Black Friday Hoopla

I remember when kids had Thursday and Friday off school for Thanksgiving. Apparently, now, it is normal for them to take the entire week off? What is this insanity?!

Anyway, this is Thanksgiving WEEK in the U.S. So, work schedules may be funny this week. And, of course, that means we’re all being slammed with Black Friday offers in our email inboxes.

I’m not doing that. Below I will tell you why. But, a few words of advice if you’re looking to snag some deals on WordPress tools this week….

• Don’t just collect things. Buy if you’re pretty sure you’ll actually use it.
• If it is a recurring fee, pay attention to the renewal. Many Black Friday offers are only covering the first year, then it’ll renew at the full rate. So, just be aware of that.

Shop smartly. And have a great week!

Now, let’s get rollin’…

Split Testing On WordPress – New Tool!

I’ve been asked many times over the years about the best way to do split testing. And a new tool just came out which looks to make it super simple.

Now, if you’re not aware yet, split testing is just the act of testing two or more versions of a page (or components on a page) to see which version converts better. You set a goal (like clicking a button, or a sale)…. and the software sits there and rotates different versions of whatever you’re testing to see which one performs better.

Now, there are third-party tools that do this very well, such as Visual Website Optimizer. But, they can be pretty expensive and complicated.

When it comes to WordPress, you see list building tools that can do A/B split testing on opt-in forms. And I used to say that Thrive Optimize was a good one. Thrive Optimize can do full pages and it actually does a reasonably good job. But, now that Awesome Motive bought Thrive Themes and jacked up all the prices, I just don’t recommend it any longer. Optimize has to work along with Thrive Architect and the normal price for that duo is $399/year. Or you need to get the full suite for $599/year. And don’t forget that they lock you in pretty badly if you don’t renew.

Nelio Testing is another option. The monthly options for that can get pretty pricey, too, but it looks like a nice tool.

Well, a new option has come out. And it happens to be put out by the same guys that make my go-to theme and builder. That tool is Kadence Insights.

I haven’t worked with Kadence Insights much yet, but it is installed on my site and it seems pretty easy to use. I also love the fact that it is built right into the native block builder.

Basically, while you’re designing your landing page (or whatever you wish to test), you can select any component of section you want to create an A/B test out of. Then, in the contextual dropdown menu, you can quickly turn it into a split test. You can create 2 (or more) versions of that component, set your goal, then let it run.

As for the goals, right now you can track the following:

• Link/button click
• Time on page
• Submitting a form (currently works with Kadence forms, Gravity Forms and Fluent Forms)
• A sale in WooCommerce
• A sale in SureCart

Very convenient and easy.

Now, this is a version 1.0 release. It is brand new. So, I expect it will get more integrations and capabilities over time.

The pricing for Kadence Insights is much more friendly, too. And if you get it with the Kadence bundle, it is way more cost effective.

Also, you don’t have to be using Kadence Theme to use it. That’s an important point. It does require that you’re using the block builder, but it does not require that you’re using Kadence. If you’re using something like Astra/Spectra, it’ll still work fine.

Adding this to my arsenal! And, yes, Concierge clients, I got you! If you want to do some split testing, just let me know and I can install Kadence Insights to your site so you can play with it.

This Week In Concierge

As I announced last week, some changes are coming to Concierge. Nothing too drastic. Instead of repeating myself, you can check last week’s issue in the archive.

Part of what I’m doing is modernizing some of the pages across the Blog Marketing Academy site. And one of them was to redo how I’m presenting the Concierge Toolkit.

In the last version, the tools were added manually to a table which I built with Ninja Tables. Frankly, it was a little tedious to manage. So, I decided to rebuild it.

The new version uses a custom post type built with Advanced Custom Fields Pro. Simply called “Toolkit”. It uses the title field, the content field, and some custom fields.

Then, the actual grid was built using an Advanced Query powered by Kadence.

The effect is a toolkit grid which can be easily added to, sorted by category, and filtered. Far more powerful and flexible than a table would be.

The uses for custom post types are many. I use CPTs for the newsletter archives, the video library, documents…. even a testimonial library.

A lot of people don’t realize just how flexible WordPress is. It comes with Pages and Posts and people don’t realize you can create much, much more. New post types, with custom category setups and custom fields. You can completely customize it to the unique needs of your website and business.

I use Advanced Custom Fields Pro for this. And all Concierge clients have access to this through my agency licensing. So, just reach out if you have something you’d like built on your site… and we can make it happen.

WordPress Quick Bits

StellarWP Deals This Week. StellarWP is the company behind some big brands such as Kadence, The Events Calendar and Learndash. They’re running 40% sales on almost all of their tools this week. Kadence is my favorite, and this week they’re offering 40% off for new people, 25% off for existing, and $150 off lifetime. The Events Calendar and Learndash are running similar deals.

FluentCommunity Updated. FluentCommunity was officially launched last week. 1.1 has already come out, offering login customization, Fluent Forms integration and some UI improvements. Coming up on the roadmap are color customizations, theme compatibility (so it will work inside existing themes), improvements to the course system…. and yes, even a mobile app. Give it a little time, but I think this is going to be a serious contender for BuddyBoss. Which makes the lifetime deal a pretty good one.

TutorLMS 3.0 Officially Launched. The next major release of TutorLMS is out. They’re promoting a “reimagined” course builder and quiz builder, an AI studio for easily generating course descriptions, topics, lessons…. native ecommerce and subscriptions, etc. In a lot of ways, they’re playing catchup with Learndash, but there are indeed some things I like better about TutorLMS. I will say, though, I’m generally not a fan of LMS platforms trying to do everything. For instance, using an LMS to do ecommerce seems short-sighted and you’d always be better off using WooCommerce for that. So, why blimp up the product by adding it? But, maybe it’s just me. ‍♂️

Fluent Forms 5.2.5 Released. A new Fluent Forms was pushed out, adding undo/redo to the form editing experience, date formatting options, better pagination through entries, shortcodes for individual entries and a number of other things. Check out the full list of changes.

CrawlWP Launched. A new plugin called CrawlWP has been launched. This tool enables you to monitor the serch engine visibility of individual articles on your website on Google, Bing, Yandex and a few others. Click here to learn more.

Rocket And WPRocket Partner Up. My favorite web host (and the one I use personally and for most of my Concierge clients) is Rocket Hosting. And, true to their name, they just formed a partnership with WP Rocket so that the popular performance plugin will now be free to use for all Rocket customers. Of course, this means that any Concierge clients hosted on Rocket can now use WP Rocket as part of Concierge. If you want to discuss that, just get in touch with me.

Better Search v4. You may have noticed, but the default search engine for WordPress kinda sucks. There are some plugins that offer much better search solutions, such as SearchWP. Thing is, SearchWP is an Awesome Motive plugin and that has it’s disadvantages. Another option is Better Search…. and they just released version 4. Version 4 includes live results, fuzzy search (forgiving typos, etc.) and some other things. You can learn more about Better Search here. I haven’t tested this one yet, but looks pretty interesting to me.

Did Matt Steal ACF Pro? Dave McCan released a video which appears to show that Matt and Automattic basically stole Advanced Custom Fields Pro and folded that code into Secure Custom Fields without attribution. Now, I use the word “stole” because that’s how I feel about it. But, technically speaking, it may not be illegal due to the GPL licensing. But, the PRO version of ACF was never available on the public WordPress repository. So, it certainly feels like they “stole” the Pro version and forked it into their own plugin. In my view, Matt Mullwenweg should be ashamed of himself. He basically nulled a professional plugin… which goes completely against the spirit of GPL and everything Matt has claimed to stand for.

Should You Do A Black Friday Offer?

Black Friday week is kicking off this week. And, who are we kiddin’…. some businesses do a freakin’ black Friday MONTH now! It is so overdone now, it is hilarious to watch.

And you’re going to see a ton of promos this week, from all kinds of sites.

And if you have your own website and do sales with it, perhaps you’re running your own Black Friday offer this week. Which is totally cool and I hope it pays off!

But, for the second year in a row, I’m not doing a Black Friday offer. Why is that?

Well, two reasons mainly:

• My business has pivoted into services more than anything else, especially with Concierge service. And, I’m not going to do discounts on that. It would be downright stupid for me to start discounting my time and I’m just not going to do it.
• There’s so much NOISE going every direction with regard to Black Friday now that it feels almost lame to add to the noise.

I remember before Awesome Motive bought Thrive Themes, the company never did promotional discounts and never did Black Friday deals. Shane was the owner at the time and his position was that it set a bad precedent. He didn’t feel it was fair to people who bought through the year and would “train” people to wait around for discounts. Also, they updated Thrive tools pretty frequently, he had a team working on them all the time, and his tools got better over time.

Instead, Shane would do an “Un Black” Friday. For one day only (Friday…. imagine that! ), they would dedicate 50% of all revenue to making Kiva loans to help small entrepreneurs around the world. I thought that was pretty cool.

So, should YOU do a Black Friday offer?

Don’t discount your stuff just to follow the ass in front of you. Think it through.

I would never discount services. Nothing with time involved from you or your team. Don’t cheapen your time – ever.

Now, if you have a consumable or information product, maybe it makes sense to play the Black Friday game. Info products and software are prime opportunities for black friday offers. Just be weary of how you go about it so you don’t cheapen your own product.

And if you do a recurring membership and want to make a special offer, go for it. But, either lock them into that rate, or be REALLY clear that it might be a “first year only” discount. Otherwise, you may get a spike in cancellations in a year when people realize they just got billed full rate for it.

Lastly, instead of a discount, you can also run a time-based special offer by temporarily adding a special bonus to your offer that isn’t usually there. Then, at the end of your offer period, you take away that bonus. This can be a far better option than discounting your offer.

If I ever run a special offer on Concierge, that would be the only way I’d consider it.

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The WP Edge is the official weekly newsletter of the Blog Marketing Academy.