How to Sell Your Services Online With WordPress

If your business is service based then I have some tips and tools to help sell your services online with WordPress!

I’ve categorized them into what  I consider are 5 things you need to do to your site to prepare you to sell services online.

Let’s just get into it…

1. Humanize Your Website

People buy from trusted sources and feel more trust online when they know there is a real, living, breathing person behind the veil. So humanize your site: show photos of yourself, show photos of your workspace, share your social media links and be “real” when you write.

An About Page is a MUST! You’ll be surprised how many people visit this page FIRST when they are new to your site!

This is actually where the solopreneurs have a leg up on big business because it’s easier to connect with one person rather than a big company so take advantage and show off YOU as much as possible!

Some examples: 

 

 

Try these WordPress Plugins:

• Meta Slider / Revolution Slider (add images of yourself, your desk, your office…)
• Image Widget (add short bio to your sidebar area and link it to your about page)
• Simple Author Bio Box (show your bio under every blog post to remind them a real person is behind your blog)
• Lightweight Social Icons / Ultimate Social Media Icons Plus
• Instafeed / The Instagram Feed / Instagram Slider Widget (instagram is a great way to show yourself “behind the scenes”)
• JetPack’s Twitter Timeline

 

2. Create a Services Page

Visitors need to know what you offer! Make sure you create a at least one dedicated services page that you include in your main navigation so people can easily get to it.  To list your services, try finding applicable images and breaking them out into columns or perhaps you can create a packages table?

Tip: If you can, dedicate entire pages for the different services for better SEO.

 

Try these WordPress Plugins:

• Lightweight Grid Columns / Column Shortcodes
• Pricing Table / Responsive Pricing Table
• WP Canvas – Shortcodes (contains pricing table and columns!)

 

3. Show some Credibility

Next, you want to validate your services and show that you are credible either by displaying testimonials or a creating a portfolio (both if applicable).

Portfolios

Already built into WordPress is the ability to add a gallery of images. A gallery or even a slideshow is the quickest and easiest way to display your work.

More advanced from there are portfolio plugins that can categorize your portfolio items, add descriptions to your work and even dedicate whole pages to bigger projects.

Tip: If you have a very large portfolio to show off then then you might also want to look for a WordPress theme that comes with a portfolio section built into it!

 

Try These WordPress Plugins:

• WP Canvas Gallery
• Essential Grid (creates a portfolio that you can filter)
• Media Grid (creates unique layouts, filters and popups or to pages) 

Testimonials

Testimonials can be displayed all kinds of ways on your site. You can use the styles provided within WordPress to italacize the font or emphasize text with a blockquote. Often, with testimonials it’s nice to arrange testimonials into columns.

Tip: It’s recommend that you provide an image of the person who gave the testimonial whenever possible!

In the past, I’ve used a couple of WordPress plugins to show different and random testimonials on ALL pages of my website because I feel like testimonials easy support every page of a service website.

 

Try These WordPress Plugins:

• WP Canvas – Shortcodes (contains columns and styled testimonials)
• Easy Testimonials / Testimonials Widget (add testimonials to your sidebar or in your pages via shortcode)

 

4. Create a Contact Page

You’ll need a way for people to get in touch so will need to create your contact page. This should also be listed in your main navigation so it’s very easy to find (typically it’s your last menu item).

You don’t need a tun of design for your contact page – it should be pretty straight forward. You can add additional fields to your contact form if you want to pre-qualify leads (find out their budget, website url, etc).

 

Tip: It may be a good idea to share both your email AND include a contact form on your Contact page because people have different preferences for both.
ie:  A contact form is quick but people may not trust that a contact form actually works – or – your lead doesn’t have the default mail client setup to send a direct email so they prefer to send the email via contact form

Try these WordPress Plugins:

• Contact Form 7
• Mailchimp for WP (integration with Contact Form 7 so people that contact you can be added to your newsletter)
• WP Booking System / Booking System Pro (if you want people to book times)

 

5. Get Paid

Finally, you need to get paid!

Now, when I was freelancing, I hopped onto paypal and sent payment request to my clients via email, however, there are situations where it’s easier and faster to send clients to a Payment Page.

Add a Pay Button

You can add a PayPal button to a page on your website and have clients pay with PayPal or Visa. Or, if you want to avoid PayPal, you can also have them pay with Stripe with WP Simple Pay Lite with Stripe. Both of these plugins also let the payee enter amounts so you can reuse these buttons for different clients.

If you need to pre-qualify leads then I recommend creating these pay pages but keep them out of your navigation and send out the link to clients when you are ready to begin work.

Sell Services as Products

If you have set pricing and several services that clients can buy at one time (ie: a logo, a business card design, a website, etc) then you can try out the WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping Cart and add it straight to your services pages.

Have People Fill Out a Form and Pay

If you need to collect certain information along with payment then you can integrate your contact form with PayPal using this plugin. Add this right after the description of your services so visitors can opt-in right there!

Tip: If you find that you are getting a lot of emails from the same people wanting help when you should be getting paid for your knowledge and expertise then one way to handle this type of situation is to inform them of your hourly consulting fee and you’d be happy to help out once they purchase your services and provide them with your payment page (I heard this tip from Kimra Luna on one of her periscopes!)

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*Featured image provided by Bloguettes Stock Photos