Monday, August 23, 2021

How to Generate More Leads with Free Online Calculators (Pro Tip)

Do you want to generate more leads with free online calculators?

Online calculators are the hot new lead magnets. They’re used as lead generation tools by some of the best blogs in the world today, like Neil Patel and Michael Hyatt.

In this article, we’ll show you how you can create your own online calculator and start generating leads for your WordPress site.

How to generate more leads with free online calculators (pro tip)

Why Are Online Calculators Such Great Lead Generation Tools?

Online calculators are useful tools that solve a problem or help answer a question for your readers. To get results from the calculator, your readers will enter their email address.

These calculators are effective at generating leads and subscribers because they’re highly engaging and personalized.

That’s why here at WPBeginner we offer many free business tools like our business name generator and WordPress theme detector.

Online calculators can be used in any industry or niche. For example, you could create:

  • BMI calculator for a fitness website
  • Mortgage calculator for a real estate website
  • WooCommerce product calculator for your online store
  • Car payment calculator for a niche review site
    • The possibilities are endless.

      It’s easy to see why online calculators are quickly becoming one of the most powerful ways to grow your email list online.

      That being said, let’s show you how to create your very own online calculator to generate leads without writing any code.

      How to Create Online Calculators Without Any Code

      The easiest way to add online calculators to WordPress is using the Formidable Forms plugin. It’s the most advanced drag and drop form builder and best WordPress calculator plugin in the market.

      It makes it easy to build advanced online calculators without writing code.

      Formidable Forms has dozens of different templates you can use to quickly create calculators like a BMI calculator, savings and investment calculator, mortgage calculator, paycheck calculator, and much more.

      Formidable calculator example

      Plus, it integrates with the most popular email marketing services in the market like Constant Contact, Sendinblue, Drip, and more. Users who enter their email address in your online calculator will automatically be added to your email list.

      The first thing you need to do is install and activate the Formidable Forms plugin. For more details, see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

      Upon activation, you’ll be asked to install Formidable Forms Lite, the free version of the plugin. The free plugin acts as the foundation for the advanced features of the Pro version.

      Once you’ve done that, you need to go to Formidable » Global Settings and then click the ‘Click to enter a license key manually’ link.

      Formidable license key manual link

      Then, paste your license key into the box and click the ‘Save License’ button.

      You can find your license key by logging in to your account on the Formidable Forms website.

      Enter formidable license key

      Once you’re done, you’ll see a license activation success message. Now you can refresh the page to load the premium features of the plugin.

      After that, you can create your first calculator by going to Formidable » Forms and then click ‘Add New’.

      Add new Formidable calculator

      This will bring up a list of available form templates to choose from.

      In the search box, type ‘Calculator’ and select the ‘Calculator’ category.

      Select calculator category

      This brings up another drop down list where you can choose the calculator template you’d like to start with.

      You’ll notice there are dozens of templates across a range of different niches.

      To select a calculator template, hover over it and click the ‘+’ icon. You can also click the ‘Eye’ icon to preview the calculator.

      For this tutorial, we’ll select the ‘Compound Interest Calculator’ template, but you can choose the template that best suits your WordPress website.

      Select compound interest calculator

      This brings up a popup where you can name your form and enter a description to help you remember what it’s for.

      Then, click ‘Create’.

      Name and describe calculator form

      The plugin will load the Formidable Forms editor interface with the calculator template you selected.

      From here, you can simply point and click to customize each form field as needed. For example, you can change the field label and number range for the ‘Initial Amount’ field.

      Customize calculator field example

      You can also add any new field to your calculator by clicking the field on the left and dragging it to your calculator on the right.

      To add an email address field to your calculator, simply drag the ‘Email’ field to the bottom of your calculator.

      Add email field to calculator

      After that, click on the ‘Email’ field to bring up the options menu.

      You can leave the default email settings, but make sure that you check the ‘Required’ box. This makes it so your visitors must enter their email address to get the results from the calculator.

      Check email required box

      You can continue to customize your calculator by changing the values for the fields and even adding new calculator fields.

      Once you’re finished customizing your calculator, make sure to click the ‘Update’ or ‘Publish’ button to save your calculator.

      Publish or update calculator

      With your lead generation calculator created, it’s time to add it to an existing page or create a new page.

      To create a separate page to display your new calculator, navigate to Pages » All Pages and then click ‘Add New’.

      Add new page for calculator

      Then enter a title for your calculator page.

      To add your calculator, click the ‘+’ icon to add a new page block.

      Name and add block

      Type ‘Calculator’ into the search box to find the correct block.

      Then select the ‘Calculator Form’ option.

      Add calculator form block

      This will automatically insert the calculator form block into your website.

      Next, select the calculator you just created from the drop down list.

      Select calculator from drop down

      You can continue to edit your calculator page by adding text, images, a description of the calculator, and more.

      If you’re ready to publish your calculator page, then click the ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ button in the right hand corner of the page.

      Publish calculator live

      Your new calculator page is now live for your visitors.

      You can start driving traffic to this page to get more subscribers and leads for your small business website.

      Compound interest calculator example

      You can always further combine the power of lead calculators by adding them to exit-intent popups from OptinMonster, using them inside your WordPress membership site or online course, and more.

      We hope this article helped you learn how to generate more leads with online calculators. You may also want to see our guide on how to create a free business email address and our expert picks of the must have WordPress plugins and tools for business websites.

      If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

      The post How to Generate More Leads with Free Online Calculators (Pro Tip) appeared first on WPBeginner.


      August 23, 2021 at 06:10PM

Friday, August 20, 2021

14 Best WooCommerce Sales Funnel Plugins to Boost Your Conversions

Are you looking for the best WooCommerce sales funnel plugins to boost your conversions?

There are many WooCommerce plugins out there to help you optimize your sales funnel, so you can make more money from your existing traffic.

In this article, we’ve hand picked some of the best WooCommerce sales funnel plugins you can use to increase conversions.

14 best WooCommerce sales funnel plugins to boost your conversions

Why Use WooCommerce Sales Funnel Plugins?

WooCommerce makes it easy to create an online store, but the default features and settings aren’t built to help you sell more products.

On average, only 10% of shoppers will add anything to their carts. After they do, 60-80% of them abandon their carts without finishing the purchase.

Luckily, there are all kinds of WooCommerce plugins to help you boost conversions, so you can make more sales from your existing traffic. Using WooCommerce sales funnel plugins can help your store in a lot of ways.

  • Recover sales from users abandoning their carts
  • Stay in touch with customers via email marketing
  • Create store pages to promote best-selling products
  • Offer coupon codes to bring in more sales
  • And much more

With that said, let’s look at some of the best WooCommerce sales funnel plugins that you can use with your WooCommerce store.

1. SeedProd

SeedProd

SeedProd is the best drag and drop WordPress page builder in the market used by over 1 million websites.

It’s very easy to use and has a collection of pre-made templates and blocks that will help you customize your WooCommerce product pages, checkout pages, and more.

SeedProd WooCommerce blocks

By creating custom pages for your WooCommerce store, you can improve conversions, promote popular and related products, and make more money.

Plus, it works with any WooCommerce theme, so you can create custom product pages, checkout pages, and more, without any limitations.

There is a free version of Seedprod you can use to create beautiful landing pages. However, the WooCommerce blocks are only available in the pro version of the plugin.

2. OptinMonster

OptinMonster

OptinMonster is the best WordPress popup plugin and lead generation tool in the market used by over 1 million websites.

It helps you convert your abandoning website visitors into new customers and email subscribers.

You can use OptinMonster to boost your conversions, reduce shopping cart abandonment, show targeted website messages, grow your email list, and much more.

OptinMonster has a ton of built-in popup features that can help you boost sales easily.

For example, you can create floating header or footer bars perfect for announcing ongoing sales, free shipping, sale countdown timers, and other special offers.

Floating header bar

Plus, every popup can be customized to display based on the rules you decide. For example, you could set your countdown timer to only appear during checkout, or only show a sales banner on a certain product category.

You can even create popups that will display based upon the visitor’s location. Plus, you can gamify popups with the spin the wheel feature, and much more.

Spin the wheel popup example

For more details, see our guide on how to create a WooCommerce popup to increase sales.

Note: You can get a free version of OptinMonster to get started through WordPress.

3. MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights is the best analytics solution for WooCommerce stores.

It’s incredibly easy to set up and comes with enhanced eCommerce tracking, which gives you more insights you can use to optimize your funnel and make more sales.

Plus, all of this information is displayed directly in your WordPress dashboard. You don’t need to sort through the complex Google Analytics reports to find what you’re looking for.

WooCommerce analytics report

You can also get a detailed breakdown of your shopping cart activity, the total number of purchases, top performing products, and more.

This helps you make data-driven decisions to grow your business and quickly see if the changes you’re making are helping to improve your store’s conversions.

WooCommerce cart report

For more details, see our step by step guide on how to setup WooCommerce conversion tracking.

4. WooFunnels

WooFunnels

WooFunnels is an easy to use WooCommerce sales funnel builder. It lets you create lead pages, checkout pages, order bump pages, upsells, downsells, and more.

It has dozens of different templates you can use to create your sales funnel pages in a couple of clicks.

You can easily customize every page of your funnel with the drag and drop builder. WooFunnels also includes built in customer reporting, so you can track customer and order data.

5. TrustPulse

TrustPulse

TrustPulse is the best social proof plugin for WooCommerce that helps you improve conversions and get more sales.

When potential customers are close to making a purchase, they’ll see a notification from other customers who have just made a purchase. By adding social proof, you give your visitors a nudge to complete their purchase.

TrustPulse example

TrustPulse makes setting up this kind of notification incredibly easy. You can install it on any WordPress website without code and customize the notifications to match your brand and website design.

There are advanced targeting options, so you choose the products and pages to run the campaign.

For more details, see our guide on how to use FOMO to increase conversions.

6. CartFlows

CartFlows

CartFlows is a feature rich WooCommerce sales funnel builder that helps you optimize your WooCommerce checkout process.

It includes a variety of templates and lets you create custom pages for every part of the sales process, including thank you pages, checkout pages, and more.

Once you activate the plugin, it’ll automatically replace the default WooCommerce checkout with a checkout process optimized for conversions.

Plus, it integrates with most popular WordPress page builders like Divi, Beaver Builder, etc to easily customize the templates and pages.

7. LiveChat

LiveChat

LiveChat is the best live chat support software in the market. It lets you easily add live chat to your WooCommerce store and instantly respond to questions.

This makes it easy to help your visitors move forward with their purchase and avoid abandoned carts. Plus, the chat window can be fully customized to match your brand.

It also integrates with top email marketing, WooCommerce CRM, and customer support tools.

The live chat apps work across mobile, tablet, and desktop devices, so you can answer questions on the go, without having to login to your WordPress dashboard.

For more details, see our guide on how to add LiveChat to your WooCommerce store.

Alternative: If you’re looking for chatbot software, then check out ChatBot.com to fully automate your WooCommerce live chat.

8. Nextiva

Nextiva

Nextiva is the best business phone service in the market that works seamlessly with WooCommerce.

Adding a business phone number to your online store will help improve credibility and trust, while boosting your store conversions.

Since it’s a virtual business phone app, you can use it to receive calls on your mobile phone, tablet, and desktop computer.

It offers advanced enterprise level features at an affordable price like call routing, auto-attendant, and more.

Once you’ve set up your business VOIP, you can add a free click-to-call button to your store, so customers can reach your team with a single click.

Alternative: RingCentral and Ooma are good business phone alternatives.

9. WP Mail SMTP

WP Mail SMTP

WP Mail SMTP is the best WordPress SMTP plugin in the market used by over 2 million websites. It helps to ensure that all of your WooCommerce emails are delivered to your customer’s email inboxes.

WooCommerce will send email notifications to the store owner and customers when certain actions are taken in your store.

But, many WordPress hosting companies haven’t set up the email function correctly, and some even block it from happening. In this case, your store emails will not send.

WP Mail SMTP fixes this problem and uses an SMTP service provider to send emails. This ensures your emails will actually be delivered to your user’s inbox and not go to the spam folder.

The free version of WP Mail SMTP will work for most WooCommerce stores. The premium version, WP Mail SMTP Pro, gives you access to premium support, a white glove set up service, and even more features.

10. Advanced Coupons

Advanced Coupons

Advanced Coupons is the best WooCommerce coupon code plugin in the market. It expands the default WooCommerce coupon functionality and helps you boost sales by offering attractive coupons for your visitors.

It easily integrates perfectly with WooCommerce and lets you create BOGO offers (Buy One Get One), scheduled coupons, auto apply coupons, shipping coupons, and more.

You can even get started with the free version of the plugin to test out different coupon offers and see how it impacts your online store.

For more details, see our guide on how to create smart coupons in WooCommerce.

11. Easy Affiliate

Easy Affiliate

Easy Affiliate is the best affiliate tracking and management plugin for WooCommerce.

It lets you easily create an affiliate program for your online store, so your customers can promote your products.

When someone joins your affiliate program, they’ll get a unique link and will earn a commission whenever a sale is made through their link.

It’s fully customizable, and you can control who is allowed to join your affiliate program and the payment options you want to offer.

Easy Affiliate also includes reporting, so you can track sales, payments, link clicks, and more.

For more details, see our guide on how to add an affiliate program in WooCommerce.

12. WPForms

WPForms

WPForms is the best contact form builder in the market used by over 4 million websites. It’s very beginner friendly and lets you create contact forms to answer your customer’s questions and resolve issues.

You can choose from the collection of 100+ prebuilt templates to quickly create the exact kind of form you need.

WPForms templates

You’ll find templates for user feedback forms, polls, surveys, and more. Then, you can simply customize the form with the easy to use drag and drop builder.

The free version of WPForms lets you create simple contact forms, but if you want to create more advanced forms, then you’ll need the premium version of WPForms.

13. PushEngage

PushEngage

PushEngage is the best web push notification software in the market used to send over 9 billion push messages every month.

It lets you connect with your visitors and customers after leaving your online store with targeted push messages. These are messages that will display in your subscriber’s browser even when they’re not browsing your store.

For example, if a customer adds items to their cart and leaves before making a purchase, then you can send an abandoned cart notification to improve conversions.

You can also send out information about product webinars, flash sales, coupons, and much more.

There’s also a free version of the plugin that lets you send messages to up to 500 subscribers.

For more details, see our guide on how to add web push notifications to WordPress.

14. Constant Contact

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is the best email marketing service for WooCommerce businesses. It’s packed with features while still being beginner friendly, so you can easily add it to your store and start building your email list.

With this tool, you can easily manage your email subscribers and deepen your relationship with your customers.

Every plan gives you access to unlimited emails, tracking and reporting, list segmentation, and much more.

It has dozens of professionally designed email templates built for specific niches, so you can quickly start creating your own email campaigns.

WPBeginner readers can use our Constant Contact coupon code to get 20% off your plan.

Alternative: HubSpot, SendinBlue, and Drip are great alternatives for WooCommerce email marketing.

15. Bonus: Uncanny Automator

Uncanny Automator

Uncanny Automator is the best automation plugin for WooCommerce. It acts as a connector between your WooCommerce store and other apps, so they can talk to each other without you writing any code.

It’s very easy to use and comes with all kinds of automated workflows you can set up in a couple of clicks.

With Uncanny Automator, you can automate many WooCommerce tasks to save time and offer your customers a better user experience.

For example, you can automatically send SMS notifications to your customers and send order data to Google Sheets for better customer tracking.

There are dozens of other automations you can create to help you run your online store more efficiently.

We hope this article helped you find the best WooCommerce sales funnel plugins to boost your conversions. You may also want to see our guide to creating a free business email address and creating an email newsletter the right way.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 14 Best WooCommerce Sales Funnel Plugins to Boost Your Conversions appeared first on WPBeginner.


August 20, 2021 at 03:07PM

Thursday, August 19, 2021

How to Add an HTML Sitemap Page in WordPress (2 Ways)

Do you want to add an HTML sitemap page in WordPress?

Unlike XML sitemaps that are submitted to the search engines for better crawling, HTML sitemaps present an organized list of your pages and posts for your website visitors.

In this article, we’ll show you how to add an HTML sitemap page in WordPress.

How to add an HTML sitemap page in WordPress

What’s the Difference Between XML and HTML Sitemaps?

An XML sitemap is a file that lists your website content in an XML format for search engines like Google and others.

You can submit your XML sitemap in webmaster tools to improve and control how the search engines crawl your website.

On the other hand, an HTML sitemap is for your actual website visitors. It is a simple page that lists all your posts and pages in an organized way.

Now that you know the difference, let’s take a look at how to add an HTML sitemap page to WordPress using two different WordPress plugins. You can use the quick links below to jump straight to the method you want to use.

Method 1. Add an HTML Sitemap Page in WordPress with All in One SEO

We recommend using the All in One SEO plugin to add an HTML sitemap page in WordPress. It’s the best WordPress SEO plugin in the market used by over 2 million websites and lets you create an HTML sitemap with a couple of clicks.

Note: There is a free version of All in One SEO Lite available, but we will be using the premium version in our example because it includes all the powerful features like smart sitemaps, redirection manager, SEO schema, and more.

First thing you need to do is install the All in One SEO plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, the AIOSEO setup wizard will open, which will guide you through setting up the plugin and getting your SEO settings right.

Simply click the ‘Let’s Get Started’ button and follow the steps.

AIOSEO setup wizard

After that, you’ll be taken to the WordPress admin dashboard, where you’ll have a new menu option called ‘All in One SEO’.

Then, you need to go to All in One SEO » Sitemaps, click on the ‘HTML Sitemap’ menu option, and make sure the ‘Enable Sitemap’ toggle is turned on.

Enable HTML sitemap

Next, you can choose how you want to display your HTML sitemap.

For this tutorial, we’ll select the ‘Dedicated Page’ option, but you can also add it as a shortcode, block, widget, and more.

Then, enter the page URL where you want the HTML sitemap to display. The plugin will automatically create a new page for you.

Enter URL for HTML sitemap page

Once you’ve done that, scroll down to the ‘HTML Sitemap Settings’ section.

Here you can customize how your HTML sitemap will display. You have control over what posts and pages will display, taxonomies such as categories and tags, sort order, and more.

Customize HTML sitemap settings

You can also turn on ‘Compact Archives’ to display your HTML sitemap in a compact date archive format.

This is similar to how we display our compact archives on our 404 pages here at WPBeginner.

After you’re done customizing your HTML sitemap settings, make sure to click the ‘Save Changes’ button.

Save custom HTML page settings

Now your visitors can view your HTML sitemap and more easily navigate around your website.

If you chose the ‘Dedicated Page’ option above, then you can visit the page by clicking the ‘Open HTML Sitemap’ button.

HTML sitemap example page

Method 2. Add an HTML Sitemap Page in WordPress with Simple Sitemap

Simple Sitemap is a free plugin that lets you easily add an HTML sitemap to your WordPress website.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Simple Sitemap plugin. For more details, see our beginner’s guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once the plugin is activated, you can open an existing page, or create a new HTML sitemap page by navigating to Pages » Add New.

This plugin has newly added Gutenberg blocks that you can use to simply add an HTML sitemap page.

All you need to do is click the ‘Plus’ icon, then select the ‘Simple Sitemap’ option.

Add simple sitemap block

Another block included with this plugin is the ‘Simple Sitemap Group’ that creates a branching visual sitemap. But, we’re going to use the ‘Simple Sitemap’ block for this tutorial.

Once you add the block, it will automatically create your HTML sitemap.

On the right-hand menu, you have customization options where you can choose to display ‘Posts’ or ‘Pages’, or both together.

In the box under ‘Select post types to display’, simply enter ‘Post’ or ‘Page’ to choose what you want to display.

Sitemap created add posts or pages

After that, you can change how the list displays by changing the ‘Orderby’ or ‘Order’ drop-downs.

You can also display the excerpt for the pages or posts listed, and enable or disable links. However, we’re going to keep the default plugin settings to keep our HTML sitemap simple and easy to browse.

Customize sitemap order and appearance

Once you’ve finished customizing your HTML sitemap page, click ‘Publish’ or ‘Save’ if you’re updating an older page.

When your visitors go to your HTML sitemap, they’ll see a navigation page that looks similar to the one below.

Final block sitemap example

Adding an HTML Sitemap in WordPress using Shortcodes

Another way to add an an HTML sitemap to WordPress is by using a shortcode. This gives you more control over the placement of your HTML sitemap and works for those who are using the classic editor.

Simply create a new page by navigating to Pages » Add New, then give your new page a name.

Add new block for HTML sitemap

After that, click the ‘Plus’ icon to add a new block to your page.

Then, type ‘shortcode’ into the search box and select the ‘Shortcode’ block.

Add shortcode block

After that, simply copy and paste one of the following shortcodes in the text editor.

[simple-sitemap-group]
[simple-sitemap]

Paste shortcode and publish

Once you’ve done that, click ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ to save your changes.

If you need more help, then see our guide on how to add a shortcode to WordPress.

The first shortcode will list your posts by category, and the second shortcode will list your pages.

This is how the plugin will display your sitemap to your website visitors.

HTML sitemap posts and pages

Creating an HTML Sitemap in WordPress For Top Pages Only

Many site owners use WordPress as a CMS with their main content published as pages instead of posts. For more details, see the difference between posts and pages in WordPress.

In this case, you would want to your HTML sitemap to show pages in the proper hierarchical order.

Here is how you can add HTML Sitemap with only pages.

Simply add this shortcode to the page where you want to display your HTML sitemap. Follow the same steps above to add the shortcode to a new WordPress page.

[simple-sitemap]

This is how it will display your HTML sitemap with all your WordPress pages listed in a hierarchical list.

HTML sitemap page example

It also includes your parent and child pages listed in a nested fashion. For more details, see our guide on how to create a child page in WordPress.

We hope this article helped you learn how to add an HTML sitemap page in WordPress. You may also want to see our expert picks of the best virtual business phone number apps and our guide on how to choose the best blogging platform.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Add an HTML Sitemap Page in WordPress (2 Ways) appeared first on WPBeginner.


August 19, 2021 at 03:07PM