WordPress: Tweet Your Way to Massive Profits

One of the best ways to increase your sales and push traffic to your site is social media. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, social media simply applies to all of those networking, reblogging, and linking sites that people use to share content and stay connected. Consider this: In October of 2009, Twitter alone had over 19 million visitors. Facebook has added 52 million users in just the last 12 months. If you’re not currently engaging that audience, you’re missing thousands of potential sales. In a recent survey about last holiday season’s Black Friday sales, 28% of consumers claimed that social media influenced their purchases.

Add Social Media To Your WordPress:

So how do you take advantage of this audience and translate it into sales? If you’ve ever visited a blog, and since you’re reading this we’re guessing that you have, you’ve probably noticed quite a few featuring a slew of icons or a “Share This!” button. These buttons allow readers to recommend your posts to sites like Reddit and Digg, or share them directly to their Facebook and Twitter pages.

This is free advertising for you – if someone shares one of your posts on their Facebook, you are gaining visibility to their entire network of friends for absolutely no investment. The best part? These buttons are easy to implement. Use a WordPress plug-in such as “Share This,” “Sociable,” or “Notable” to add these buttons with minimal effort and watch the traffic roll in.

Participate In The Community:

Sharing things to Digg, writing guest posts for other bloggers, and commenting on sites such as Technorati and Reddit are great opportunities to link back to your blog and generate additional traffic. Here’s a rundown on the big guns:

Digg – Readers recommend posts and vote on them to increase their popularity.
Facebook – Members share your content with a built-in network of friends.
Twitter – Users link your posts which can then be re-linked by their followers.
Technorati – Blog community with real-time searching and popularity index.
StumbleUpon – Site that uses personal interests to recommend unexplored topics.
Reddit – Similar to Digg with user-generated links and a popularity index.

It’s also a very good idea to create a company Facebook and Twitter. As people visit your site and add themselves to your networking pages, your repeat-customer base (think of it as an opt-in mailing list) will grow, at zero cost.

Never underestimate the power of social media in building steady traffic and introducing your site to a broader audience. If you make it easy for people to share your blog with their friends, you will notice an immediate improvement in your traffic. The more customers see your company as a part of their lives, the more time and money they will be willing to put into it.

WordPress Payment Gateways: Use The Best to Increase Sales

The internet is a dangerous place for personal information, and when you look at ecommerce sales it shows. A recent survey indicated that nearly 32% of purchases are abandoned due to customers being uncomfortable with the site, and an even higher amount (41%) are lost because the checkout process is too long. However, if you use a website builder like WordPress to manage your content, you can utilize the convenience and good name of industry leaders to push your customers through the final process.

Payment gateways allow your customers to make purchases on your site. Here are the three most recognizable gateways currently available to WordPress users:

PayPal

Paypal is internationally recognized as the industry leader in payment. Most of your customers probably already have a PayPal account, so if you use it as a gateway you’re one step ahead. Money through PayPal takes about 3-4 days to go from purchase to your bank. Install the plug-in “Are Paypal” and your customers can use their accounts to buy anything you wish to sell, instantly.

Google Checkout

Though a relative newcomer to the scene, Google Checkout is a great payment option for your customers. People appreciate the convenience of not having to re-register for every site they visit, and with Google Checkout they can make purchases just by staying logged in to their Google accounts. The all-in-one “WordPress E-Commerce Plugin” is Google Checkout compatible, so it’s easy to implement for the novice website builder.

Authorize.net

The name might not be as familiar as Google or PayPal, but Authorize.net has been a powerhouse in e-commerce payment processing for some time. Essentially, Authorize.net allows you to accept credit card or electronic check payments directly from your customers, without the need for a PayPal or Google account. They also offer free customer support (for you), one of the fastest payouts in the business (1-2 days), and advanced fraud protection. As with Google Checkout, the “WordPress E-Commerce Plugin” suite will allow you to use this payment gateway.

With convienience and name recognition on your side, you will be far ahead of the curve when it comes time for you customers to make a purchase. Avoid some of the most common causes of abandoned shopping carts and lost sales by using these simple plug-ins and watch the positive impact it has on your sales.

Finally, integrating one of these payment gateways into your WordPress is a strong step towards monetizing your WordPress and impressing your customers, but we recommend you make a purchase through one of these gateways or any plug-in you use to ensure the customer-side experience is streamlined.

Remember that your customers aren’t concerned with how easy something is for you. If they find your payment options to be unwieldy or inconvenient, they’re likely to take their business elsewhere, so make sure you’re choosing the best tool for your customers and your business alike.

Spam is Gross: Control Your Comments in WordPress

Having a popular blog can often be a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you’re fortunate enough to have hundreds, maybe thousands of readers that hang on your every word. On the other hand, you are a prime target for exploitive and damaging web techniques such as comment spam. Luckily, there are plenty of ways for a website builder to deal with and prevent the spam that all WordPress blogs will eventually face.

What is Spam?

Put simply, spam is any comment on a blog post that has no value to the discussion. While a final call on what exactly this constitutes is up to you, most bloggers would agree that link spamming (where a robot posts dozens of links in your comment section) is their main concern. People set up these link spamming systems to improve their page rankings with the major search engines and don’t really care if they have a negative impact on your blog or your readers.

What Can I Do?

There are several ways to battle spam when using WordPress as your website builder. First and foremost, WordPress has quite a robust set of tools built right in that can help you deal with spammers. Changing the number of links allowed in a post, setting a filter for spam words, blacklisting certain words from your comments, and restricting your comments to just registered users are all a default part of every WordPress download and should allow you a great deal of control over spam.

Besides that, WordPress also comes with the Askimet Comment Spam Fighter software. This particular tool uses complex algorithms and user-modified inputs to learn which comments on your blog are spam, and which are not. What’s really amazing about Askimet is that it can adapt to new threats as spammers change their tactics, so as long as you pay attention to your comments section you should be able to keep a tight reign on spam.

When using Askimet it is very important that you periodically check in on your Askimet Panel to ensure that no false positives are being trapped in the net. Marking non-spam comments off in the panel will help the software to do a better job of discerning between legitimate and illegitimate comments and will ensure your readers are able to participate in your blog without worry of having their comments spam-blocked.

Spam comments and bad links can ruin the appeal and personality of a good blog. If you’re interested in building a successful WordPress blog with many regular readers, protect them from spam by applying all of the techniques listed in this article. Additionally, provide your readers with a way to get in touch with you should they have their comments block or pick up on some spam that you might have missed. As long as you stop spam early or completely, you shouldn’t have a major issue keeping it under control.

Hacked! Is Your WordPress Blog Vulnerable to Attack?

In September of 2009, many users of the website builder WordPress pulled up their blogs to find a horrible sight: it wasn’t there. Due to vulnerabilities in WordPress, their blogs had been hacked, dismantled, and in some cases permanently damaged. Imagine losing all of your data. Your layout and theme. Your advertisements. And, worst of all, your revenue for the period of time it takes you to get everything working again.

If you value your WordPress site, here are some ways to protect your blog, and thus, your money:

Protect Your Login

There are a couple of things you can do right off the bat that make your WordPress less vulnerable to attack. Install the “Chap Secure Login” plug-in to encrypt your login and prevent the bad guys from sniffing it out of a public network. Additionally, install a plug-in like “Login Lockdown” that will track your login attempts from different IPs; this will prevent third party users from brute-forcing your password.

All WordPress blogs have “admin” as the default username, which is a glaring security hole in every site that uses this as a website builder. Create a new user account and assign that user the role of administrator. Log in with that account, then delete the old “admin” account (make sure to click “attribute all posts and links to” first!). This will close the backdoor on your blog.

Be sure to use a great password too! We recommend one or two capital letters, at least one number, and a symbol such as an exclamation point or percent sign. And stay away from common password subjects like pet names or birthdays – people can usually figure these out.

Protect Your Content

Even if you’re certain you have the most secure WordPress blog on the planet, there’s always a chance of unauthorized access. Install the “WP Database Backup” plug-in and make sure it backs up all of your data often, just in case. Then protect your plug-ins from prying eyes by creating a regular text file named “index.html” and uploading it to your “/wp-content/plugins” folder. This will prevent people from seeing the plug-ins your blog is currently running and attempting to exploit any security vulnerabilities they may have.

Also, it is imperative that you put the lockdown on your admin folder. This folder contains tons of important information and can cause a great deal of trouble for your blog if compromised. The “AskApache Password Protect” plug-in will allow you to password protect the folder and keep unwanted guests where they belong (out).

While nothing that exists on the internet is 100% safe, it is far easier to prevent someone from hacking your WordPress blog than it is to clean up the mess a hacker leaves behind. Follow safe browsing practices, use great security plugins, and regularly scan your computer for viruses, trojans, and other malware to ensure you are not potentially giving up all of your personal information to a keylogger. Your WordPress blog is a valuable asset, so be sure to treat it like one!

5 Minute Ecommerce Website Builder with WordPress

Believe it or not, creating an ecommerce website to sell products online is such a simple process, you can complete it in less than 5 minutes. Whatever you have to sell, from eBooks to music, clothes to garden sheds, adding products that your readers can buy is an excellent way to increase your income stream and make a healthy income from your website.

WordPress is the ideal ecommerce website builder. It’s simple to install, easy to customize and perfect for selling your products. We’ve put together a step by step guide on how to create an ecommerce website in less than 5 minutes, which means you could be making extra money by the end of the day!

1. Download Your Ecommerce Website Builder

Once you’ve decided on a hosting company, you’ll need to download WordPress as your free website builder program. Once you’ve done this you’ll have your blank website, which you can begin customizing to suit your ecommerce needs.

2. Choose an Ecommerce theme

The really great thing about WordPress is that there are so many themes to choose from, which basically give you the look and design of your website, to which you can add images and content. Here are three ecommerce themes, which are all available to download through our themes page:

Crafty Cart: designed to be used alongside the WP e-commerce plug in, which we will be discussing in just a moment. This is a free theme with a fresh retro style, ideal for t-shirts, handmade items and vintage wear.
Ecommerce Theme: this is a premium theme, costing $79.95 for multiple websites. It’s really easy to customize, is search engine optimized and ideal for selling any kind of products online, from eBooks to photos, music to gadgets.
The Shopping: this is another free ecommerce theme, ideal for combining product sales alongside a blog. It’s bright, colorful and has an attractive header with a simple style, perfect for selling clothes, shoes, handbags and designer gear.

Once you’ve chosen your theme, simply download it to your WordPress program. For more information on how to do this, this article has everything you need to know about How to Install a WordPress Theme.

3. Install the WP e-Commerce Plug in

The WP E-commerce plug in is the perfect tool for any website wanting to sell products. It gives you everything you’ll need and is completely free to download from our resources page. It provides a one page checkout, a shopping cart and easy to customize product pages. You can also add premium widgets to suit various ecommerce styles and for extra control over customization.

To install the plug in, first log into the admin page of your WordPress website. The address for this is http://yourdomainname/wp-admin. On the dashboard go to the plug in section, where you can install new plug ins. Choose the ecommerce plug in and once installed you’ll see a new drop down menu on your side bar, saying e-commerce.

4. Setting your WP e-commerce Plug In

This plug in gives you so many options for customizing your products pages and how your customers can pay. Here are some of the most important setting you can adapt to suit your needs, which you can access by clicking on e-commerce in your dashboard:

In the settings page, ensure you choose your country, the currency you wish to trade in and whether you want to add tax to your products.
Payment Options: you can choose from PayPal, Google Checkout, PayPal-Express, Chronopay or Manual Payment. The final choice gives your customers the option to make an order, then phone you to give their credit card details or send a cheque in the post.
Presentation Settings: choose which product group you’d like to display on your main product page by default, or you can show all products. You can also decide on your Cart Location, which can be inserted anywhere on the page or as a widget on the sidebar. By clicking Show Breadcrumbs, this allows readers to navigate through product subcategories, which can be very useful if you have a lot of products for sale.
Admin Settings: if you’re selling digital items, such as eBooks or music files, you can limit the number of times a customer can download the file once they’ve purchased it. This could be just once, or any number of times. It’s a good idea to lock the download to a particular IP address, to prevent customers from sharing the download with other people.

5. Display Your Products

The final stage is to add your products, by entering the Products category on the dashboard. You need to set the name, price, description, assign to a category and add an image. Once completed your product is on your website and ready for your customers and readers to buy.

That’s it, your ecommerce website builder is now complete and it’s only taken you a matter of minutes! Now all you need to do is drive some quality traffic to your site who’ll be interested in what you have to sell. This article has 5 Secrets to Ecommerce Success using Social Media that any ecommerce website builder will find invaluable.

5 Secrets to Writing Engaging Content with High Search Engine Ranking

One of the most difficult things a blogger and website builder has to achieve is the balancing act between creating engaging content that’s also optimized for search engine ranking. If you don’t have great content, you’ll never develop a loyal readership who are likely to promote you to their network of social media friends. But if you fail to follow the basic SEO principles, people may never find your website in the first place because you won’t rank in search engine results pages.

It’s a tricky balancing act and anyone who’s decided I want to build my own website will know it can take months of practice and tweaking before you get the balance right. So that’s why we want to save you the headache of trial and error and give you 5 secrets to writing engaging content with high search engine ranking.

1. Create Value for Your Visitors

Before you even think about optimizing your content you need to ensure you’re writing engaging posts that your readers simply can’t live without. Whatever niche you’re targeting, give them something of real value they won’t find elsewhere.

For example, if you’re an expert in tax accounting, why not give your readers top tips on how to save thousands on their tax bill. Or you might be good at writing in a satirical style, putting a different slant on the news that gives your readers their daily dose of humor. Or finally you might have the latest information on gadgets that tech enthusiasts would be dying to read. These ideas would give real value to your website visitors and sure to bring them back time and again.

Creating content your readers value is vital for ensuring you build external links to your website. People will only want to share your content if it will also add value to their friends and colleagues. When visitors share your content through their social media networks, these external links also help to boost your search engine ranking success. For more information, this article has 10 Secrets to Linkbaiting and Why Your Blog Depends on it.

2. Keyword Density

The frequency of your keywords and phrases is also important. If you’ve decided I want to build my own website, you’ll need to practice incorporating your keywords naturally into your content. One of the biggest mistakes new bloggers make is adding too many keywords that stick out from the text and interrupt the flow and reader enjoyment.

When people use the internet, searching for something is still the most common reason for being online, and search engines recognize this. That’s why you need to spoon feed them and give them exactly what they’re looking for. When it comes to keywords, the density should be between 3 and 5%, which roughly means around 4 times per 500 words. Anything over 5.5% can reduce your ranking dramatically as search engines exclude your site for overuse of keywords. They believe your content may be weak and purely a string of keywords to try to fool the search engines.

3. Keyword Placement

Anyone who has the experience to say, “I can build my own website” will know there really aren’t any hard and fast rules to SEO. In fact, the world of SEO is constantly changing and keyword placement is no exception. However there are a few simple tried and tested guidelines you can follow to help improve your search engine ranking:

The main keyword phrase should appear in the title and the first sentence of the opening paragraph
Add your keyword phrase to at least one subheading
Finally add your keyword phrase to the last paragraph

And don’t forget, above all make sure your content still has a natural flow and is engaging to your readers. There’s no point optimizing bad content!

4. Always Use Your Keywords In The Title Tag

The title tag is the headline that will be displayed on the search engine results page. It has two very important functions. First, because this is what searchers will see on the results page you need to make sure it entices them to click on your site and not others.

You also need to include your keyword phrase in your title, preferably near the beginning, as search engines use the title as part of the ranking process. They want searchers to see clearly that they’re providing relevant results, so the keyword should always be in the page title.

5. Learn to Build My Own Website Using Audience Language

You may be an authority in your field but you still need to do your keyword research to find out the type of phrases your audience actually use to search for your content. There are a number of free tools you can use, such as Google’s free Keyword Tool , which allows you to search for keywords in any field. Make sure you choose keyword phrases that are easy to spell, simple and have a good number of searches, without throwing yourself into the most competitive keywords on the internet .

When it comes to search engine optimization and the use of keywords to boost your search engine ranking, once again it’s important to remember that content is king. There’s no point optimizing poor content, because you simply won’t keep your readers and encourage anyone to create links to your website. This article gives you more ideas on How To Engage Your Readers With Compelling Content.

5 Ecommerce Website Builder Plugins Reviewed

WordPress is the perfect ecommerce website builder, making it possible for anyone with absolutely no experience of creating a website to get their products on sale online in just a matter of minutes. Selling products through your blog or website is one of the best ways to boost your income stream, whether it’s eBooks or photographs, vintage clothes or expert advice.

All you’ll need to make your site a commercial success is one of the ecommerce website builder plugins. These handy pieces of software have been downloaded by thousands of people to make the job of selling online a breeze. But which one should you choose? To save you the hassle of searching through the hundreds of ecommerce plugins, here’s a review of five of the best.

1. WP e-commerce: The Complete Commercial Website Package In One

This plugin is designed with both functionality and aesthetics in mind, giving you an elegant ecommerce site with full shopping cart software. It’s ideal for selling your products, services or subscription fees online. Over half a million people have now downloaded this plugin and its success is probably due to the fact it’s a complete website builder package ideal for ecommerce. It’s packed with features, including:

Easy to use design templates you can customize to suit your needs
Ability to run promotions, newsletters and add coupon codes
Automatic online marketing tools – such as built in search engine optimization, shopping search engines, Google Base and Facebook Marketplace submission

WP e-commerce works with all WordPress themes, or you have the option to choose one of the WP e-commerce themes. There are also premium upgrades you can purchase from as little as $10, such as the MP3 Audio Player or the Next Gen Gallery Buy Now Buttons, which turn your gallery into a shopping cart.

2. eShop: Sell Your Expertise Online

Another free plugin which allows you to create products from your pages and posts, which is ideal if you’re an expert in your field with knowledge that people will pay for. It gives you a wide variety of payment options, has various methods for listing products, a variety of shopping options and automatic email after a successful purchase. This plugin is compatible with WordPress 2.9 and above.

3. WP Live-Shopping: Highlight Your Latest Promotions

Keep your readers up to date with all your current shopping offers and latest promotions with one simple widget that goes on your sidebar. You can customize the appearance of the widget to suit your site’s style, allowing it to blend seamlessly with your ecommerce website.

This is a really useful piece of software to promote your products. All you’ll need to do before you use it is set up a Live account, which is free and easy to do.

4. Quick Shop: Make Shopping a Breeze For Your Website Customers

If you have sidebar widgets installed in your website builder for ecommerce, this plugin is the perfect addition to enhance your customers’ shopping experience. It places a widget on the sidebar to show buyers what they have in their cart, which they can change at any time.

It also makes the job of building an ecommerce website much simpler by adding a TinyMCE button to use for quickly and easily adding products to any page or post on your site. You can also create various product options in a drop down menu and it comes with a checkout page to complement the shopping cart.

5. WP Auctions: Make Buying from Your Website an Interactive and Fun Experience

Bring the commercial side of your website to life with this auctions plugin for WordPress. It costs just $35 and allows you to host auctions on your blog for anything you wish to sell. There are no auction fees or commissions to pay, just a one off fee for the plugin.

The software presents your auctions in an elegant pop up or you can have them featured within a page or post. Payment can be made through PayPal and you can also offer items for “Buy Now.” If you want an innovative way to sell your goods, that makes your customers’ experience more fun and interactive, then this is the plugin for you.

Don’t forget that all these plugins are available to download from our resources and plugins page. The sooner you get building your ecommerce site, the quicker you can start making money from your products and building a profitable website business.

The 15 Minute Free Restaurant Website Builder

Restaurant websites have one of the highest conversion rates, with around 10% of visitors making a booking before they leave. That’s because the most common method of searching for a place to eat is using the internet. If you’re a restaurant owner or manager, these are potential customers you simply cannot afford to miss out on and you need to create an online presence.

If you’re in the restaurant business, you probably have very little experience of building a website. Don’t worry! Using WordPress it’s so simple, you can make a restaurant website in 15 minutes. Here’s how in 7 simple steps:

1. Decide on a Hosting Company for Your Restaurant Website

The first thing you need to do is choose a company to host your website. This can cost from as little as $6.95 per month. Just make sure that you select a good quality company you can trust to guarantee the reliability of your service. The last thing you want is your website going offline as your customers try to find you. This article has plenty of guidance on Which Web Host to Choose.

2. Register Your Restaurant Website Domain Name

Next you’ll need to select a domain name, which is basically the address of your website. When it comes to restaurants, it’s probably best to use the name of your restaurant as your website address. For example, if your restaurant was called Sizzler Steak House you could create the domain name: http://www.sizzlersteakhouse.com.

You just need to check whether your chosen domain is still available, and this domain name checker will do this for you. Then all you need to do is register your name, which your hosting company should be able to do.

3. Download your Free Restaurant Website Builder

The most difficult stage of learning to make a restaurant website in 15 minutes is now complete. Now comes the fun part… designing and building your website.

The next step is to download your free website builder. WordPress is the ideal platform for creating your restaurant website and is extremely easy to use, customize to suit your needs and best of all, it’s completely free. Millions of people are using it worldwide to create websites that look like they’re built by professionals. As soon as you’ve downloaded WordPress, you now have your blank website template to begin customizing to suit your needs.

4. Choose a Restaurant Theme

The really great thing about WordPress is that there are hundreds of free and premium themes available, which you can use to create the look, style and layout of your website. All the program writing and complicated tasks are done for you. Simply download your favorite theme to your WordPress website builder. For more guidance on how to do this, this article tells you How to Install a WordPress Theme.

There are many different restaurant themes to choose from. Here are three of the best, all of which are available to download through our WordPress themes page:

Food Plates: this free theme is ideal for any restaurant or café, with a simple and professional style that will let the images of your food do the talking. Fully widget ready, it comes with RSS feed buttons to spread the word about your great food, as well as pages in the header and a left side bar.
Be a Gourmet: for a more fun and upbeat tone, this free WordPress restaurant theme comes with a search box, Recent Posts, Recent Comments and Welcome Text in the sidebar, social bookmarking buttons and sidebars on the left and right.
Delicious: this is a premium restaurant theme, ideal for any kind of food establishment. Although it costs $69 for a single license, $149 for multiple use, it’s worth the spend because it comes with four developed widgets, custom fields for images and four different page templates. Ideal for a restaurant website with a blog attached.

5. Upload A Gallery of Delicious Food Photos to Your Website

The saying goes that people eat with their eyes, so it’s vital to place some good quality photos of your delicious food on your website. You should also include some photos of the dining and bar area, to show people the style and ambiance of the place.

To really make your photos stand out and tantalize the taste buds, a slideshow is a good idea. Featured Content Gallery is a really great plugin that creates an automated, fully rotating slideshow you can customize to place on any page, including the front page.

Simply download the plugin from our resources page, go to the admin section of your WordPress site (which is http://yourdomainname.wp-admin), click on the plugin section where you can install new plugins. Once downloaded you’ll see the Featured Content Gallery on your dashboard, which you can customize to suit your needs. For more ideas on how to add slideshows to your new restaurant website, this article has plenty of ideas.

6. Add a Table Booking Plugin

There are so many plugins you can use to add booking calendars and online reservation to your new website. To save you time, so that you can make a website for your restaurant in under 15 minutes we’ve selected one of the most popular with caterers worldwide. The WebReserv Embedded Booking Calendar provides your customers with the facility to easily check availability and reserve a table online. As soon as they’ve made a reservation they will receive a confirmation email, which you will also receive so that you can make the reservation. Upfront payment can also be secured.

7. Spreading the Word About Your Great Food

If you are planning to make a restaurant website in just 15 minutes, you’ll still have time to do a bit of online promotion. One of the easiest ways to spread the word about your fabulous dining experience is using social bookmarking websites, such as Facebook and Twitter.

The first step to social promotion is to get your customers to spread the word for you. By adding the Sociable plugin, your website visitors can easily share news about your great food with all their social bookmarking friends. A simple icon is placed at the end of each page, post and photo, so that visitors can easily share the content with their friends. This is ideal if you have a special offer running with discount coupons, which your customers can help you promote through social bookmarking sites.

So in just 15 minutes you have been able to make a top class restaurant website that gives your customers the ability to find you online, see photos of your great food, place an online order, pay in advance and tell all their friends about the wonderful experience they had!

Top 5 Best Business Website Builder Plugins

When it comes to plugins, less is definitely more. If you install too many you’re cluttering up your website, which could compromise its speed, efficiency, security and upward compatibility. That’s why you need to ensure you’re choosing the best plugins available that add functionality and performance to your website as a whole.

So that you don’t have to trawl through the hundreds of business plugins available, we’ve put together a list of the Top 5 Best Business Website Builder plugins. These innovative and functional plugins will ensure you get the most from your business blogging efforts, with a professional finish that projects the kind of image your company deserves. These top 5 plugins (which are all available to download from our resources page) will complement each other and ensure your business website builder is performing to the best of its ability. What that means for you is a better customer experience, improved conversion rate and in turn more sales and income for you and your company.

1. Gravity Forms

Although this is a premium plugin, you get a lot for the one off $39 fee per single site, making it one of the best business website builder plugins available. It allows you to easily create, edit and manage contact forms without the need to understand any programming language. If you want your potential customers to be able to contact you through your website, this plugin will be great for your business.

2. Google Analytics

Any successful business knows that the key to becoming a profitable organization is to monitor your performance so that you can improve. This analytics plugin is ideal for any business website, with so many features to show you what you’re doing well and where areas for improvement. These include:

The ability to track sales and conversion rates
Ecommerce reporting – trace transactions to campaigns and keywords and identify your best revenue sources
Create customized reports to share with your entire organization

3. WP-DB Backup

Downloaded by over half a million website builders, this is another great business plugin. In light of recent high profile blog hacks where website owners found their entire content had disappeared overnight, you need to ensure you backup your website regularly and keep a copy of your content.

This plugin allows you to easily backup your core WordPress database, which is where all your posts, pages, links, comments and admin settings are stored. Simply download the plugin, click on the Manage menu in your admin section, and then click Backup. You can then select how you’d like the database to be delivered, either to your server, your computer or by email. As soon as you click Backup again, your website has been saved. Repeat this process on a regular basis, preferably once per week if you’re adding a lot of new content.

4. WP e-commerce

This is the favorite plugin of professional ecommerce website builders because it offers a complete package. Designed with both functionality and aesthetics in mind, it gives you a full shopping cart service ideal for selling any type of product online. Some of its best features include:

Integration with a variety of payment options, including Google Checkout, PayPal and Payment Express
Built in marketing tools, such as email campaigns, submission to Facebook Marketplace and Google Base
Built in shipping rate calculators
Automatic SEO to improve your search engine rankings
The option to upgrade and extend to suit your needs, with a variety of compatible plugins to customize the plugin to suit your needs

5. I Love Social Bookmarking

Any business that’s serious about creating an online presence must join in the social networking revolution. It’s one of the most effective advertising and promotional tools around and billions of people worldwide use these sites to discuss their favorite products, ideas and services.

One of the best business plugins a website builder can add to their site is I Love Social Bookmarking. It’s simple, clutter free yet visually impressive. It provides a drop down menu of the most popular social sites around. All your visitors have to do is choose their favorite, such as Facebook or Twitter, to share your content, news about your latest products or special promotional deals with their networks of friends. This is one of the best ways to quickly spread the word about your products and business around the internet.

If you want to get the best out of your business website builder, these are the top essential plugins you need to install. Don’t forget they’re all available to download now through our resources page.

Be A Gourmet Restaurant Theme

For a more fun and upbeat tone, this free WordPress restaurant theme comes with a search box, Recent Posts, Recent Comments and Welcome Text in the sidebar, social bookmarking buttons and sidebars on the left and right.