Over 30% of all websites are powered by WordPress. Given that there are billions of sites on the internet, it’s safe to say that WordPress is going to be around for while.
If you run your website on the WordPress platform, one of the things you may be most self-conscious about are the similarities in design your site might share with other sites in your niche. After all, a large amount of WordPress users stick with the content management system’s default settings.
Your website feeling redundant in look and the way it functions can work to undermine your business’ credibility.
To give help give your site the pop it needs, below, our team has put together a list of WordPress hacks that can boost its uniqueness and overall professionalism.
1. Add Author Boxes to Your Blog
Millions of businesses have a blog component to their website.
Why?
Because blogs are an outstanding way to engage your existing customers. They’re also a fabulous way to make search engines take notice of your site which can result in a massive uptick in leads from Google and Bing.
If you’re trying to make your blog feel more professional, consider adding an “author box” to the bottom of your articles.
This post describes the process of adding author boxes in full.
2. Start Backing Up Your Website
Websites crash all the time. This happens because of hosting errors, PHP issues, hacks and for a variety of other reasons.
Nothing undermines a website’s credibility worse than it suddenly being offline.
To avoid elongated crashes, one of our favorite WordPress hacks is to use a plugin like “BackupBuddy” to save copies of your site.
With the help of BackupBuddy, if your website goes down, you can easily restore it to its pre-crash state with a few clicks. That means reduced downtime and a more reliable experience for your customers.
3. Install Google Analytics into Your Site’s Back End
Google Analytics is a tool that allows web masters to understand how people are interacting with their site. Most people don’t think of Analytics as a tool that can improve your site’s professionalism… But we beg to differ.
Analytics lets you know which pages are resonating with your audience and which aren’t. It even provide some insight as to why.
Armed with that insight, you can optimize your website by producing more content people are interested in and by squashing bugs that may be driving up your “bounce rate“.
Installing the “MonsterInsights” plugin is one of the most powerful WordPress hacks that enables you to get all of your Google Analytics data filtered into your WordPress dashboard.
4. Limit Your Login Attempt
For some reason, WordPress grants people unlimited attempts at logging into your website. That makes your site ripe for “brute force” hackers to crack your password and gain entry to your account.
Fortunately, WordPress hacks help us modify this behavior and reduce your site’s risk.
Simply download the plugin “Login LockDown” and specify the number of attempts you’d like to allow.
5. Put Your Coding Knowledge to Work
One of WordPress’ biggest sell points are the beautiful themes it offers access to. As we mentioned in this article’s intro though, the downside to WordPress themes is that they can look a little stale since a lot of people use the same ones.
The solution to this issue is in “theme customization” which you can achieve via some hidden-in-plain-site WordPress hacks!
Our favorite way of modifying your theme’s code is by going to your site’s “appearance” panel and then clicking the “customize” and “additional CSS” buttons.
By doing that, you’ll be able to modify your theme’s code to make it feel more unique to your brand.
6. Add Icons to Your Navigation Menu
Making a website that exudes professionalism is often achieved by paying attention to the little things. One of our favorite little tweaks that you can implement in your site’s design is to add icons to your navigation bar.
Icons in your navigation bar give people a visual cue as to what they’re going to get by clicking a navigation item.
This can make navigating your site more simple and can also be helpful to non-English speakers.
You can add icons to your navigation menu by downloading the “Menu Image” plugin.
7. Up Your Search Game
One of our favorite new plugins that can make your site look like it was built by a coding genius is “Full Screen Search”.
Full Screen Search creates a search box overlay that covers your site’s full window when people click the “search” button in the corner of your website.
If searching is a feature that’s used a lot on your site, leveraging Full Screen Search can improve your site’s experience and your credibility with customers.
8. Share Your Registration Stats
Does your website allow people to create accounts? If it does and you have a large number of people signed up, one of the best ways to exude credibility is to show off the size of your community.
There is a plugin called “Simple Blog Stats” that adds a widget to your sign up screen that says something like, “Sign up today and join 12,000 other subscribers that share your interests.”
That 12,000 number will update as more people sign up on your website.
Wrapping Up WordPress Hacks That Will Boost Your Site’s Professionalism
As you can see from our list above, there are no shortage of easy to use WordPress hacks that can give your site the dash of professionalism it needs to stand out in today’s market.
We recommend implementing as many of our suggestions above as possible to find which tweaks do the most to move the needle for your business!
For more tips on how to get the most out of WordPress, check out additional tips and tricks on Blogging WP today!