Pete Hudson: Visual WordPress

For several years Pete Hudson was our go-to-guy for wordpress and website design. He not only is an expert in website development, he “gets” marketing as well. This is a rare combination.

In this presentation he shows us what good design looks like and offers some tools to use to put up good looking websites fast that convert well.

Some of the areas he covers:

• The use of fonts…as logos as well as for headlines and content
• His favorite themes for websites and membership sites
• How to use color to express the mood of your site, and how to find complementary colors easily
• Nuts and bolts of good design…font size, alignment, use of white space, script, images,
• and much more…

Pete knows his stuff and is able to explain it in a manner that even the most non-techie among us will understand. But, there is a lot of great information for those more sophisticated, as well.

NOTE: We no longer recommend the use of Headway for a site. They have stopped providing support. We use Optimize Press and Divi for our sites.

Up to 5:00: Intro, who he is

5:00 Theory of constraints (Rich Shefren)

Everyone has a major constraint that is holding them back.

What is your major constraint?

Identify and eliminate the major constraint.

6:40 Plug for attending the last day

7:25: He doesn’t know a lot about design or coding

10:40: He will talk about basic design and some tools that they can use to create and effective site without knowing design or coding

Version 1: Get it up and start closing sales.

12:40: He mentions Xsite pro briefly (doesn’t offer a recommendation for it)

13:46 First impressions are important and are lasting.

Famous study: What is most important in communication? What we say is 7%, voice quality 38%, what we look like 55%

20:35 He recommends envato.com for logo design, videos, music, teplates, web design

21:39: Typography: use 1 or 2 fonts

recommends Arial, Georgia, Verdana

Start with one font and build from there. Google “complementary font ______ “(font type)

• Use hard left alignments
• 130% – 140% line height so the lines are not too close together
• Don’t use all caps for more than 3-4 words
• Use script fonts only for logos. He mentions Lobster, Jenna Sue(handwriting font)
• Use white space. Don’t lump everything together
• Create a swipe file for design (look at competition to see what they do, get ideas from non-local company), sites like Apple, Mashable, FastCompany are also good for design swipes.
• Use Shadows, Gradients, Subtle reflections, thin lines

26:24: He puts up a screen showing the opt in page for “Marketing Rebel Report” and discusses the elements of design

Pre head, Headline should be centered. Everything else is left-aligned

Headline font (30-40 pt): Verdana, Impact, Arial Black, Arial Bold

Subhead (18-24 pt font):

Body copy (12-14 pt). He prefers 14 pt font so it is easier to read

He likes “subscribe now” as the CTA on the button

Product images: Good images will help increase your conversions. Gives a visual

He recommends Graphic River (sub of envato)

30:25 He mentions headway

32:43 He recommends Headway and Thesis (Note:  We no longer recommend Headway because they do not support the product.  We now use Optimize Press)

33:00 Someone in the audience recommends Optimize Press. Pete says he likes it but only uses it for membership sites

36:00 He talks about using InstaBuilder for coding and Photoshop CS6 for image editing.

38:24: He talks about promoting a webinar when you are not well-known. He was successful pitting himself as fresh against the “gurus” as kind of dated.

He uses Sales Acceleration Blueprint as a model for his opt in page

He explains his funnel (Opt in, webinar signup page, intensification sequence (optimizes show-up rate), webinar delivery page).

He has an authority site which is fairly inactive (4 blog posts) so they know a little about him. Consulting page where he charges $2,000. Doesn’t sell any of the consulting.

1. Take a look at your website and sale materials.
2. Do you have too many fonts? Too many colors?
3. Use Pete’s advice to tone down your offerings.
4. Test the effect of the changes on your conversions.
5. Repeat as necessary.

We have a lot of information about graphics and fonts in the Marketing Rebel Insider’s Club.  There are links to a lot of them on this post.

Link to Envato.com

Design Swipes:

Apple website
Mashable
Fast Company

Other recommendations:

Optimize Press
IntstaBuilder
Photoshop (you might want to look into Photoshop Elements, which has many of the most popular features of Photoshop but is less expensive)