How To Create Sales Pages On WordPress
Master how to create sales pages on WordPress! Learn proven strategies and design tricks that drive results and enhance your sales funnel.
Are you looking to boost your online sales? This video is your ultimate guide to creating impactful sales pages on WordPress! We’ll walk you through every step, from choosing eye-catching layouts to writing persuasive copy that captures attention and encourages action.
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The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:00.720] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to another Membership Machine Show. We might get some people joining us; you never know. So, do my countdown and go straight into it. So three, two, one. Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This episode is the Big 100. I’ve done 100 episodes of this podcast, folks. We have not pot-faded. We have just staggered on, folks. But thanks for your support. We’re getting more listeners and viewers. It’s growing. I want to thank you for listening and also for the support of my regular co-hosts, Kurt and Haru. And the guests I’ve had on the show as well, I will attempt to get more guests. Kirt will hopefully keep supporting the show and have a little bit of Haru, and we mix it up. In this episode, we will discuss how to create sales pages and explain why they’re essential. And I regularly see people trying to build a membership-based business, concentrating on the course and the membership for understandable reasons. They don’t focus enough on the message and the key sales pages. It’s a slight problem, in my opinion.
[00:01:34.010] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve got my patient and supportive co-host, my regular, Kurt, with me. Kirek, would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers?
[00:01:43.180] – Kurt von Ahnen
Jonathan. Thank you. My name is Kurt von Ahnen. I run an agency called MananaNoMas. We focus primarily on membership and learning websites, and I work directly with the great folks at WP-Tonic and Lifter LMS.
[00:01:55.350] – Jonathan Denwood
Thanks for that, Kurt. He did that at the last minute. He pulled down his mic at the last minute, moving it all around. You’re right. Like I said, before we go into the meat and potatoes of this significant show, I’m looking forward to this. I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I also want to point out that we’ve got a fabulous course. It shows you how to build your membership website on WordPress from beginning to end with the best tools available in the quickest way possible. Kirk himself does it, and it’s aimed at you, the beginner or intermediate, and it shows you the fastest and most powerful way of building a powerful membership website on WordPress with the best tools. Plus, we provide a created list of the best plugins. If you’re building a membership or community website and a load of other free resources. You can get all these free goodies by going over to wp-tonic. Com/deals, wp-tonic. com/deals, and you can get all the free goodies there. What more could you ask for?
[00:03:28.470] – Jonathan Denwood
So, for sales pages, as I said in the intro, folks, it’s been a consistent pattern I’ve observed when dealing with clients. I think Kirk… Well, I won’t speak for Kirk, but I think he would agree. I’m going to ask his opinion in a minute about this. But to me, it’s been a consistent pattern, an understandable pattern, of really getting engrossed in the course content, which is essential. But as I’ve consistently said, avoiding what I call the war and peace syndrome of building a monstrous course is also necessary. I’m also a member of a few forums, round tables, Lifter LMS, and others. And I consistently see people concentrate on building out their course, and they’re fearful about actually launching. It’s like the moment of truth. But you’ve got to avoid that. But what you should also do is work out who your target audience is, what their problems are, and what the things that they want to get from a course are. And you’ve got to have some sales pages that talk to that audience straightforwardly and powerfully.
[00:05:05.710] – Jonathan Denwood
What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:05:08.640] – Kurt von Ahnen
There’s so much on the subject. There is. And I think defining what is a sales page or a landing page as compared to another page in your website, right? I think it’s essential to explain that. But what Jonathan talked about is correct. It blows my mind how many people want to be course creators and want to share wisdom with an audience, with a group of people. And that’s not their priority in what they do. They say it’s their priority to do what they say, but it’s not their priority to do what they do. They want to do custom CSS and change the color of a button or the width of this section of the page versus that section. They get distracted by all these things. And in some cases, don’t even build the stinking course. They’re trying to make something, but it’s not delivering information to an audience, and it’s not attempting to sell that information to an audience, which are the two things you need to focus on.
[00:06:07.120] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s about balance, folks. Having a platform where you can customize the look of your website quickly is excellent. Having a website where you can alter the course layout when you get feedback is fantastic. That’s what you get with WordPress compared to SaaS platforms, where you have no options. And when you really want to make those changes, you just can’t. So it’s great to have choices and options. It’s just concentrating on the correct elements at the right time. And there’s a flow. If you want success, there’s a flow to this. And if you get things back to front for understandable reasons, and it’s one of the main reasons I wanted to do this podcast, promote my own business, and be honest about it. But the other reason was that I wanted to convey this most important message to the audience. It’s having the freedom to do things in the correct order at the right time. And many people, for understandable reasons, Would you agree with that, Kurt?
[00:07:33.110] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I would say if you catch yourself saying things like, Oh, I’m going to redesign my course page, or I’m going to redesign my services page, and you haven’t launched and you don’t have a single paying student yet, you’re focused on the wrong thing.
[00:07:49.180] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s the key, isn’t it? It’s really getting the course layout, getting the course materials in the learning management system, whatever system you’re using is important. And then working on it when you got your feedback and when you want to improve it or put another course in, these are the times to look at that, not when you’re launching your first course on your first website. What they should be concentrating is really understanding if you want success, and we’ve outlined all you need. And Kirk was yesterday taking the Mickey out of me and out of my favorite number. My favorite number, folks, is 497, $497. That’s my favorite number. If you’re going to launch a course and you put enough effort in, it’s the 497 price tag. And getting those 100 students or getting 500 students, but getting those first 100 students, it’s totally achievable. It’s a totally achievable goal. It’s not pie in the sky. It’s totally achievable. Said that three times to stress it. It’s a damn site more achievable than other influencers that will tell you that you can sell a course for $1,997 or a course for $5,900. $97 with no credibility, no audience.
[00:09:35.560] – Jonathan Denwood
I feel, in my opinion, they’re misleading you considerably. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:09:43.230] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think you can definitely stare step up to that program. Maybe you come out with a mini course, and I tell this to people getting started as course creators all the time. They’ll give me some strange 10-section course on this giant subject, and I’m like, Hey, Hey, let’s slow down. Let’s just do the first two or three sections as a mini course. Sell that for 29.95, 50 bucks, 75 bucks, whatever. Dip your toes in the water, see if you can get any interest, and then blow it out to the big course, load it up for 497 $7, and you’ve got some skin in the game. You’ve got some energy in your website. You’ve got users. You have an audience that you can market to. But to think you’re just going to come out as a no name, no experience, no audience, and sell something for 500 bucks, that is a stretch. Unless, I’d make an exception, if you’re a speaker, coach, or author, and you have published a book, and the course is the sister product to a book that’s been well received, readers will join if the message is strong enough. But that’s going against what Jonathan just said.
[00:10:48.160] – Kurt von Ahnen
That would be someone that is known, that has an audience, that, right?
[00:10:51.190] – Jonathan Denwood
I think at the 497, if you’ve been on a couple of podcasts, you got some online content, and it looks like you know what you’re talking about. And your landing page, your sales page, actually talks about the problem that your course solves. I think you’re going to get people that buy, because I think the 497, it’s not too high for people to take a pump. To take a risk. I think when you get above that, they really need a lot more reassurance, online reassurance, and a lot more- Yeah, testimonials and things to back up the value. Yeah, that’s my position. I’m not saying I’m right, but it’s just my honest opinion. I love your feedback, folks, what you think. But also, I think you can get a lot from the bootstrap startup world when it comes to why your landing page, your sales pages are so important. There’s a podcast Startups For The Rest of Us by Rob Rowland, and it’s an enormous amount of advice in the startup bootstrap world around what makes a good sales page. What are the key things? One message, one call for action, minimum navigation. You don’t want to offer too much navigation.
[00:12:40.630] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s totally the opposite of your website. You want people So Google wants to see that people go to a particular page on your website, and then Google wants you to see people going to other pages of your website. It’s going to be one One of the key measures of how Google sees the success of your website. When it comes to a sales page, it’s totally the opposite. You don’t want them to be moving off because you want them to do one action, one thing, either sign up for that newsletter, get that free digital resource, or sign up for your course. You want one action. So So you don’t want navigational options on that page. What do you say about that, Kurt?
[00:13:36.890] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, that leads me to what I said at the very beginning of the show, and that’s like defining what this sales page or landing page really is. Because a lot of folks might think it’s just a page in the website and they’ll use the same template, which gives you all the same navigation options and all those things. Whereas a real sales page landing page, you might remove the header at the top with the navigation options and things and just focus on a single message. I think it’s important to recognize, as Jonathan’s saying, what is the intention? And then some of the other concerns you might have with other pages in your site, what’s the intention versus what you’re trying to really do with your whole project as a whole. I think it is a separate piece from the whole project.
[00:14:21.190] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, and I like good design. I My MA was in graphic design, so I really like good design. I think it’s important, but it’s been scientifically proven with sales pages, the simpler… But I think there is a balance here. I think you can have a good-looking sales page, but you got to understand that you don’t want multiple options. It has one purpose. If you don’t have that one purpose really clear before you make the sales page, I think that’s a problem, I think. We’ve discussed this, and Kirk has been part of these shows where we’ve discussed it, where you need your niche, you need to understand your target audience. The more focused you are, the more research you’ve done on, or the more you feel that you know about this this ideal customer, this target audience, and the more you can write it down, you should be able to explain straight away who your target audience is, and you should be able to do it coherently in one sentence or two sentences at the most. If it takes you 10 minutes to do a wander, as I call it, to explain who your target audience is, I think you’ve got a problem.
[00:15:57.640] – Jonathan Denwood
I think, and it’s going show, and it’s one of the major reasons why you’re member. You might have a fantastic course that really helps your target audience, folks, but you aren’t going to get any traction. If you can’t explain it really easily in one or two sentences, who it is and how they’re going to be helped. I think you got a major problem. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:16:20.860] – Kurt von Ahnen
I agree 100%. You’ve got to be able to focus down. We say CTA, that call to action. That call to action has to be really well-defined and articulate, and it has to hit that audience right between the eyes.
[00:16:39.610] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s all linked, folks. Let’s say you’ve done the homework, you’ve listened to a few of these episodes, folks, you learned from it, which I hope you have, and you’ve done your research, you really know who your target niche is. You’re not going too broad. I have people say to me, folks, Well, I’ve lost a lot of weight, and I’ve got a lot of knowledge. And they do. They have lost. They’ve lost 80, 90 pounds. And they say, Well, it’s an enormous audience, and I’ve got this knowledge to share with people. And it’s great. It’s very unlikely that they’re going to be successful because it’s just so many players in that, so much noise in that sector. And to find your client and get through the noise, you either need a lot, you need to be a top-level influencer, or you need a considerable budget for paid advertising, get through the noise. Now, if they said to me, I’ve used it, well, after pregnancy, getting rid of that pregnancy weight. I’ve got experience and I’ve got a morphology that followed makes it easier for ladies to do that if they want to do that. I’m just drawing out that example.
[00:18:16.960] – Jonathan Denwood
Or somebody that wants to get a certain weight loss through a certain type of exercise or something. It’s more of a niche. It’s more of a target audience. I think they stand a chance. If they sort out their sales copy and their focus, they stand a chance. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:18:40.200] – Kurt von Ahnen
The weight loss category is a really great example, Jonathan, because you could have a weight loss program on people that have that ball and chain locking them to the cubicle at a corporate job. Do you sit in a cubicle all day? Are you suffering with lower back pain and a poufy belly? We can solve that. People that mountain bike, people that hike, people that mountain climb. How many people do we know, personally, that have running courses? I know three or four people that teach people how to run, and they’re fairly successful at it. But it’s because one runs ultra marathons, one runs 5 and 10 ks, and they get specific about what the goal is and how they’re going to get their user to that goal. And I think that that is really important in the messaging. So it’s specific, it’s nicheed, and there is a goal.
[00:19:33.100] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think that’s a perfect… It just comes to my mind. I know a lot of people that do running, they suffer from injuries. If you had a course, help you consistently run and avoid injuries, That could be a good message for your landing page, can’t it? We love our running, but we all suffer from these injuries, and we We keep having these injuries, and we get to a certain level in our running, and then we go backwards. Well, in my course, we show you how you can consistently keep running and avoid injury. I know nothing about… I do a lot of walking, I don’t do a lot of running. So I don’t know, but I’m just surmising that, because I’ve known a lot of people that done a lot of running, and then they suffer from a lot of injuries. Yeah.
[00:20:35.210] – Kurt von Ahnen
And that’s a really great example, though, the running, right? Because the average listener is going to hear this and go, Running? Running is like fast walking. Everybody can run. And what you need to understand is when you elevate yourself as a professional or an expert in a certain thing, the most common of things can be a course. Chris Badget’s first course was how to make an omelet. You think, Oh, you’re going to fry up some eggs? Boom. That was his first course, how to make an omelet. It is amazing to me if you apply yourself how you can become the expert on just about anything and generate an audience from it.
[00:21:15.870] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I do agree with that. Also, you got to research your competitor’s courses and find that niche. I’d like to say, don’t have navigation Too much navigation on that sales page. You don’t want them moving off somewhere else. You want them to stay having a lot of testimonials. The higher the price point, the more credibility, the more testimonials. It’s been proven through the history of copywriting and some of the biggest influences in effective landing pages, sales pages, that long form, where there is a structure. I always pushed a little bit back from it because they tend to be extremely ugly pages. I don’t think you need an ugly page. You just need… But I do agree with some of them, and it’s very long form. I go in the middle. I think you probably need more supportive copy than you probably think, but I wouldn’t go to the extreme that some of the biggest influences in copywriting and sales pages push. The reason why is I think people’s attention span has reduced through multimedia and YouTube. I just don’t think a lot of the audience has the attention span that they used to. But I also think you do need probably more copy on a sales page that really talks about not features, but the benefits of the audience will get from the course, and then a lot of reassurance testimonials.
[00:23:16.580] – Jonathan Denwood
If you get some people to do the course free and then give you some testimonials, it’s important. If it can be a video testimonial. I also have For the video of yourself, maybe it’s a good idea talking a little bit about what the course is. But you probably need more copy than you think. But I don’t go to the extreme of some of the biggest influencers, because I think we’re in a slightly different age. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:23:49.060] – Kurt von Ahnen
Every time I want to say, Don’t go long form, someone comes out of the woodwork with something extremely long form and is extremely successful. I think a lot of times as pros in the web space, I think we make an assumption about something that’s going to work or not going to work, and then mainstream audiences show us by their actions that we were mistaken. I don’t like the long-form stuff at all. I’m more against it than you are. I think it’s horrible. That constant scrolling, especially if you’re on a mobile device, is incredibly annoying.
[00:24:26.400] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, that’s the other factor. That is the other factor.
[00:24:29.390] – Kurt von Ahnen
But there’s a high conversion rate on those things. It’s like you go, Okay, well, if it’s working, it’s working. The thing that can create a lot of stickiness to a landing page that’s long form like that is narrative, heart-wrenching case studies. You have so and so was, suffered a… It got three stints in their heart and this and the other thing for a weight loss thing. It’s a heart-wrenching story about someone that almost died, and now they walk their dog every night before dinner in their 200 pounds lighter. That’s a story. If that’s written emotionally in long form and sandwiched on both sides by a button that says learn more, submit your name and email, then that’s part of that conversion process.
[00:25:14.550] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, so I go the middle ground because I think because of mobile and because of a reduction in attention, I wouldn’t go full. But on the other hand, I used to bulk against that message completely. I’ve I find my position. I go the middle ground. But it is important that you work out who your target is. You write powerful copy. There’s loads of resources out there that gives That framework’s about. Obviously, with AI technology, it’s really easier to knock out the first round of copy. I then would spend a lot of time editing it and personalizing it. But But there’s no excuse now of this problem of the blank sheet because you get writer’s block. Because you got AI now. I’m not saying that you should just write AI when it comes to your sales page, I think that’s bonkers, but you can do it. So it gives you a layout, and then you’re avoiding that blank sheet syndrome. So there’s no excuse for it with modern technology.
[00:26:33.090] – Kurt von Ahnen
The underlying message here for all of everything that Jonathan and I are speaking about, though, is we’re telling you how to make a killer sales page. You have to have killer content behind the paywall to back it up. Because if you have a killer influential sales page with heart-wrenching case studies and all the things we just talked about and your product doesn’t deliver, then your request for refunds go up and it makes you a problem for your processors. So You really do diligence. You have to make sure that you don’t exaggerate or set the bar too high with your sales page, but you want to be fully descriptive and influential at the same time.
[00:27:10.790] – Jonathan Denwood
Just to finish off before the first half of the show, folks, in the second half, we’re going to be looking at some of the leading plugins and services to help you build sales pages. But just give you some insight here before we go to the second half, folks. People that are really interested interested in your product or service, your membership, they’re going to read every word on that landing page multiple times. If they’re interested in your membership, they will read every word on your website I have quite a large website, the WP Tonic. It’s hundreds of pages, hundreds of pages. It’s over 10 years old. I have people bring up paragraphs of text that I wrote seven years ago, and they expect me to remember what I said. I can’t remember what I said two days ago, not alone seven years ago. But they’ve spent hours on the website reading almost every page on the website before buying a hosting package from me. People that are really interested in your membership course, really interested, they’re going to read every word on your website. That’s why you need to spend more time on the front-facing pages.
[00:28:44.100] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re about your homepage, your key landing page, your Home page, your Key Landing page, Sales pages, rather than spending all your time on the course. Other people, if they’re not really interested, they’d be gone in in less than two minutes. They’d be off somewhere else. But the people that are really interested, they’re going to read almost every word on your website. Sorry to scare you there, folks, but that’s the truth. It’s the truth. I’ve been amazed. We’re going to go for our break, folks. We’ll be back, like I say, in the second half, we’ll be looking at some of the leading tools. Hopefully you got some value from this first half. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. Before we go into the second half of the show… Oh, we got a sneeze from Kurt.
[00:29:40.190] – Kurt von Ahnen
Sorry, couldn’t get the mute fast enough.
[00:29:41.770] – Jonathan Denwood
No, could call him out. Before we go into the Second half, I want to point out we’ve got a fantastic free resource for you. That’s the Membership Machine Show Facebook Group. It’s totally free. Just go to Facebook, put in the Membership Machine Show Group, and the free group will come up. It’s a mixture of WordPress professionals and people like you building a membership course. Love you to sign up. If you got any questions or there’s any subjects that you would like us to cover during the podcast, just join the group and give me some feedback, and Kirk, and the other people that helped me with the show, and we love to have a discussion with you. So just go over to Facebook and join the group. Let’s look at Let’s look at some of the tools. Obviously, there’s SaaS-based tools out there. There’s three. There’s WordPress plugins, there’s hybrids that are plug-in, but also use a hosted service, and there’s full SaaS solutions, software solution. There’s three solutions here. We’re going to not be looking at the leading SaaS providers. We’re going to be We’re looking at the WordPress plugin plus the hybrid, which is a WordPress plugin with a bit of SaaS thrown in.
[00:31:08.260] – Jonathan Denwood
I treat that as a third choice. You got WordPress, SaaS, and these hybrid solutions. Now, there’s another micro divider as well in the WordPress, because a lot of the page builders provide landing page, sales page functionality as well, especially in the world of Gutenberg. Cadence, we’re a big support of Cadence WP, WP tonic, and we provide our own starter websites, and we’re going to, in the near future, be building our own library of sales pages. But that’s the landscape Would you agree with my provisional how I divide the choices in the end of 2024, Kurt?
[00:32:08.020] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, makes sense.
[00:32:10.570] – Jonathan Denwood
Right, yeah. I’m getting a good start. I’m going to start with one that I don’t know I don’t know too much about, but when I was doing my research and doing my show notes, it seemed to come up in a few in the few of the articles that I was reading. Is it called Kubo? Kerbio?
[00:32:29.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
Kubio.
[00:32:30.740] – Jonathan Denwood
Kubio. Do you know this one at all?
[00:32:33.490] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, other than just researching it right before the show. It’s got good reviews and the price is favorable. But then I go back to, would I make my whole website with this? Would I just make landing pages with it? What would I actually use it for? That’s where I was like, Okay, I’m going to talk to Jonathan about this and see where his head’s at.
[00:32:54.620] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think it’s just a landing page. It is confusing for normal people, folks, because you have email marketing platforms like Mailchimp, and you got the You’ve got Kajabi or you’ve got Podio, and then you’ve got Mailchimp or MailLight, or there’s a lot of cross-fertilisations in these email marketing, marketing-automisation systems. When you take something like… I’m naming some SaaS products, which we’re not going to delve in detail in this second half. We’re going to be looking at more the hybrid and WordPress solutions. But something like Active Campaign, you could build a newsletter, but they haven’t really entered in the sales page market. You got SaaS solutions like Leadpages. They’re one of the bigger ones in the SaaS market, but they’re not really big in marketing, optimization, or newsletters, are they? They bought a company that Of a friend of mine, Rob Rowland, he developed an email marketing company called Drip, and him and his joint founder, they sold it to lead pages. But it’s still a separate It’s a separate company. Its focus is e-commerce, but they’ve kept the two things separate. I think they have combined them a little bit, but they’ve also kept them separate.
[00:34:41.650] – Jonathan Denwood
So this all causes a lot of confusion for people because is it a landing page builder? I just think it causes confusion. Do you think it causes confusion?
[00:34:54.320] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think a little bit.
[00:34:57.250] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I’m with you. Now, with this thing, Curbo, Curbio, they provide a WordPress plugin, but it is a hybrid. It’s a SaaS-based system, and the prices are very attractive, but I haven’t used the landing page build. I haven’t used it. I watched some videos and it looked okay. But like I said, the reason why we’re bringing it up is that if you do a search on this subject, you’re going to come across it because they’re doing a lot of SEO and they’re doing a lot of work and they’re turning up on a lot of people’s articles. They’re probably doing a lot of affiliate marketing and that as well, aren’t they?
[00:35:44.020] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. When you look When you look at their starter site library, you see a lot of familiar-looking templates that you might have seen in the ASTRA and Cadence directories. But there was a lot of fresh designs in there, too, that I thought were more modern or clean-looking. It’s worth taking a look because like we both said already, the pricing was real favorable on it.
[00:36:07.450] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, and it starts around these per month. It starts at their personal, starts at 8.25. I’m not sure if you have to pay the whole year upfront. I would imagine you might have to, or you can just pay this month to month. A lot of these, they give a month to month, but you have to pay the whole annual amount up front.
[00:36:26.220] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s an annual. You pay it annually up front. It’s for the first year.
[00:36:32.080] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, so that works out at 8.25. That’s what they’re saying. Then they got a plus at 10.75, Freelancer at 20.75, and Agency, that’s multiple websites at 31. They’re not ridiculous prices, and they got a big library of templates. I understand why they’re getting traction, but I haven’t used it myself in anger. But I thought we I have to talk about it. A very older solution that’s been around quite a bit in WordPress, and it’s owned by one of the largest multiple plugin companies in the WordPress space, automotive, is Seed Prod. Prod? C Prod, yeah. What you got to say about this one, Kurt?
[00:37:29.330] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, you nailed It’s been around forever. I had projects well over 10 years old that had some seed prod content in them. I’ve always found them to be at the front of things, to be honest with you. I know that they’re owned by that big, giant company, but it’s a product that works, and I’ve used it successfully. I’ve had clients use it successfully. Over time, I think I’ve outgrown it just a hair. We do stuff at the agency We do things a little more independently. But for people that are on the DIY plan, I think that Seedprud is actually a really good product.
[00:38:09.680] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it is. It’s one of the better WordPress solutions out there. It does land in pages. I think they do a bit of email. Well, they’re not going to send out the email, and I don’t want to get into that conversation because we go off big ways. We’ve covered this in in other episodes of the podcast. Have a look at some of the other episodes. We’ve gone into how you can effectively do email marketing on WordPress in other episodes. The basic starts at 79. They do offer discounts when you first sign up. I never use them because they’re just for the first year, and then it converts to their normal prices. I don’t agree with that sales morphology myself. But it’s just my opinion. I’ve got their normal prices here, and that’s 79 for the basic. The plus is 199, pro, 399, and elite is 599. So it jumps up. I don’t know what the difference between the basic and the plus is. I would imagine the basic because I know this company and they really know how to market things really well, that there’s some key functionality missing from the ’79 product, and you’re probably going to end up with the ’99 to get the basic product that you really need.
[00:39:49.190] – Jonathan Denwood
But I’m only surmising because it’s been quite a while since I’ve used this particular product myself.
[00:39:56.890] – Kurt von Ahnen
The pro version gives you Xavier abilities and dynamic text and some would I consider advanced features for most do it yourselfers. So I think the plus plan is where a lot of do it yourself DIY folks would end up. The thing that is really interesting about Seed Prod, and I don’t mean to make this sound like a commercial for Awesome Mode of Jonathan, but I like when I can do my shopping in a one place. And I know that that goes against a lot of ideologies, but I don’t like having to go to 16 10 different things to do 10 different functions. And with Seed Prod, a DIY person gets access to like, Woocommerce templates, landing page templates, website templates, and everything is organized very well there for them. So it’s a nice offering, but to your point, that entry-level package isn’t going to give people what they want. They’re going to have to jump up a level.
[00:40:55.710] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, and I don’t know if their landing page builder seems quite modern, doesn’t it?
[00:41:05.360] – Kurt von Ahnen
It does, yeah. It’s real drag and drop friendly.
[00:41:09.290] – Jonathan Denwood
Like I say, they’ve got a theme builder, they’ve got a landing page builder with Woocommers, templates, maintenance. They got a lot of stuff. My only thing about this is their problem, in a way, is the page builders, and we’re going to be talking about one right now. I think, personally myself, there are a lot of website and page builders in the WordPress space. Some are really aimed at the professional developer, designer, implementer, power implementers. Others are more aimed at the DIY individual. At the DIY, but also cover as the implementer and professional, there’s really, to my mind, there’s two that I would look at, and that’s Cadence WP and the one that we’re going to be talking about here is Elementor. Elementor is a bit of a beast, but it has got a big library of landing pages, and then It’s got a big third-party community that provide an enormous amount of sales page, landing page templates as well. What’s your thoughts? What’s your thoughts still How does it feel with Elementor?
[00:42:47.870] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, you got the beast part right. I used Elementor for well over two years before I even understood that there was a whole site kit library in the back end of that thing, and landing landing page library and all of that stuff. And there is a little bit of a learning curve when it comes to creating a landing page, where that landing page is stored in your website, how to access it, and how to promote it, because it’s in a separate menu. But man, the product is sharp.
[00:43:19.540] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it starts, and it’s not really crippled. It’s more like… Do you know what the difference between the essential $59 and the advanced solo is at 79.
[00:43:36.450] – Kurt von Ahnen
I am locked into some previous old agency pricing plan they had, and I’m scared to death of ever letting it lapse. So no. No, I can’t answer that because they’re a new pricing… They just changed all their pricing strategies. They have.
[00:43:53.980] – Jonathan Denwood
I thought this was… I thought myself, this is a little bit… And of course, they also, folks, they’ve done something that a lot of people do, and they’ve got their own hosting package. I would never use Alimator with their own hosting package because You might as well just go to a full SaaS solution in some ways, I think. But other people would totally disagree with me, but I just think you You would be best going to a third party hosting provider and getting the plugin. But there are arguments against that. It’s a difficult one because people say, Well, they’re going to make sure their hosting really works with it. If you just want the most easiest route, it’s just best to host with them. It just makes me a little bit crazy, a little bit. Am I being a bit uncharitable there?
[00:45:01.420] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, I don’t think you’re being uncharitable at all. I don’t like the idea of hosting with them either. When you look at their pricing for just the page builder, the big difference is up to three sites or up to 25 sites. And so when you look at the features, they’re super similar. So are you an agency? Are you building this for customers or are you a DIY person? And the difference between one site and three sites, if you get more features, don’t worry about the number of sites, if it’s the features you want. But when you look between the popular advanced program and the expert program, I think the only difference is really the number of sites. Yes.
[00:45:45.290] – Jonathan Denwood
Like I said- It’s not like you’re not getting reduced functionality if you go to the lower ones. The only problem with this is that the next one we’re going to be talking about, when it comes to their pricing structures, they’re totally opposite of Alimator. They’re really easy to follow the next one. They’ve got only two choices. I just find Alimator, and others are doing this, it’s just when you’ve got three choices and then sub-choices, you got three different tables of different pricing choices. I just think that’s bonkers. What do you read?
[00:46:26.230] – Kurt von Ahnen
I agree. It shouldn’t be hard for me to figure out what I want to buy. They make it difficult. I’m in the eLearning space. The eLearning space is notorious for this. How many active users per month? How many? You’re like, Oh, my God, I don’t even know what I’m going to… I don’t know what my budget is going to be to run this program yet.
[00:46:45.740] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, you just look at the hosting solution they’ve got. They’ve got two choices. They’ve got WordPress hosting and eCommerce hosting. Even if you go with the hosting solution of their plugin, it’s endless choices, isn’t it? Endless You need to simplify your pricing structures, animator. On to the diviBuilder. Now, diviBuilder in 2025 is in a bit of a quandary. Because they’re fabulous people. When it comes to divi, and people love it, I would never recommend it. But they’re in a transition anyway, because they’re going… But they’ve been in a transition for a couple of years there. I think in 2025, it’s actually going to happen, is that they’re moving to utilizing Gutenberg, and they got Divi5, and they’re going the Gutenberg route. But when you buy Divi, they’ve only got two prices. That’s $89. And the next one is a big jump. I’m not using their introductory pricing here. Like I said, with the other pricing, I’m using their normal pricing, and that’s 665. They actually bummed that up because it used to be under $300, and they’ve really bummed that up. They do offer you a massive discount if you’re buying it first off. I’m just going with their normal pricing structure.
[00:48:26.610] – Jonathan Denwood
But it’s a big difference now between the one site and the multiple site. But it’s only two prices, which is totally the opposite to Alimator. They’ve got an enormous community, and they’ve got an enormous community of third-party theme and landing pay options. When you sign up, you do have to pay extra to buy one of these, but they’ve got an enormous community. It does the job. But then you got this… I think I’m fair in saying this, a couple of times they’ve made it clear, where they indicated that they were going to go fully public and fully live with Divi5, and then it’s backtracked, and it’s been delayed. I think it’s in public beta, but they haven’t gone fully public, have they, with Divi5? Am I right about I don’t think they have. I don’t think they have. I don’t even know where they are with it because I’m not really part of the Divi world, am I?
[00:49:38.770] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, no. And here’s the thing that… I really think This is like a misnomer, and I’m sure someone’s going to argue with us. We might get some hate mail on this one, Jonathan. I have clients that use divvy, and they’ll say, Well, I don’t want to use this, this or this because I need a front-end developer. I need a front-end editor. And they keep referring to divi as this front-end thing. And when you use divi, it says, use the divi editor, use the front-end editor. But when you go into the front-end editor, it’s not less confusing. It’s not intuitive. It’s not easy. The learning curve on this tool, to me, is immense. And it’ll say, do you want to start from scratch? Do you want to import a template? Do you want to use this library? You click library, it says, do you want to join? No, I’m going to join. I don’t want to pay more stuff.
[00:50:32.120] – Jonathan Denwood
I personally think Alimator is a bit of a beast. I actually think it’s simpler. You can wrap your mind around it much easier than divvy, but I’m going to get a load of hate mail for saying that. We will.
[00:50:47.560] – Kurt von Ahnen
And the people that love it, love it. So there’s different strokes for different folks, courses for courses, all these things. But for me personally- I think Gutenberg is easier to use than this. What is?
[00:51:02.670] – Jonathan Denwood
Gutenberg.
[00:51:03.890] – Kurt von Ahnen
Oh, yeah. I mean, you and I could blow through a Caton site so much more quickly than if we tried to duplicate the effort in divvy. And remember, most of my sites are membership and dynamic content driven with Lifter LMS. Everything in DIVI becomes a short code and a CSS this or a CSS that. And if I wanted to dive that deep, let’s just face it, I’d be in I’ve converted him to bricks, actually.
[00:51:35.460] – Jonathan Denwood
I juiced him to that poison. But it’s great. But I consider it, which Kirk is, he’s a power implementer/developer, whatever those terms mean, because they’re meaningless, really. But I would not recommend that to your average DIY person. Optin Monster, another part of the automation family, being around, really was the leader. It really was the only tool in town that really enabled you to do light boxes, pop-ups. It really founded automotive. The developer, I actually have forgotten his name, Arthur. I think it’s Arthur. I actually interviewed him, a great developer. He actually partnered with the other half of Automatic, and it’s still a big part. It has still an enormous presence. What’s your views of Optin Monster?
[00:52:54.330] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I absolutely hate every time you build a new website, some pop-up shows up telling you to download Optin Monster. They’ve definitely got the market cornered on used car salesman techniques. But that said, they’ve got over 700 templates. They work in multiple platforms. So if you’re an agency that works with Shopify or Squarespace or Wix, then they work in those. So it builds that familiarity and consistency for you, cross-brand, cross-product. But for a DIY person, sometimes, like some Some of the setup seems very intuitive and very straightforward, but some of the other features can seem a little more involved. And as with anything, there’s a learning curve. And so sometimes I wonder if it does… Because this talks about sales.
[00:53:44.530] – Jonathan Denwood
Are you involved Are you involved with, because I haven’t used this in donkey’s years either. Are you actively involved with any websites that are using this?
[00:53:52.590] – Kurt von Ahnen
I have two or three customers that have it, and the most used thing is they have that your email list initiative. They look for cart abandonment and grow your email list, and that’s what that’s focused on. Not so much on landing pages, sales pages, or even the thing that I remember Optin Monster being really good at was you could do A/B testing with Optin Monster. But I don’t see a lot of DIY people really leveraging the awesome tool that A/B testing is.
[00:54:25.670] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, you need a lot of signups or a lot of traffic to make that worth Most people are wasting their time. They got a lot of better things to be focusing on, in my opinion.
[00:54:38.490] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. I sound like I’m really contradicting myself because when we talked about seed prod, I was like, I like the one-stop shopping. I like the multiple assets and one deliverable. But I just feel like the opt-in monster with their options, I think they’re more disconnected and scattered. It’s not just for content, it’s for all these other functions.
[00:54:59.470] – Jonathan Denwood
I think there’s too much-It’s more focused, it’s from their background, which was more from email marketing and building up their email list. That’s where they were champions on. And then obviously, email list died down, so they focused more. But of the two automotive products we’re talking about, if you’re looking at… I would go with CPOD. If you’re looking at landing pages, sales pages, I think Option Monster is more about email building. That’s where the history goes from. And finally, we got Thrive Suite. What do you want to say? I’m going to let you open up. When you were doing a consultation and the client said, Well, we’ve just bought five suite and we want to build our website and our landing pages, what would be your instant response, Kurt?
[00:56:06.040] – Kurt von Ahnen
Hold on. Let me refer you to a couple of other agencies that may be able to serve you better.
[00:56:15.120] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s also owned by automotive, and I want to point out, folks, there will be show notes. You will be able to go to the WP tonic website. I get no affiliate income. There will be no affiliate links to all Devotev. They’ve done me no harm. I don’t particularly like them as a company, but they’re not evil or anything. It’s just certain things they do. I don’t agree with business-wise, but Other people would say that I’m wrong. So everybody has their opinion. They bought these people, the founder, Sean, and his technical founder, I forgot his name. I haven’t spoken to Sean in years, but he came on my show, my other podcast, folks, a couple of times, and he’s a really fabulous guy, very intelligent, speaks multiple languages, comes from Switzerland, really. And they really built up a suite of… And they were the first people with Divi to really build the first modern page builder. He actually did it, and it’s called Architect. Yeah, that’s right. And they actually, I think I’m right, they actually did it at the same time. Divi built a theme with short codes, so I don’t classify it as a modern page builder.
[00:57:55.020] – Jonathan Denwood
The era of the WordPress modern page builders was starting I’d have with beaver builder and Alimator, but I think architecture were just before those two. It was a modern drag and drop environment, but when it came to performance and some other elements, it was a bit clunky. When Alimator came on the market and Beaver Builder, in marketing terms, they got blown away a bit. There was things about Alimator that the developer agency user didn’t like. It might have been their pricing structure. I can’t remember.
[00:58:44.940] – Kurt von Ahnen
The pricing for an agency is not favorable. I mean, it’s $300 a year, and that gives you access to work on five websites. You have to spread that cost out, and you have to figure your profitability and margins on that. That’s not incredibly relatively favorable. In the Elementor world for that money, you get 50 sites, or at least that’s the program I’m on.
[00:59:05.570] – Jonathan Denwood
When they were trying to get market share, folks, they were very aggressive. And Beaver Builder, well, the problem with Beaver Builder, they had two elements that were separately priced. And if you wanted both bits, it was quite expensive. And the Elementor were very aggressive initially, and they still are to some extent. Now, Frife Suite, They got into email marketing, a quiz builder. These were all separate plugins, and for a while, they sold these plugins separately. Then they had their own learning management system, which was a separate plugin. I forgot what they call it, actually. Then when they sold to automotive, automotive You’ve stopped selling, and you just got to buy all the plugins, and they do all work with one another. They haven’t done much with it, but they keep it maintained, updated. But you could say that with all their plugins, they really don’t do a lot with them. They just keep them, and they just use a lot of marketing. And it works, but I wouldn’t… I just feel unbiased, but other people, I think for 599 a year, they offer a lot of stuff. But I wrote a blog post last week about and did a video, or I got to do the video.
[01:00:55.210] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s a bit like what Kirk said earlier on, it’s nice to have it all in one place. But the problem is, if the fundamental tools, if there’s separate tools that do it much better, see with the learning management system, I think just lift the LMS and learnDash, just do the learning management part, and you get the quiz building built, not as a separate plugin. And when it comes to the landing page, which you’re going to be using architect, there’s other page builders that are just better, in my opinion. They’re just better. Cadence or Animator, they’re just better. So it’s a tricky one. I don’t know if I’m slagging it off a little bit, just based on my biases, really.
[01:01:40.820] – Kurt von Ahnen
And to be fair, I need to walk back from my harshness because I opened up very harshly. It was rushing to me, Kurt. For a DIY startup or general business, Thrive does have an excellent template library. It’s got decent tools. It’s So, in that light, in that use case, it’s a very usable product. I think the pricing, I think it’s a little proud on the pricing, right? I feel that way for a person coming in and building their website. When you get into dynamic content and e-commerce and an LMS on the back end, it can become a bit of a boat anchor around some; I don’t want to say conflict. It’s not like the website goes straight. It doesn’t work, but some features might be inhibited, or you might need to design around or add a short code to make it work. The average user who is not an agency will get frustrated with that.
[01:02:42.140] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s not one thing or the other. I think it’s one foot in the WordPress world and one foot in the SaaS world. It is tricky because I’m trying to build something. Still, I’ve better understood how much you can combine something and maintain flexibility rather than trying to do everything. You might as well go to the world of SaaS, but it is tricky. I think that’s the end of this. I think we’ve done it. It’s been a great show. So, Kirk, what’s the best way for people to learn more about you and what you’re up to?
[01:03:19.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, to get in touch with me, LinkedIn’s the jam. I’m the only Kurt von Annen on LinkedIn, so you know you got the right guy. Manana No Mas is our agency name. If you go to manananomas.com, I’d love to work with you on a project.
[01:03:32.820] – Jonathan Denwood
And they’re the Scorm Kings, aren’t you? Scorm Kings. You’re the Scorm King, aren’t you?
[01:03:38.100] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, that reminds me of the doors. I’m the Storm King. I can do anything.
[01:03:42.040] – Jonathan Denwood
They’re the Scorm. Kirk is the person to talk to if you’re into Scorm and looking to run it on WordPress. Hopefully, we will be back next week with another great show. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye. I need it.
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