Starting a blog for the first time can be a nerve-wracking experience. There’s a lot of excitement, but at the same time, there’s a fear of the unknown. You want to do everything the RIGHT way and avoid all major pitfalls, so your blog can be successful. In our 12+ years of blogging, we have made countless mistakes and learned from them. Over the last decade, our blogs have received well over a billion pageviews. In today’s article, we will share the “expert tips” that we wish we knew before starting our first blog.

Pro Tip: We have a step-by-step guide on how to start a blog (the RIGHT WAY) from setting it up, to optimizing it, securing it, and then making money from it. This guide has been used by hundreds of thousands of visitors, and it’s 100% free.

Having that said, here are the lessons that WPBeginner founder, Syed Balkhi, has over the last 12+ years of blogging.

1. Choose The Right Platform

A lot of folks start with popular free blogging platforms like Blogger, Medium, or WordPress.com, but these blogging platforms are limited. You don’t want to waste your time there if you’re serious about blogging.

First, you’ll have to follow the terms and conditions of these platforms, and they have the right to shut down your blog without any notice. Also, there’s no guarantee that you will be able to export your content should they shut off your blog.

You can only use the features available on their platform which are limited. Most free platforms also restrict you from making money blogging.

WordPress.org, on the other hand, gives you complete freedom and control of your blog.

You can add features, make money, or do whatever you like. All of our blogs now use WordPress including WPBeginner. WordPress powers over 31% of all websites on the internet.

If you are thinking about how WordPress.org compares to other free blogging platforms, then we have done the research for you:

• WordPress.org vs WordPress.com
• WordPress vs Blogger
• WordPress vs Medium
• WordPress vs Weebly
• WordPress vs Wix

2. Find The Perfect Domain name

Choosing the right domain name is very important. I had a wildly successful blog called List25.com which had over 2.3 million YouTube subscribers and over 500 million video views. But in hindsight, I wish I didn’t add a number in the domain because it restricted us to only 25 items in a list.

Here are some quick tips on choosing the best domain name for your website.

• Stick with .com domain extension
• Choose a domain name that is easy to pronounce, spell, and as short as possible.
• Use your keywords and brand name in the domain name. For example, stargardeninghouston.com is more search engine friendly, than stargardeningcompany.com

See our list of the best domain name registrars to pick your domain name. We also have a step-by-step guide on how to register a domain name for free.

3. Choosing The Right Hosting is Very Important

Choosing the right web hosting is by far one of the most important decisions when starting a blog because this is where your website files are stored.

Many beginners like the idea of getting free hosting, but choosing a free website hosting is always a bad idea, and it will end up costing you more money and time in the end.

In the early days, one of my first websites was hosted on a free host which was going fine until one day they shut down without notice. My entire website was gone with no way to restore it. I lost months of hard work.

This is why it’s important to choose a reputable hosting company. Here are a few things you need to consider:

• There are different types of hosting plans like shared hosting, managed hosting, VPS, and more. You need to pick a plan that suits your needs and budget.
• Compare reviews of different hosting companies.
• Support is important for beginners, and you want make sure that there are plenty of options to get help when you need it.

For those who’re just getting started, we recommend using Bluehost because they’re an official WordPress recommended hosting provider. They’re also offering our readers a free domain name + a 65% discount on hosting.

Our second choice for hosting is SiteGround. They’re also officially recommended by WordPress, and they’re known for great support.

For more on this topic, see our guide on how to choose the best WordPress hosting.

4. Always Keep Regular Backups

Often users don’t think about backups until it’s too late. In the early days, I chose a cheap web hosting provider that wasn’t very well-known, and they had a hardware failure. I lost my entire website because I didn’t have a backup.

Many hosting companies offer limited backups. However, these backups are not guaranteed, and a hardware failure can cause you to lose data as well as the backup.

Backups are your first line of defense against brute force attacks, hacking, and data theft. They are the first step to improving your WordPress security and keeping your website safe.

There are plenty of reliable WordPress backup plugins that allow you to schedule automatic backups and store them in remote locations like Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, and more.

Need to set up WordPress backups now? Here is a step-by-step tutorial on how to backup your WordPress site using UpdraftPlus.

5. Setup Google Analytics from Day 1

You can’t grow your site if you don’t know how people find and use your website. Like many beginners, I too relied on “guesswork” and “winging it” to get the job done until I learned the importance of website analytics.

Google Analytics is the best analytics software in the world used by millions of websites. It allows you to see your most popular content, where your visitors are coming from, and more.

It also helps you track user engagement across your website, which helps you improve your business using real numbers instead of guesswork. If you are running an online store, then you can use it to track customers and boost your conversions.

For quick setup, follow our step-by-step guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

6. Setup a Professional Branded Email Address

If you’re serious about your blog, then it’s important to have a professional branded email address. This goes a long way in negotiating deals with an advertiser because they think you’re a legit operation.

Here is how to easily get a professional branded email address for free.

Plus it also helps with email deliverability when sending email newsletters. Which brings me to tip #7.

7. Start Building an Email List Right Away

Over 70% of people abandoning your website never return. You need a way to keep in touch with them. This is why you need to start building an email list.

Now you may think, why not just build a following on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more?

While you should absolutely work on building a following on social media, you do not own these platforms. They can limit your reach to your own followers and can even block your account at any time.

On the other hand, email is still the most effective online marketing tool. You own your email list, and you can reach your audience without any limitations.

For more on this topic, see our article on why you should start building your email list right away.

Not building an email list from day 1 is still my #1 regret, and this is a common regret shared by many blogging experts.

8. Setup Unique Contact Forms for Each Use Case

In the beginning, I had my email address publicly displayed on the blog. This led to tons of spam coming my way. Contact forms are very important and that’s why you will find a contact page on almost every website you visit.

It’s also important to have different forms for each use case, so you can easily filter the emails and be more efficient.

There are plenty of WordPress contact form plugins in the market. However, most WordPress contact form plugins are designed for developers. This is why I launched WPForms, with the goal of making it the most beginner-friendly contact form plugin for WordPress.

It has more than 5 million active installs with 10,000+ five-star reviews. There is also a free version called WPForms lite that you can try.

For step-by-step instructions, see this article on how to easily create a contact form in WordPress.

9. Pay Attention to Image Copyrights and Licenses

Often beginners just copy and paste images from the internet. This adds liability as your site grows. Don’t just use images from Google because you might have to pay thousands later in image copyright infringement fees. The copyright owner can also report the page displaying their work and ask Google to remove it from search results.

Considering these costs, it’s worth paying for a Shutterstock license to get high-quality vector images to use on your website.

However, if you are just starting out and don’t want to pay for licenses, then you can find several websites offering cc0 images. These images are royalty-free, and you can use them on your website.

Another way to add images to your website is by creating your own. However, most beginners are not graphic designers. Luckily, there are online tools like Canva which enable you to create professional images to use on your blog.

10. Onsite SEO Optimization is Important for Growth

If you’re serious about growing your blog and making it successful, then you need to pay attention to on-page SEO from the beginning.

SEO short for search engine optimization helps you get more visitors to your website from search engines. SEO strategies are divided into two categories, off-site and on-site SEO.

Onsite SEO helps you optimize your blog by making small adjustments in various areas. Now, this may sound a bit technical, and it is, but there are plenty of tools that can help you with this.

First, I would recommend you install AIOSEO on your website. It is the complete WordPress SEO plugin suite, and it will help you with the onsite optimization of your blog.

It also allows you to easily create and submit sitemaps to search engines. This enables your website to get listed in Google and start appearing in search results.

Next, you need to make internal linking a habit. Internal links are the links you create inside your content to your own blog posts, pages, and different areas of your website. Internal links help you increase your pageviews as well as guide search engines to understand the context and relationship between your content.

You can use an internal linking plugin like AIOSEO to automatically find internal linking opportunities and add them to your content easily.

For more SEO tips, see our ultimate WordPress SEO guide for beginners with step by step WordPress SEO setup.

11. Keyword Research is VERY Important

Often people write great posts, but they aren’t discoverable because they didn’t think about using the right keywords. Most beginners follow their best guesses to come up with ideas for blog posts. You don’t need to do that when there are tools that can help you find out what your users are looking for. You can use these keywords for your blog posts and increase your traffic.

You can use a free tool like AnswerThePublic to find the questions your users are searching for. You can then answer those questions in your blog posts to get more search traffic.

Want to know which keywords are bringing traffic to your competitors? Use SEMRush to steal your competitors’ keywords. It also shows you paid keywords where your competitors are running paid advertising campaigns.

For more tools and ideas, see our guide on how to do keyword research for your WordPress blog.

12. Catchy Headlines are important for Social and SEO

People judge the book by its cover and blog posts by its headline. If you want to get a lot of shares, then you need to write catchy headlines.

Google even uses CTR (click-through rate) as a ranking factor, so you need to have catchy headlines to get more people to click on them.

How do you analyze your blog post headlines? Luckily there are several tools that will help you improve your headlines. Here is a list of tools that’ll help you create better headlines.

13. Repurposing Content is a Secret Weapon for Expert Bloggers

You don’t always have to come up with new blog post ideas. Expert bloggers repurpose their content into videos, images, collection articles, etc.

Following are some examples of articles we have compiled with repurposed content from our existing articles.

• Most common WordPress errors and how to fix them
• 32 Extremely useful tricks for the WordPress functions file
• How to fix common image issues in WordPress
• 15 Useful WordPress configuration tricks that you may not know

You can also repurpose articles as downloadable ebooks, audio files, or YouTube videos. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see how we reuse content from our articles to create highly engaging video tutorials. This brings me to my next tip #14.

14. Videos are a Great Way to Boost Engagement and Stand Out from the Crowd

Videos are the most engaging form of content on the internet. Users are actively looking for video content, which is why YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world.

Using videos on your blog allows you to keep users on your site and help them discover more content.

Over the years, I have learned that you should never upload videos to WordPress. Instead, I recommend using video hosting services like YouTube.

We have our own WPBeginner Videos section to help new users get started with WordPress. WPBeginner’s YouTube channel has more than 100,000 subscribers and 10 Million views.

15. You can Re-share Old Posts to Boost Traffic

Your blog posts are displayed in reverse chronological order (newer posts appear first). This means your older posts are buried down and are not easily discoverable.

One way to fix this is by sharing your older articles on social media. Often beginners think that it’s not ok to recycle old content. It’s completely fine and expert bloggers do it all the time.

To do this, you need to use the Revive Old Posts plugin, which allows you to automatically share old posts on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. For instructions, see our guide on how to automatically share your old WordPress posts.

Need more tricks? See these tested and proven methods to promote old posts in WordPress.

16. Diversify Your Income Stream

The easiest way for new blogs to start making money is by displaying ads using Google AdSense. While Google AdSense is great, you need to diversify your income stream. We have seen bloggers losing all their income when AdSense blocked their accounts for a policy violation.

There are plenty of ways to make money online from your blog. You can supplement your blogging income with affiliate marketing, selling online courses, offering membership plans, and more.

Another way to boost your ad revenues is to monitor who’s advertising on your site. You can then go to them directly to eliminate the middle man.

17. Consistency is Key

You don’t have to post every day. But you have to be consistent in your schedule. At WPBeginner we post once a day, 5 days a week. Some popular blogs publish several new posts each day.

Choose how frequently you will publish and then stick to that frequency. If you are just starting out, then you can start with 3 posts per week and then gradually increase your pace.

If you’re not disciplined, then it’s easy to slip and this is how most blogs die. You need to keep yourself motivated and don’t get distracted from your goals.

18. Streamline a Flow for Storing Your Blog Post Ideas

There are plenty of online tools that you can use to store your blog ideas. As a professional blogger, you will often come up with blog post ideas during conversations and everyday chores. It is important to jot them down before you forget.

You can use tools like Asana, EditFlow, or Evernote to store new ideas, plan content strategy, and manage your editorial calendar.

This is extremely important because there will be days when you are out of ideas to write about. Having an idea bank will help you stay consistent with your publication schedule.

19. Setup a Place to Manage All Your Passwords

Passwords are the gatekeeper to your WordPress website as well as your online accounts. They are also the most common target of hacking attempts.

This is why it is recommended to use strong and unique passwords for all your accounts. I am often asked by beginners how to remember all those strong and unique passwords?

Well, you don’t need to. There are excellent password managers like LastPass and 1Password, which securely store all your passwords, auto-fill them for you, and can generate strong passwords to use.

To learn more see our article on the best way to manage passwords for WordPress users.

Whatever you do, just make sure that you DO NOT use the same password everywhere!

20. Connect Multiple Emails with Your Gravatar

Gravatars are the profile images used by WordPress. It is super easy to start using Gravatar, but what most users don’t know is that you can connect multiple email addresses to your gravatar.

This allows you to use the same brand image for your comments while using different email addresses.

Leaving comments on other blogs is a great way to bring attention to your new blog and get more traffic.

To learn more, see our article on Gravatar and why you should start using it.

21. Comment on Other Blogs and Networks to Grow Your Brand

Blogs are an inherently social platform, allowing people to comment and engage with content. To grow your brand, you need to utilize this feature by participating in other blogs in your niche.

When we first started, we commented on all relevant blogs. It’s important that you take part in relevant blogs and Facebook groups to grow your brand. This grass-roots effort is essential for your blog’s growth.

It helps you get the word out about your blog, get noticed by influencers in your niche, and make new connections on the way.

22. About Page and Start Here Pages Are Very Important

You need a place to share your story as well as give new users a place to start. This is why you need to add an about page to your blog. It allows your users to learn more about you, your story, and build a personal connection with your brand.

You should also add a Start Here page to walk your new users through your most important content. This walking tour helps you quickly get new subscribers for your blog and establish your brand as an authority.

Need more ideas? See our list of most important pages for your WordPress blog.

23. Social Media is Important But Always Remember It’s Rented Land

Remember MySpace or Orkut? We have seen social networks come and go. While social networks can be a great source to drive traffic to your blog, you should always focus more on items that you control (i.e. your blog, newsletter, push notifications).

There are plenty of clever ways you can use social media to grow your email list.

24. Start Building Brand Recognition

In 2011, I lost 40% of traffic when I redesigned WPBeginner simply because we switched color schemes which confused users. Consistency in your brand’s color scheme and website is crucial for building brand recognition.

There are thousands of free and paid WordPress themes which makes it tempting for beginners to switch their website’s design and colors. You need to pick a design and stick with it so that your users can become familiar with your brand’s color and design,

You should use your brand’s colors and logo on your merchandise like t-shirts, mugs, stickers, etc. You should also stay consistent across your social media profiles.

25. Leverage Social Proof When You Can

Social Proof is a marketing tactic that eases a customer’s mind by showing them that other customers already trust the brand, product, or website they are viewing.

As humans, we prefer to learn from other people’s experiences and decisions. Marketers use this social phenomenon by adding social proof to their marketing campaigns and websites.

You need to use this to help establish trust and grow your blog / business. You can add social proof by sharing your total subscriber count, adding website logos where you are featured, displaying your growth indicators, number of downloads, and more.

26. Website Speed is Very Important

Nobody likes slow websites. Search engines like Google give an SEO advantage to faster websites. As a blogger, you need to optimize your website for speed and faster page loads.

The key to faster websites is choosing the right WordPress hosting. A bad host can slow down your website and no matter what you do on your end, you will never be able to improve performance.

Next, you need to start using a WordPress caching plugin. There are excellent free plugins like WP Super Cache which help you serve a cached version of your website with just a few clicks.

You can also combine that with DNS-based firewalls like Sucuri or Cloudflare. These firewalls block bad traffic which reduces your server load. They also serve static content through their CDN servers which gives you a significant speed boost.

For complete step-by-step instructions see our ultimate WordPress speed and performance guide for beginners.

27. Content Upgrades and Exit Popups are Magic

Content upgrades and exit popups work like magic. When you are first starting out, you might think that these things don’t work, but they do and that’s why you see them everywhere.

I used exit-intent popups on WPBeginner and increased our subscribers by 600%. Later, I ran a similar experiment with content upgrades on my personal website and got a 27% conversion rate on a single page.

For details see our article on how to add content upgrades in WordPress.

28. Ignore Haters and Turn-off Distractions

As your blog starts growing, you will get a ton of positive feedback and encouragement from your users. However, you will also get some haters who will criticize you and try to bring you down.

You need to ignore these haters and not waste your energy or time on them. To make sure you are not distracted, turn on comment moderation and disable new comment notifications.

29. Don’t Obsess Over Perfection

When writing a blog, I recommend not obsessing over perfection. It’s completely ok to make mistakes as long as you fix them.

Some folks might get upset over grammar or spelling mistakes, but you can fix them and move on. Remember, it’s human to make mistakes.

You can use tools like Grammarly to help catch some errors.

My advice for new bloggers is to write and develop your own voice / style. Often blogs with more personalized writing do better than those that are written like research papers.

30. Always Use the Best Tools to Get Ahead

All experts have a toolkit that helps them stay ahead. These online tools are made specifically for bloggers and website owners. They will help you be more efficient, so you can make your blog successful.

Following are just some of the tools that I have found very helpful in my journey.

• Asana – Productivity and task management tool
• Evernote – Notes and personal organizer app
• Grammarly – Best online spelling and grammar checking tool
• AnswerThePublic – Free keyword research tool
• SEMRush – Best competitor analysis and keyword research tool in the market
• TimeDoctor – Time tracking and productivity app for teams and individuals
• LastPass – The best password manager app
• IsItWP Headline Analyzer – Analyze your blog headlines
• Feedly – Best RSS feed reader to help you keep up with all the blogs you follow
• IFTTT – Online automation app that allows you to connect different apps like your WordPress blog and social media

Need even more tools? Check out our pick of the 40 useful tools to manage and grow your WordPress blog.

Hopefully, you found this blogging advice helpful, and I wish it helps you avoid some of the mistakes that I made when starting a blog. You may also want to see these actionable tips to drive traffic to your new WordPress site.

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.

After our articles on how much does a WordPress website cost, and how much does it cost for a custom WordPress theme, many of you asked us to write about how much does an eCommerce website cost?

Knowing the cost of building an eCommerce website is important because it helps you calculate the investment you will need to start your new online business idea.

The challenge is that there are many factors involved in making an eCommerce website, and all of them will affect the overall cost of your business.

If you don’t have a clear action plan, then you can easily end up overspending. But don’t worry, we are here to help.

In this article, we will break down all the information to give you a clear idea of how much does an eCommerce website cost. We will also show you different ways to avoid overspending and maximize profits.

Ready? Let’s get started.

How to Calculate the Cost of Building an Ecommerce Website?

The best way to calculate the cost of building an eCommerce website is to compare different eCommerce platforms, tools, add-ons, and additional services that you will need based on your business requirements.

This is the only way that will give you an accurate cost of an eCommerce website.

Since there are multiple ways to create an online store, most online eCommerce website cost calculators end up being completely inaccurate (so it’s best that you avoid them).

To keep this article focused, we will break down our eCommerce cost analysis into the following major expenses:

• Hosting costs
• Payment processing costs
• Design costs
• Add-ons and extensions cost
• Total costs of an eCommerce website
• Costs of growing your business

There are many different eCommerce software and platforms that you can use to make an online store. For the sake of this article, we will use the following top eCommerce platforms:

• WooCommerce
• Shopify
• BigCommerce

That being said, let’s start calculating the cost of making an eCommerce website, and how to save money with smart choices along the way.

1. Hosting Costs

Every website on the internet needs web hosting. This is where your website’s files are stored. You’ll also need a domain name which is your website’s address on the internet, e.g. wpbeginner.com.

When it comes to eCommerce hosting, there are two routes that you can take for your eCommerce projects. Each of them has different costs and technical requirements.

Let’s take a look at both of them.

1. Hosting Costs for Self-Hosted eCommerce Website

WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce platform in the world powering millions of small and large online stores.

WooCommerce itself is available as a free software which means you can download and use it for free to create as many eCommerce websites as you like.

However, you’ll need a WooCommerce web hosting account to install it. You’ll also need a domain name and an SSL certificate.

A starter website hosting plan normally starts at $7.99 / month, domain name $14.99 / year, and SSL Certificate starts from $69 / year.

All of these costs add up to a small but still significant investment to make a starter eCommerce store.

Luckily, Bluehost has agreed to offer WPBeginner users a generous discount on hosting with a free domain name and SSL certificate.

Basically, you can get started for just $2.75 per month.

As your business starts growing, you will eventually need to upgrade your hosting plan to handle more traffic.

This means your hosting costs will start increasing as more customers visit your website. Hopefully, by that time you’ll be making enough money (sales) to justify the increasing costs of hosting.

You can switch your hosting plan to a managed WordPress hosting company like WP Engine. Their Starter plan is $35 per month and the Scale plan is $290 per month, but you can use our WP Engine coupon to get an additional discount.

Here are the advantages of a self-hosted eCommerce site:

• You get complete freedom to build your eCommerce site the way you like.
• You can save a ton of money by only paying for what you need.
• You can make unlimited sales, add unlimited products, and use any payment gateway platform that you like.

With that said, some non-techy users don’t want to learn how to install their own eCommerce software and prefer a done for you solution instead. That’s where the SaaS eCommerce platforms come in.

2. Hosting Costs for SaaS eCommerce Platforms

Ecommerce platforms available as SaaS (Software as a Service) do not require you to install software, manage it, or host it yourself.

Your website hosting price is included with the software. You don’t need to worry about managing website hosting.

The two of the most popular SaaS eCommerce platforms are Shopify and BigCommerce.

They both offer incredibly easy and highly scalable eCommerce platforms to sell your products online. Both platforms include SSL, but you’ll need to purchase a domain name separately. See our guide on how to register a domain name for instructions.

Here is the cost of Shopify eCommerce plans:

• Basic Shopify: $29 / month
• Shopify: $79 / month
• Advanced Shopify: $299 / month

Now, let’s compare it with the BigCommerce plans:

• Standard: $29.95 / month
• Plus: $71.95 / month
• Pro: $224.95 / month

For both platforms, each plan comes with a different set of features that you need to review, so you can choose the right plan for your needs.

There are some major differences between Shopify and BigCommerce, and we will discuss them throughout the article.

For example, the BigCommerce Standard plan limits you to $50,000 in online sales per year. After that, you will need to upgrade your account.

Shopify on the other hand forces you to use Shopify payments. If you want to use another payment gateway, then you will be charged an additional 2% fee for each transaction made on your eCommerce store using a third-party payment gateway. The fee drops to 1% and then 0.5% for their higher-paid plans.

Estimated Ecommerce Hosting Costs:

Self-hosted eCommerce website: $2.75 – $241.67 / month

SaaS eCommerce hosting costs $29 – $299 / month

Please keep in mind that this cost estimate is for starter to medium-sized online stores. For high-volume stores, you will likely have to upgrade to Shopify Plus or BigCommerce Enterprise which costs in the thousands per month.

On the self-hosted site, you will have to upgrade your hosting plans with WP Engine, Liquid Web, or whichever hosting provider you are using.

Based on the hosting cost analysis above, a self-hosted eCommerce site with WooCommerce comes out as a winner. See our guide on how to start an online store.

2. Payment Processing

Many beginners don’t look at payment processing fees when choosing an eCommerce platform. This can have a serious impact on your business because it will significantly increase your costs and lower your profits.

Let’s see how different eCommerce platforms handle payments, and how much it would cost you to accept payments from your customers.

Payment Costs in WooCommerce

WooCommerce is an open-source software, so it has many payment platform integrations. This means self-hosted eCommerce websites using WooCommerce are free to use any payment gateway they want.

By default, WooCommerce supports PayPal and Stripe payment gateways to accept credit card payments. You can also choose from dozens of other payment services which are available as extensions.

You will only be paying the processing fees to the payment gateway service you choose. Each one of them has different rates for different regions, currencies, and services.

Another advantage is that WooCommerce has extensions and integrations available even for some lesser-known regional payment services. This is a big advantage for eCommerce websites catering to customers in specific countries.

Using WooCommerce, you can compare the rates for different payment services and choose the best option for your business.

WooCommerce also does not put a cap on how many sales you can make on your website. This gives eCommerce websites the freedom to choose their payment service and not pay any overage fees.

WooCommerce payment processing costs:

Payment processing fees vary depending on the payment gateway, currency, and region. Here is a quick overview of popular payment gateways in US dollars.

• PayPal: 2.9% + $0.30 for transactions over $10
• Stripe: 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction
• Authorize.net – 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction + $25 monthly fee.

Payment Costs in Shopify

Shopify offers its own payment solutions called Shopify Payments which lets you accept credit card payments on your website. It also offers many third-party payment gateways including regional and cryptocurrency payment services.

Shopify Payments is available only in 13 countries at the time of writing this article. You will need to carefully read payment terms for your country as you are not allowed to sell certain items in some countries.

If you choose to use a third-party payment service, then you will pay that particular payment gateway’s fees + 2.0% additional fee to Shopify. This might not seem a lot at first, but it can become a significant amount in the long term.

Considering that most payment services charge 2.9% of the transaction amount on average, this means you could end up paying up to 5% of the total transaction as payment processing charges.

Now if you are in one of the 13 countries supported by Shopify, then you get almost the same rate as PayPal.

However, if you are not in those select countries, then you will pay 2% additional charges to Shopify for each transaction which could significantly reduce your profit margins.

Shopify Payment processing costs

• Shopify Payments: 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction
• Third-party payment services: The payment gateway fees + 2% additional fees paid to Shopify for each transaction.

Payment Costs in BigCommerce

BigCommerce allows you to choose from over 65+ third-party payment gateways. These payment platforms provide a wider global reach than Shopify, but it is not as large as WooCommerce.

The biggest advantage of using BigCommerce is that it does not charge additional transaction fees. This means you only pay for each transaction to the payment service provider you choose (similar to WooCommerce).

The charges for each transaction will depend on payment service, currency, and country. You can choose from all popular payment services like PayPal, Square, Stripe, Authorize.net, and many more.

BigCommerce Payment processing costs

• PayPal: 2.9% + $0.30 for transactions over $10
• Stripe: 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction
• Authorize.net – 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction + $25 monthly fee.

Estimated Costs for Payment Processing on an Ecommerce Website

Your payment processing costs will depend on your eCommerce platform and the payment services you choose. Here is an average estimate of the payment costs.

• WooCommerce: PayPal or Stripe – 2.9% + $0.30 for transaction
• Shopify : Shopify Payments – 2.9% + 30¢ | Additional 2% per transaction for third-party payment gateways
• BigCommerce: PayPal or Stripe – 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction

Note: These costs do not include any fees that may be charged by your bank.

When looking at payment processing costs, both WooCommerce and BigCommerce are tied for the lowest costs.

3. Ecommerce Website Design Costs

The eCommerce industry is growing at an incredible rate. Each day new online stores are popping up and chances are that there will already be significant competition in your area of business.

This is where design comes in.

Giving your website a professional and customer-centric design helps you get ahead of the competition.

Now you might be thinking, well I’m not a professional web designer, how do I come up with a design that helps my store stand out and make more sales?

Well, most eCommerce platforms realize this problem, so they offer ready-made website templates. Store owners can customize the layouts using simple drag and drop tools.

Store owners can also purchase premium designs that come with additional features, priority support, and unique layouts. Of course, you can also hire a developer to design a completely custom template from scratch with custom features.

Let’s see how much it costs to design an eCommerce website on different platforms.

WooCommerce Design Costs

WooCommerce is the most flexible option in terms of design and appearance. It is built on top of WordPress, the most popular website builder, which means you can choose any WordPress theme to use with WooCommerce.

However, you would want to select a WooCommerce specific theme for best results.

Luckily there are thousands of WooCommerce themes that you can choose from. Many of them are completely free and some are available for a small fee, starting from $30.

Here are the top WooCommerce themes with tons of customization options.

• Astra – A popular WooCommerce theme with dozens of ready-made sites that you can install with 1-click.
• Divi – A powerful WooCommerce theme with dozens of templates, a built-in page builder, and beginner friendly customization options
• Ocean WP – One of the top all-purpose WooCommerce themes on the market with tons of customization options

For the complete list see our article on the best WooCommerce themes.

WooCommerce also gives you access to amazing WordPress page builder plugins. These drag and drop tools allow you to create custom product pages and custom landing page layouts within minutes.

If you don’t want to use a free or paid WooCommerce theme, then you can hire a WordPress developer for custom WooCommerce development.

Custom themes are unique and made specifically for your business. They allow you to incorporate custom features and turn your ideas into reality.

A custom theme can become very expensive depending on the features you need, and the expertise of your developer. The overall cost of a custom website development could start from $1500 to $6000 for an average-sized eCommerce business.

An enterprise-level custom theme with its own companion plugins can cost from $10,000 to $30,000.

An easier and more cost-effective way to create a custom theme is to use SeedProd. It’s a powerful drag and drop website builder that allows you to create a custom theme for your WooCommerce store, without editing any code.

You can get started quickly with one of the 28+ ready-made WooCommerce themes. Each theme can be customized for your brand by pointing and clicking.

Plus, SeedProd comes with full WooCommerce integration.

Simply drag and drop the WooCommerce template tags or blocks to create a custom WooCommerce checkout, cart, featured product grids, product ratings, and more.

Shopify Design Costs

Shopify offers ready-made templates that you can use as a starting point for your eCommerce store. It also offers built-in tools to customize the layout, colors, and other settings.

There are currently 10 free and 65 paid themes available on the Shopify website. This is a very small number, especially when compared to thousands of themes available for WooCommerce.

On average, a paid theme for Shopify starts from $160. You may find cheaper themes on third-party theme marketplaces where Shopify themes may be available for as low as $59.

You can also hire a developer to make you a custom Shopify theme. However, Shopify is not as popular among developers as WooCommerce, which means your hiring pool will be quite small and rates will be higher.

Depending on the developer you choose and their rates, a custom design development for Shopify can cost between $5,000 to $30,000 USD.

BigCommerce Design Costs

BigCommerce also offers paid and free themes. There are currently 12 free themes in multiple styles and more than a 100+ paid themes in the store.

Each of these themes is fully customizable using an intuitive user interface. You can add your own business logo, custom colors, and choose different layout styles for your store.

All themes are mobile responsive and designed for higher conversion rates. They strictly adhere to BigCommerce platform guidelines and coding standards, so you get the same user experience regardless of which theme you choose.

You can also find BigCommerce themes from third-party marketplace websites. However, these themes may not be as good in quality as those available in the official store.

BigCommerce also allows developers to upload custom made themes. You can find a developer for hire on BigCommerce’s official partner’s directory or freelance marketplaces like UpWork.

Pricing for paid BigCommerce themes start from $160+. A custom BigCommerce theme can cost you somewhere between $3,000 to $30,000, depending on the developer or agency you hire for the job.

Estimated Design Costs for an Ecommerce Website

WooCommerce – Free, $99 for premium, and $5,000 for custom

Shopify – Free, $160 for premium, and $5,000 for custom

BigCommerce – Free, $160 for premium, and $5,000 for custom

Note: Both BigCommerce and Shopify have limited themes both free and paid. WooCommerce gives you access to thousands of free and paid themes, large pool of developers, and a lot more flexibility in design.

4. Cost of Add-ons and Extensions

It is simply not possible for an eCommerce platform to bake all the features you’ll need into one software. Even if they tried, things would get messy and the software would become difficult to use.

To fix this problem, most eCommerce software are made with a modular approach. This allows the core software to be extended using add-ons and apps.

These add-on or extensions allow you to add new features to your eCommerce website and extend its functionality. Many of them are paid and buying them will increase your cost of making an eCommerce website.

Let’s compare the costs of add-ons and extensions on popular eCommerce platforms.

WooCommerce Extensions and Add-ons

When it comes to add-ons and extensions, no other eCommerce platform comes even close to WooCommerce. There are thousands of both free and paid add-ons available for WooCommerce that you can use.

You also need to keep in mind that WooCommerce runs on top of WordPress, which gives you access to 59,000+ free plugins as well.

There is a plugin or add-on available for any feature that you can think of.

Want to see some examples? See our expert-pick of essential WooCommerce plugins showcasing the most popular WooCommerce add-ons (most of them are free).

Pricing for paid WooCommerce addons start from $19 and can go as high $299 (depending on licensing plans and features of a plugin).

If that’s not enough, and you want a custom feature, then you can hire a developer to make a plugin for you. It could cost you anywhere from $500 to $10,000 USD depending on how much work is required or the rates of the developer you hire for the job.

WooCommerce Addon Costs: Free – $299 and custom plugins cost $500 – $10,000 USD

Cost of Shopify Addons

Shopify is a SaaS platform and the core software is tightly integrated to provide maximum security and stability to all users.

However, they do offer APIs for developers to integrate their own services and solutions into Shopify. These addons are available as third-party apps on the Shopify app store.

There are hundreds of apps available both free and paid. The prices for paid apps vary and most of them are available on a monthly subscription basis.

Shopify also allows you to add private apps made specifically for your store. The app needs to be stored and run elsewhere, and you can generate Shopify API keys to manage the app’s access permissions.

Shopify Addon Costs: Free – Varied monthly subscription apps. Custom app: $5,000+ depending on developer rates and skills.

BigCommerce Addons Cost

Similar to Shopify, BigCommerce also allows you to install both free and paid apps. Many of these third-party apps are available on a monthly subscription basis.

You can also hire developers to create custom apps for a single store. These apps are stored as a draft app and you can only use it on that particular store.

BigCommerce Addon Costs: Free – Varied monthly subscription apps. Custom app: $1000+ depending on developer rates and skills.

Estimated Cost of Addons on an Ecommerce Website

This one is hard to calculate because each online store will use different apps for their own needs.

Ofcourse using more paid add-ons will cost more and increase your total costs significantly. Add-ons with recurring billing will be an ongoing expense for your business.

We are assuming that you will be careful with paid add-ons to give a very conservative estimate of the costs.

Add-on costs: Free – $1,000 USD

WooCommerce addons and WordPress plugins overall are cheaper since they’re billed on annual basis whereas Shopify and BigCommerce apps are billed on monthly basis.

5. Total Cost of Building an Ecommerce Website

Now that we have covered different spending areas for an eCommerce website, let’s take a look at how much would be the total cost of building an eCommerce website.

As mentioned earlier that each eCommerce platform gives you the flexibility to choose how much money you would spend. This would obviously affect your overall costs.

Following are the estimated total costs of building an eCommerce website.

WooCommerce Starter – $500 – $3000 (Shared hosting, paid design, fewer paid plugins and services).

WooCommerce Custom – $5000 – $10,000 (Managed WordPress hosting, custom eCommerce design, paid plugins and services).

WooCommerce Enterprise – $10,000+ (Dedicated hosting servers, custom design and features, paid plugins and services).

Shopify – $1,000 – $10,000+ (Your costs would increase dramatically when you make more sales and if you are using a third-party payment service).

BigCommerce $1,000 – $10,000+ (Your costs will increase when you make more sales as you will be asked to upgrade your plan).

A WooCommerce / WordPress eCommerce site costs between $500 and $3000 USD for a starter eCommerce business. This gives you the best value for your money as it is the most robust, flexible, and easy to use platform.

• You wouldn’t have to pay additional transaction fees
• WooCommerce doesn’t cap your sales or number of products you add
• You can use it with any third-party service
• It has the best design options to improve conversions and make more sales

If you would rather not maintain hosting by yourself, then BigCommerce saves you money by not charging you a transaction fee for using your preferred payment services.

You can also use BigCommerce with WordPress, allowing BigCommerce to handle your store and WordPress to manage marketing content.

Lastly, Shopify could be a cheap option for making an eCommerce website but only if you use Shopify Payments to accept credit card payments on your website.

For more details see our comparisons: WooCommerce vs BigCommerce and WooCommerce vs Shopify.

6. Bonus: Costs of Growing Ecommerce Business

Now that you have made your eCommerce site. What’s next?

The real fun part comes when you start growing your eCommerce business. This part is painful and overwhelming for most beginners, but it is also the most rewarding.

It is painful because it can be excruciatingly slow if you are not using the right tools. By using proper tools to grow your business you can boost your sales and skyrocket conversions.

While these tools will also add up to your overall costs, their ROI is so high that it automatically justifies the expense.

Following are our top picks for the best marketing tools to grow your eCommerce business with their costs.

Marketing Tools

1. OptinMonster

As your eCommerce site starts getting visitors, you’ll learn that most visitors leave without making a purchase. Wouldn’t it be great if you could stay in touch with them so that you can convince them to buy?

This is what OptinMonster does.

It is the best lead generation software in the world because it helps you convert abandoning website visitors into leads and customers. OptinMonster works with any kind of website and all eCommerce platforms.

For instructions and practical examples, see our article on how to convert visitors into customers.

Cost: We would recommend you to start with their Plus plan at least. It costs $19 / month with annual billing.

2. Constant Contact

The best way to stay in touch with website visitors is by email, which is still the preferred mode of communication by customers.

You need to start building an email list on your eCommerce store from day 1. Basically, you are losing money each day you are not collecting emails.

The easiest way to start with email marketing is by using Constant Contact. It is the best email marketing software on the market allowing you to send targeted messages to subscribers and increase your sales.

For details and step by step instructions, see our tutorial on how to start an email newsletter.

Cost: Starting from $20 per month.

Alternatives: We also recommend SendinBlue, HubSpot and Drip depending on the use-cases.

3. SEMRush

The best source to get free traffic to your website is search engines. To utilize them, you will need to keep learning eCommerce SEO.

SEMRush is the best SEO tool on the market. It allows you to see the keywords your competitors are ranking for and how you can beat them by ranking higher.

In just a few clicks, it provides you a ton of optimization ideas that you can implement with minimal effort.

For instructions and details, see our guide on how to properly do keyword research.

Cost: Starting from $99.95 per month.

4. Nextiva

Normally you can just add your landline or mobile number to your eCommerce website. However, it doesn’t look very professional and can end up hurting your business.

Nextiva is the best business phone service on the market. It allows you to use one number on multiple devices, phonesets, mobile phones, and even computers.

It runs on voice over internet protocol technology also known as business VoIP. Compared to traditional landline phones, it is way cheaper and allows you to efficiently handle calls for your business.

Cost: Starting from $20 / month / user.

Alternative: RingCentral and Ooma are other popular virtual phone number app.

5. PushEngage Push Notifications

One of the easiest way to increase your store revenue is to use push notifications. They allow you to communicate with customers after they leave your website.

Push notifications have one of the highest engagement rate out of any communication platform.

PushEngage is a leading web push notification software that makes it easy for you to add push notifications to your online store.

You can use it to send bulk push messages, cart abandonment notifications, automated drip messages, sale announcements, and more.

Cost: Free to start and grows based on the number of subscribers.

6. PPC Marketing

Starting an eCommerce website will not instantly start making money for your business. It will take some time before you can get search traffic to your website. Meanwhile, you’ll still be paying for hosting and other services.

This is where PPC marketing can help.

PPC or pay-per-click marketing allows you to display ads for targeted keywords in search results. You can use SEMRush to find the PPC keywords your clients are targeting and plan an effective strategy within minutes.

The best place to start with your first PPC campaign is Google Ads. It is super-easy to use and even absolute beginners can get started without any help.

PPC campaigns don’t need to cost a lot of money. You can set a small budget, run a very targeted campaign, and then increase the budget to get more leads and sales.

PPC is not just for eCommerce startups, you can continue using PPC marketing alongside your SEO efforts to get targeted traffic to your store.

Cost: You can start as low as $100 and increase budget as you need.

How much would it cost to properly grow an eCommerce business?

Basically, it depends on you. Your goal should be to find the right balance of tools start building upon it. Keep trying new tools as your business grows and you have more budget to expand.

Estimated Cost of Growth Hacking: $1000 to Unlimited

We hope this article gave you a good idea of how much does an eCommerce website cost in real numbers. We recommend being thrifty and only spending when it is essential for your business.

You may also want to see our guide on how to grow your business on a very small budget and the best live chat software for eCommerce 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.

Are you wondering if there is a difference between coming soon and maintenance modes?

The answer is: Yes. They are both used for different purposes and search engines treat coming soon mode differently from maintenance mode.

In this article, we’ll explain the difference between coming soon vs maintenance mode so that you can choose the best option for your needs.

What is Coming Soon Mode vs. Maintenance Mode, and Why Does It Matter?

Coming soon mode is used when your website has not yet been launched. Maintenance mode is used when your website is temporarily offline for maintenance.

It’s easy to get these 2 modes confused. Several WordPress plugins such as SeedProd let you put your site into either coming soon mode or maintenance mode. You may not be sure about the difference.

It’s extremely important to use each mode correctly, because if you choose the wrong option, then it can harm your WordPress site’s SEO rankings.

When to Use a Coming Soon Page

You should use a coming soon page after registering a domain name but before you have finished creating your website.

A coming soon page lets you generate buzz about your upcoming site before launching it. Plus, it allows Google to start sending you visitors.

It’s best practice to have an email newsletter signup form on your coming soon page. This allows people to get an email when your site goes live, and also helps you to get a head start on building an email list.

SeedProd lets you create great-looking coming soon pages with just a few clicks. It’s the best landing page builder for WordPress and with its drag and drop builder, you can easily create coming soon and maintenance mode pages for your website.

Let’s take a look at how to create a coming soon page in WordPress.

How to Create a Coming Soon Page

To create a coming soon page, you first need to install and activate the SeedProd plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

We’re using the SeedProd Pro version for our tutorial because it offers more customization features and templates, but you can also use the free version of SeedProd.

Upon activation, you should be prompted for your license key. You will find this in your account area on the SeedProd website. Simply enter the key and click the ‘Verify Key’ button:

After that, you can go to SeedProd » Landing Pages from your WordPress dashboard and click the ‘Set up a Coming Soon’ button.

Then, simply pick a template for your coming soon page. There are over 150 different templates to choose from.

All you have to do is hover over a template and click the orange tick mark button.

You will now be taken to SeedProd’s drag and drop page builder.

Go ahead and change anything you want using the blocks given in the left-hand sidebar.

For instance, you can drag and drop standard blocks for text and images, or choose Advanced blocks to add a countdown timer, contact form, icons, and more.

Besides that, there are options to change the font, background image, text and color of the button, and more.

If you would like to integrate your coming soon form with your email marketing service, then simply go to the ‘Connect’ tab at the top and select your email marketing service.

You then need to follow the on-screen instructions to connect your coming soon page with your email service.

Once you’re happy with your coming soon page’s design, head over to the ‘Page Settings’ tab at the top. After that, click on the Page Status toggle and switch the status from Draft to Publish.

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button at the top and then exit the landing page builder.

Next, you’ll need to go to SeedProd » Landing Pages from your WordPress dashboard and click the toggle under the Coming Soon Mode to make your page ‘Active.’

Your coming soon page is now live. To view it, log out of your website and visit any page.

When to Use Maintenance Mode

You can use maintenance mode if you need to briefly take your site offline for changes or updates.

For instance, you might want to use maintenance mode while changing WordPress themes. This ensures that your site functions correctly and looks good with the new theme.

Another good time to use maintenance mode is to add an online store to your site. You can leave your website online but put your store into maintenance mode.

Maintenance mode lets search engines know that your site is currently down. It does this by returning the header code 503. That way, your site’s SEO won’t be affected by downtime.

It’s good practice to let users know that your site will be back soon, too. You can do this by putting a message on your maintenance page. You might want to add an email form so they can get an email alert once your site is back up.

Tip: When you update plugins, themes, or core WordPress, your site will automatically go into maintenance mode for a few seconds. If your site gets stuck in this mode, we have instructions on fixing the WordPress maintenance mode error.

How to Put Your Site in Maintenance Mode

To put your site in maintenance mode, you’ll need to install and activate the SeedProd plugin. You can follow our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin for more details.

Upon activation, you can head over to SeedProd » Landing Pages from your WordPress admin panel and then click the ‘Set up a Maintenance Mode Page’ button.

Next, you can select a template for your maintenance mode page.

SeedProd offers numerous templates to get started.

After that, you can customize the page in the SeedProd landing page builder.

Simply drag and drop blocks that you want to add to the template and edit the text, font, size, layout, color, and more.

You can now add an email marketing service under the ‘Connect’ tab.

Simply choose a service and follow the on-screen instructions to set it up.

Next, head over to the ‘Page Settings’ tab.

Simply click the Page Status toggle to Publish your maintenance mode page.

Once that’s done, go ahead and click the ‘Save’ button and exit the page builder.

When you are ready to put your site into maintenance mode, simply go to the SeedProd » Landing Pages in your WordPress admin area and then make the maintenance mode page ‘Active.’

Remember, maintenance mode should only be used when your site is down for maintenance. If you have not yet launched your site, use coming soon mode instead.

We hope this article helped you understand how to choose coming soon vs. maintenance mode. You may also want to check out our guide on the must have WordPress plugins for your website and our guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

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.

Are you wondering what to add in the footer of your WordPress site?

Footer is the area at the bottom of your website. It is often overlooked by website owners but can be used in significant ways to improve the user experience on your website.

In this checklist, we will share the top things that you should add to the footer of your WordPress website.

What is Footer in WordPress?

Footer is generally the area that appears below the content part of your website. It is a common website design feature used by millions of websites.

Footer may also refer to the footer code area. As you manage your website, third-party services like Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, and others may ask you to add code to the footer of your website.

This footer code is not visible on the screen but is used to add code snippets needed for website functionality and features.

Many beginners often find it difficult to choose what to add to the footer of their WordPress website. This is a missed opportunity that can help improve your website.

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the things to add to the footer of your WordPress site, and how to make it more useful.

Here are the things we will add. Feel free to jump to the items that interest you:

• Adding Links to The Footer of Your WordPress Site
• Adding Code in WordPress Footer
• Adding Privacy Policy Link in WordPress Footer
• Adding Copyright Date in WordPress Footer
• Remove Powered by Links from Footer in WordPress
• How to Add Instagram Feed in WordPress Footer
• Add a Sticky Footer Bar in WordPress
• Add Social Buttons in WordPress Footer
• Add a Phone Number in WordPress Footer
• Add a Contact Form in WordPress Footer

1. Adding Links to The Footer of Your WordPress Site

The first thing you would notice is that most websites add links to the important pages for their website in the footer area. This usually includes links to their about, contact, team members, press, and other pages.

All popular WordPress themes come with a footer widget area. This is what we will be using to add different widgets and elements to the footer of your website.

To add a set of links, you first need to go to the Appearance » Menus page and click on the ‘create new menu’ link.

After that, enter a name for your menu and then click on the ‘Create Menu’ button.

After that, select the items you want to add to the menu from the left column and click on the ‘Add to Menu’ button.

Once you are finished, click on the ‘Save Menu’ button to store your changes. For more help, see our article on how to create navigation menus in WordPress.

Now that you have created the menu, let’s display it in the footer area of your website. Simply go to the Appearance » Widgets page and add the Navigation Menu widget to your footer sidebar.

After that, select the footer menu you created earlier from the drop-down menu and click on the Save button.

You can now visit your website, and you will see the links displayed in the footer widget area of your website.

You can also easily add links to the footer of your website using a drag and drop page builder plugin like SeedProd. You can even create different footers that suit your individual WordPress pages.

For step by step instructions, check out our guide on how to edit the footer in WordPress.

2. Adding Code in WordPress Footer

As you manage your WordPress website, you may sometime need to add some code snippets to your WordPress website’s footer area.

One way to add them is by editing your theme files directly and pasting the code in the footer.php template. However, this is a bad approach as your code will disappear when you change the theme or update it.

The best way to add code in the WordPress footer is by using a code snippets plugin.

First, you need to install and activate the WPCode plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to go to Code Snippets » Header & Footer from your WordPress dashboard. From here you can paste your code snippet into the ‘Footer’ box.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your changes. For more details see our article on how to add header and footer code in WordPress.

3. Adding Privacy Policy Link in WordPress Footer

In order to comply with the GDPR and privacy-related laws in different countries, website owners are required to add a privacy policy page to their website and link to it from all other pages.

WordPress makes it super easy to create a privacy policy page and then you can add a link to it in your website footer.

First, you need to visit the Settings » Privacy page. You’ll notice that WordPress has already created a Privacy Policy page draft for you.

You can click on the ‘Use This Page’ button to use the default Privacy Policy template or create a new page.

Next, you need to edit that page like you would edit any other page in WordPress. You can add more information about your privacy policy as per your own requirements and publish that page.

Once you are finished, you can add the privacy policy page to your footer navigation menu (see above).

For more details, see our article on how to add a privacy policy page in WordPress.

4. Adding Copyright Date in WordPress Footer

You may also want to add a copyright date in the WordPress footer area. Now one way to do this is to simply add the text in your theme settings.

Many top WordPress themes allow you to easily add text in the footer area of your website. You can find the option by visiting the Appearance » Customize page and looking for footer settings in the left panel.

You can make the copyright symbol by adding your text in this format:

© Copyright 2016-2021. All rights reserved.

Don’t forget to publish your theme changes.

However, you will have to change the copyright notice each year to update the date. See our article on how to add dynamic copyright date in WordPress footer for a more elegant solution.

5. Remove Powered by Links from Footer in WordPress

Some free WordPress themes add a link back to the WordPress website or their own websites in the footer area of your site.

You are not required to keep these links on your website. As they are outgoing links and affect your website’s SEO score if you have them on every page of your website.

Now many WordPress themes make it super easy to remove those links. You can find the option in the Appearance » Customize page. Usually, it is located under the ‘Footer Options’ panel.

However, some themes may choose to hard-code the links in the theme files with no option to remove them manually. In that case, you can edit the footer.php file in your theme to remove those links.

6. How to Add Instagram Feed in WordPress Footer

If you run a fashion blog or want to promote your Instagram content then the footer of your website could be a nice place to display your recent Instagram photos.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the Smash Balloon Instagram Feed plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

After that, you need to visit Instagram Feed » Settings page and click on the ‘Connect an Instagram account’ button.

Follow the on-screen instructions to connect your Instagram account to your WordPress website. Once finished, you can go to the Appearance » Widgets page and add the Instagram Feed widget to your footer sidebar.

After that, you can visit your website to see your Instagram feed in the footer.

To learn more, see this guide on how to easily embed Instagram in WordPress.

Smash Balloon also has plugins to easily embed Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter feeds anywhere on your website.

7. Add a Sticky Footer Bar in WordPress

Want to display special offers or notifications in the footer area? A sticky floating footer bar allows you to display a banner that remains on the footer of the screen as users scroll your website.

For this, you’ll need OptinMonster. It is the best conversion optimization software in the market and allows you to convert abandoning website visitors into customers.

It also comes with powerful display rules which means you can show personalized custom messages to users in the footer of your website.

First, you need to sign up for an OptinMonster account.

After that, install and activate the OptinMonster plugin on your WordPress website.

Upon activation, you need to visit OptinMonster » Settings page and click on the ‘Connect an Existing Account’ button.

Once connected, you need to go to the OptinMonster » Campaigns page and click on the ‘Add New’ or ‘Create your first campaign’ button.

On the next screen, you need to choose ‘Floating Bar’ as your campaign type and then choose a template.

This will take you to OptinMonster’s drag and drop campaign builder. From here you can design your footer bar. Simply point and click on any element to edit it or drag and drop new blocks from the left column.

Once you are finished editing your campaign, simply switch to the Publish tab and make it live.

After that click on the close button to exit the campaign builder and return to your WordPress website. From here you need to set the campaign’s output status to ‘Published’.

You can now visit your website to see your floating footer bar campaign live in action.

OptinMonster can also be used to create a slide-in footer popup, add countdown timers, and targetted footer notifications to recover abandoned cart sales.

8. Add Social Buttons in WordPress Footer

Another good way to utilize the footer space in your WordPress theme is by adding social media icons there.

Simply, install and activate the Social Icons Widget plugin. Upon activation, go to the Appearance » Widgets page and add the Social Icons widget to your footer widget area.

The plugin offers a bunch of options to choose colors, icon styles, button types, and more. You can just add the social media icons and replace the URLs with your own social media profiles.

Don’t forget to click on the save button and visit your website to see it in action.

Bonus: Need more social engagement for your brand? Take a look at these best social media plugins for WordPress to grow your audience.

9. Add a Phone Number in WordPress Footer

If you offer customer support and sales via phone, then adding your phone number in the WordPress footer area would help users easily contact you.

For this, you’ll need a business phone number. We recommend using Nextiva, which is the best business phone service for small businesses.

This allows you to make cheaper calls and use advanced features like call forwarding, using the same number on multiple devices and handsets, and managing calls from any device with an internet connection.

Once you got your phone number, there are multiple ways to add it to your website. The easiest one is to install and activate the WP Call Button plugin. Upon activation, go to Settings » WP Call Button page to configure plugin settings.

First, set the ‘Call Now Button Status’ to active. After that, add your phone number and choose where you want to display the button. Once finished, don’t forget to click on the save changes button to store your settings.

Don’t want to add the button? See our guide on how to add clickable phone numbers in WordPress for more methods.

10. Add a Contact Form in WordPress Footer

The footer of your WordPress website doesn’t have to be a dead-end. Give your customers a chance to continue the conversation by filling out a contact form.

Simply install and activate the WPForms plugin. It is the best WordPress contact form plugin and allows you to easily add a contact form anywhere on your website including the footer.

Upon activation, go to WPForms » Add New page to create your contact form. Enter a name for your form and select the Simple Contact Form template.

Next, WPForms will load the form builder with the usual contact form fields. You can click on any field to edit, move or delete it. You can also add new fields from the left column.

Once you are done editing, click on the Save button to publish your form and exit the form builder.

Next, you need to visit the Appearance » Widgets page and add the WPForms widget to your footer area. After that, select the form you created earlier from the drop-down menu and click on the Save button.

You can now visit your website and see the contact form in your website footer area.

We hope this article helped you learn which things to add to your WordPress footer and make it more useful. You may also want to see our guide on how to improve your WordPress website speed and performance, and our expert pick of the best WordPress plugins to use on your site.

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.

Are you wondering what you should do before you change WordPress themes?

When switching your WordPress theme, there are few very important steps that you must take to ensure the process is smooth, and you don’t lose any important data. 

In this WordPress checklist, we’ll share the top things you must do before you change WordPress themes.

Switching a theme is an important decision that every website owner makes at least once every few years.

Of course you have to decide your reasoning of why you’re switching, and pick a theme that suits all your needs.

We have a list of best WordPress multi-purpose themes and best WordPress blog themes that you can check out if you’re looking for recommendations.

Once you have chosen the theme that you want to switch to, it’s important that you follow the checklist below to ensure that you don’t lose any content or data during the process.

1. Make Note of Any WordPress Theme Customizations

Some WordPress website owners will customize their WordPress themes by adding code snippets directly to their theme files. Code snippets can be a great way to add new features to your website that aren’t part of the stock theme.

But, if you’re adding those snippets directly to your theme files, it can be easy to lose track of them.

If you or a web developer made these changes, then make sure you go through your current theme files and note all of the additional code that’s been added. 

For adding code snippets in the future, we always recommend to use a site-specific plugin or a code snippets plugin. This way, you can keep those snippets even if you change themes later. For more details, see our beginner’s guide on pasting snippets from the web into WordPress.

2. Get Current WordPress Theme Performance Metrics 

Before changing your theme, you should check your current website’s loading speed and performance. This lets you compare any differences in the page load time after you switch themes.

Since WordPress speed and performance plays an important role in user experience and WordPress SEO, you need to ensure the new theme is faster than what you’re using now. 

You can easily check your current website speed metrics using a WordPress speed testing tool such as IsItWP’s free website speed testing tool.

For more details, see our guide on how to run a website speed test.

3. Make Note of Current Theme Sidebars and Widget Areas

Sidebars are used for adding different widgets to your website, like email newsletter subscription forms, social media buttons, popular posts, and more.

Since every theme has different widget areas, your widgets may unexpectedly move or disappear from your site if you switch themes.

That’s why it’s important to make a note of what widgets you’re using in your WordPress sidebars and any other widget areas of your website before you change themes. Then you can easily replicate them after switching.

If you’ve added any custom code or shortcodes, then make sure to copy this code and save it somewhere safe so that you can use it with your new theme. 

4. Copy Existing WordPress Tracking Codes

Many users will add analytics tracking code directly to their theme files. Some WordPress themes also allow you to add tracking codes directly into your theme options panel.

It’s a common mistake to overlook these important tracking codes. 

You need to make sure you copy all of your website tracking codes you’re using for analytics, advertising, and more, so you can add them to your new website. 

If you want to make it easy on yourself, then we recommend using a plugin like MonsterInsights to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

By using MonsterInsights, you can rest assured there will be no interruptions to your analytics or lost data. You’ll also unlock bonus tracking like link clicks and button click tracking, WordPress category and tag analytics, author tracking, and much more.

For all other tracking codes, you can use the Insert Headers and Footers plugin. For more details, see our guide on how to add header and footer code in WordPress.

5. Back Up Your Current WordPress Website

It’s always a good idea to back up your website on a regular basis. Before changing your theme, you should completely back up your posts, pages, plugins, media, and databases.

The easiest way to do this is by using a WordPress backup plugin to create a backup of your entire site. For more details, see our guide on how to backup your WordPress site with UpdraftPlus.

This will help ensure you can easily recover your website if anything goes wrong when switching themes. 

6. Put Your WordPress Site Into Maintenance Mode

When making changes to your site, it’s always a good practice to put your website into maintenance mode. Maintenance mode lets you display a user friendly notice to your visitors.

This helps prevent your visitors from seeing your website when it’s half-finished or under construction.

To do this, we recommend using the SeedProd plugin. It’s the best drag and drop WordPress page builder used by over 1 million websites.

It lets you easily create custom maintenance mode pages, landing pages, coming soon pages, 404 pages, and more. 

For more details, see our guide on how to put your WordPress site in maintenance mode.

7. Test All Functionality and Installed WordPress Plugins

Once you have a new WordPress theme activated, you need to ensure you have the same functionality as before and that all of your old plugins work with your new theme.

You can start by adding back the code snippets that you copied from your old WordPress theme files. For more details, see our beginner’s guide to pasting code snippets into WordPress.

Then, spend some time using the features of your site that are powered by WordPress plugins. If you’re experiencing any errors at this time, see our beginner’s guide to troubleshooting WordPress errors.

8. Test New WordPress Theme Across Browsers and Devices

Cross-browser testing will help you make sure your new website looks good on different browsers, screen sizes, operating systems, and mobile devices.

Most of your visitors will probably use Google Chrome to visit your WordPress blog. However, other web browsers like Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Safari, and more are still used by hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

If your new website doesn’t work right on one of those browsers, then you’re missing out on visitors and traffic. 

Luckily, you can use all kinds of cross-browser testing tools to see how your website looks across different browsers and devices.

For more details, see our guide on how to test a WordPress site in different browsers.

9. Delete WordPress Plugins You No Longer Need

Some WordPress themes will pre-install plugins when you install the theme. Some of these may be useful, but other times you won’t need them.

Simply go to Plugins » Installed Plugins to see if your theme has added any new plugins.

Now is also a good time to go through your entire plugin list to see if any plugins are worth deleting. 

If you’re looking for high quality plugins to use with your new theme, then see our picks of the must have WordPress plugins. 

10. Let Your Users Know Your New Website is Live

Once you’re ready to make your new WordPress theme live, you can turn off maintenance mode.

You should also get in touch with your readers to tell them about your new website. This will prepare your audience so that they’re not confused by any big design changes, and it will also help to keep your subscribers engaged and returning to your site to see the new design.

Here’s an example post we shared on Facebook about our new website redesign.

We recommend notifying your audience via your email newsletter, social media, and push notifications.

If you’re looking for more ways to promote your site, then see our guide on how to share your blog posts with readers.

11. Test Loading Speeds for Your New WordPress Theme

Once your new theme is live and you’ve gone through the steps above, it’s time to do another speed test. Ideally, your new website will be faster and get better scores in your speed test.

To do this, simply use the same website speed tool you used earlier and compare the results. 

If the new theme is slower than your old theme, then make sure you run multiple tests, test from different areas, and check to see if you have any caching or firewall settings that could be causing the dip. 

12. Monitor Your WordPress Website Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who land on your website and leave without continuing to a second page. A high bounce rate means that you didn’t convince your visitor to stay on your site long enough to take action.

After you switch themes, it’s important to monitor your bounce rate. Some themes are simply friendlier at helping visitors navigate around your site.

If your bounce rate has gone up since switching theme, then you’ll want to work to lower it. You can do this by improving your navigation menus, adding more internal links, adding a popular posts widget, and more.

For more details, see our guide on how to increase pageviews and reduce bounce rate in WordPress. 

13. Listen to Reader Feedback to Improve Your WordPress Website

Finally, it’s important you listen to reader feedback after you switch to a new theme. Some readers may love or hate certain parts of your design. 

You don’t have to listen to every reader and make the changes they suggest. But, if there’s a group of readers who are experiencing the same issue, then it’s probably worth looking into.

You can collect visitor feedback by adding a contact form to your website, or running a survey asking for reader feedback on your new design.

The easiest way to do this is by using WPForms. It’s the best WordPress survey plugin in the market used by over 5 million websites. 

It lets you easily create engaging survey forms with the drag and drop builder.

Plus, the reporting section automatically creates beautiful reports to help analyze your results. 

For more details, see our guide on how to create a survey in WordPress.

We hope this article helped you learn exactly what you should do before switching WordPress themes. You may also want to see our guide on how to choose the best WordPress hosting and our expert picks of the best AI chatbot software for your website.

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.