• a contact form
• a map
• welcome text
• footer
• widgets here; and
• social media icons

In fact, whenever in the past when I did web design work for local businesses, what I found was there was one particular company that did a lot of testing and they’ve actually shown me this was a similar layout that they showed me.

But after comparison of other successful lead generation pages, we found that this format was great for local lead generation.

Because when somebody lands on your site, they see your company, they see the tag line, but they see a Call Us number that is compatible with mobile phones.

And then they see a contact form right here that they have the ability to fill it out for a free estimate or other things like that.

Then you have map, welcome text, a video or slider, which gives you the ability to present them with your services and things like that.

Obviously, in this case, we’re generating leads for a local brokering company but the people that will be visiting the site will be actual people that are interested in that company.

You kind of have to create a middleman type lead generation site.

The stuff that’s on the site will be quite general like “roofing” will have general roofing pictures.

We might have some welcome text or some tips and advice on roofs - like the 5 maintenance tips on roofs.

And the map – the map can be replaced with a banner ad or something like that.

The reason why I want you to do this layout is not only does it convert really well but let’s say in the future, in the long-term that you decide to sell this lead generation website to a local roofing company. Then you’ve already set up the site to do just that. All you have to do is make a few tweaks to their own logo and information like that. And guess what, you have your site to be sold!

This is right for right now – short term and long term as well. Weather you stick to lead generation or you flip the site and sell it off.

This is a mockup design of a possible layout that would be good.

Another possible layout that might be good is something like this. Where at least it’s a 2-column where you have:

• Everything at the top
• You’ve got page or post with information; and
• The same stuff here

Now that you know what kind of layout to look for, let’s go to google.com.

I’ve pretty much done all the research for you already. But there’s one called GoPress, which is free.

It’s GoPress Free WordPress News Theme.

This is what it looks like. As you can see here, you have:

• The logo
• You’ve got a banner ad
• We’ve got navigation links
• But a tag line; and
• We have here a slider; and then
• You have this side bar; the side bar here can be customized with a contact form, with Facebook information, with banner ads, and other things like that. It’s highly flexible in that case.

But I also want to show you an example of the easyleads.com WordPress Theme, which should be released quite soon. I got an access to this and as you can see, it follows pretty much our layout. It’s really, really cool because it’s so easy. In fact, it’s almost more easier than GoPress.

GoPress is obviously free though so definitely give that a try but easyleads theme, as you could see, we’ve got:

• The logo
• We’ve got a link up here that could be replaced with your contact information and tag line
• We’ve got the slider here
• The free estimate area here, which is actually from the network’s affiliate program; and then
• The welcome text and news items; and so forth

I’m going to be setting up something that looks similar to this. But in order for us to set this up, you need to have WordPress installed.

• I’m going to go ahead and install the WordPress site here. We already have this here. I’m going to log in and there we go! We’ve got pretty much a clean installation.
• I’m going to update it here.
• While that is updating, I’m going to log in to my Networx account. If I go to Forms, you’d see that there’s a bunch of forms that you can choose and I picked this one.
  • Basically, all you have to do is simply click on one of these links. See: “You can’t do it yourself” “Get free estimates” “Find a qualified local contractor”

In my opinion though, what I found converts better is something that looks like an actual Contact Form because that’s what people are looking for. They’re looking for something like this or they’re looking for a phone number to call.

But with these types of brokering companies, you can’t really have necessarily a phone that people can call. Unless you set up a phone call with a voice message that says, “Go to such and such link”. That’s another strategy that you can take.

• But if you click on here, I’m particularly interested in roofing so I’m going to unselect everything except roofing. Click Save Services.
• And then Highlight All, Copy, and then I’m going to copy this to a safe place like WordPad so I have it later on.
• After we’re done with that, I can close this out and if I go back to my WordPress site, I’m going to be installing this sample site in a sub root folder called roofing. But for most of you, of course, you want to install it in your domain name at the top here.

But anyways, what we need to do is we need to install the theme. Whether you go with GoPress or easyleads theme, that’s your choice.

But with GoPress, you do have some flexibility in terms of the front page. I’ve used this particular theme before in setting things up. I can say it’s definitely easy.

In this case, I’m going to be installing the easyleads theme WordPress theme. You can use anything you want but in this case, I’m going to use easyleads theme.

• I’m going to locate the files. I’m going to go to:
• Appearance; and
• Themes
• And then I’m going to go to Install Themes
• Click Upload and I’m going to upload the zip file
• Click Install Now

The cool thing about easyleads theme is that they have this import and export feature. For example, the roofreplacementcolumbiasc site that I own - this one’s on easyleads theme.

And all I do is basically exported it. They have this setting wherein you can save it, import it, export it, and then you can import it into a different site.

But I’m going to import it. I got to find the file first. And if I visit the site, let’s take a look at what it says. So as we can see here, it’s pretty much uploaded everything that I was looking for.

So within a matter of seconds, I was able to upload everything!

If we go to:

• Appearance; and
• Theme Options; This is basically the font area.

• For the header area:
  • You can upload the logo. As you can see I’ve uploaded the logo and just by importing the feature. That’s so cool! Within seconds I was able to set that up.
• One thing that I might want to change is this. So I could change this to a phone number so I could say something like 1-800-888-8888.
• Then change the number color.
• And I could change the link to a telephone number.

One thing to note is that whenever you want to make a compatible mobile phones, and smartphones, and iPhones, Androids and so forth, what you do is put a tel: right before the phone number.

If you do that, then when somebody reaches your site, then they actually will see “Call this number” In other words, instead of putting a hyperlink, just keep the tel:

I can’t say if that’s compatible with the other themes but this theme, all you have to do is that.

• Save changes here.
• Refresh the page.

Okay, there you go! We’ve got the phone number at the top. That way, if somebody clicks on that number, what I can do is because networks and other local lead companies usually only allow the form itself, then in this case, I would probably set up a phone number that when they call that number that says “Please go to such and such to Get Matched With Screened Roofers” or something.

But you don’t want to set it up where it looks like it’s a scam.

Then we go to the Slider Area:

• We can add slider images quite easily or you can use a video. We can make a video as well. I’ll show you how to create a video that kind of gets people to take action in the next video after this.
• And then we got the Contact Form. This is where you post the local lead CPA code form. And that’s how this form appears right here.
• You got Welcome Text
• You got a Map
• News Items; and
• Social Media Icons

But I pretty much set it up with the very most basic types stuff. With easyleadstheme.com, you can set it up super fast. I basically have a copy but I think it’s being released soon.

If you go with WordPress, it’s actually quite easy as well. I’ll show you how to do that. All you to do is have the same access to those files that I showed you.

• Go to files here GoPress
• We’ll just install this so you can see a secondary option that you can take. GoPress is great too. The only thing with GoPress is it takes a little more time. Through my experience, I found that GoPress took about a few hours to about a day. The other one definitely speeds it up. But this one is pretty flexible as well. It’s free. It just takes a little more time.
• As you can see right now, I’m basically going through the whole process of installing GoPress, clicking on Activate here. And this is GoPress.
• I pretty much reset everything but it looks like this now. But if you click on Theme Settings:

• You can change the logo here. In this example, I need to find my logo files. Click Upload Image. Select Files. Choose the logo image. Insert into post. Save Options. We’re going to go to the live site and refresh the page. And there you go!
• I don’t recommend putting a banner ad. You can’t really put a phone number so you might have to put a banner ad actually, come to think about it.

Let me pause the video and I’ll make a banner ad and tweak these right here. I’m back and we’re going to use this image here as a banner ad “Call now Free Estimate 1-800-ROOF-REP” and we’re going to need to place it here.

I believe the Header Banner allows to do that but you have to enter the banner code here for the header. To do that, you have to:

• Go to Media
• Go to Add New
• We have to upload the banner ad itself, which is here
• After we upload this; Okay good. I’ve done that.
• But I still need to get the URL so I have to get the file URL. Let’s just double check here. Good.
• But you have to use an embed code here so you have to say something like img src= this and I believe that’s it. Let me just check real quick. That’s it!
• And you can make it clickable if you put a hyperlink href=
• So you can pause this video and just look at what I’m typing in here. 1 800 888 8888.
• Save Options
• Refresh the page and there we go!

As you can see at the very bottom here, mass over here, you can actually see TEL: phone number. So now this is compatible smartphones and so forth.

With GoPress, you can do slides but if you click on Add New, you have to actually upload the images into your Media Library and get the image URL and put it here. And put the description and the title here in order for this to work. There’s a few more steps as you can see but if you want to go with GoPress, you can actually do that.

If I go back here, this is the side bar Widget Area. If I go to the Widget’s area and I’m going to move all these information over here. I want to include that local lead form. I’m going to make a copy of that. Move the text widget over here. I’m going to enter this here. Click on Save. That should work and it does.

So you can see it’s fairly clean and good looking. But you just have to populate it with a slider if you want to and other information as well.

This is highly customizable as well and it takes a little more time to get used to. It might take a few hours to a day to get it up and running but it’s free!

That’s another avenue and I wanted to show you 2 different avenues so you have an idea of a free version that might take a little bit of time or a paid version if you don’t have a lot of time. And you just want to get it up and running fast.

With the easyleads theme, you can actually import it, export it; and everytime you set up a niche site; let’s say you have to set up 10 different roofing sites, you could easily import, import, import and within less than a minute, you can have 10 sites up and running.

That’s a neat little cool feature with that but GoPress is great as well and looks great as well as you could see here. If you want to customize it further by adding pages if you want to, that is fine.

In my opinion, what I found is you don’t want to include too many pages. You want people to be focused as much as possible.

Because the more distractions that a user gets, the lower your conversion rate; actually decreases.

I’m going to show how to create a video, which you could place here if you want to. I’m not sure if GoPress actually allows you to do videos here. I know easyleads does but I’m going to show you how to create a video that is going to get people to take action in the next video after this.