When it comes to creating a clean website design for your business — and also generate conversions — you need to focus on just making it look nice.
But if you don’t have any website building or design experience, you’ll have trouble figuring out what a good website looks like.
As someone new to designing, without the right guidance you’ll spend more time researching unfamiliar terms like “correct use of white space” , “minimalist design elements”, “negative space” and so on... instead of actually building a site.
If you’re an entrepreneur who really needs a simple business website to start attracting potential customers, this guide is for you.
Read on to learn how to achieve a clean website design and why these two plugins are all you'll need.
Let's dive in.
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Plugins You Need to Create a Simple Website that Generates Conversions
As we mentioned before, you’ll only need 2 plugins to create your solid professional website on WordPress that provides an amazing user experience — Thrive Theme Builder and Thrive Architect. Thrive Theme Builder and Thrive Architect
Thrive Theme Builder & Thrive Architect
This is the ultimate no-code, visual building combo to you need to build your WordPress website.
Thrive Theme Builder is where you’ll choose and customize your WordPress theme; and you’ll use Thrive Architect to build and customize all your web pages (homepage, sales pages, landing pages, etc.)
You can use these tools to design different types of websites — blogs, e-commerce, one-page websites, forums, etc.
We also recommend downloading AIOSEO to help optimize your website for SEO so search engines can discover your pages.
Tip: If you’re brand new to WordPress, read this tutorial to learn how to install WordPress correctly.
The 4 Conversion Focus Checkpoints
Your website needs to hit 4 important conversion focus checkpoints if you want it to grow a mailing list and make sales for your online business. They include:
Clarity, Readability and Structure
Site Speed Optimization
Clear Clickable Calls to Action (CTAs)
Conversion Pages
You can easily achieve all four of these conversion focused benchmarks when creating your own WordPress website with Thrive Theme Builder and Thrive Architect.
Setting up Your Website’s Layout
1. Install Thrive Product Manager to Activate Thrive Theme Builder + Thrive Architect
Access your Thrive Themes products through the Thrive Product manager plugin
You’ll need Thrive Product Manager to access any Thrive Themes product from your Thrive Customer Dashboard.
Once you install and activate the Thrive Product Manager plugin (here's a handy guide to walk you through setup), you can then use it to activate Thrive Theme Builder and Thrive Architect.
And if you purchase Thrive Suite, you can access the rest of our plugins you see in the above screenshot, to turn your clean, conversion-focused website into a thriving online business.
2. Select a Theme in Thrive Theme Builder
Professionally designed companion themes available in Thrive Theme Builder
Next, you need to choose a theme.
Thrive Theme Builder comes with a selection of professionally designed companion themes, complete with conversion-focused pages and block templates for every part of your website.
When you take a look at the themes we offer in Thrive Theme Builder, you’ll notice that they include all the important design elements of a successful website design:
Lots of white space for easy reading and navigation
Harmonious color schemes that you can customize with one click
Clean typefaces
Optimized for desktop and mobile devices
...and so much more.
When you start creating your new website, Thrive Theme Builder makes it super easy to build a high-quality, modern website design your audience will love.
Each theme includes all four of the conversion focus checkpoints, saving you a lot of time in designing.
And it gets better with our Thrive Theme Builder Setup Wizard...
3. Complete the Thrive Theme Builder Setup Wizard
The Thrive Theme Builder Setup Wizard helps you select all your web page templates, a color palette, and all the fonts you need for your clean web design – and it only takes a few minutes to get this done.
Thrive Theme Builder Setup Wizard
Here’s what you’ll need to do:
Select your main brand color to create your site’s custom color scheme
Pick a conversion-focused header
Select a Homepage template
Pick a layout for your Single Blog Posts (with or without a sidebar, featured image, etc.)
Choose a layout for your Blog Post List template (grid layout, list layout, masonry, etc.)
Select a Page template
Choose a Menu template
By the end of the Setup Wizard, you'll have created a clean website layout that you can now go in and customize using Thrive Architect.
4. Configure Your Site Typography
In this step, you’ll establish your site-wide typography settings.
The Typograph settings area of the Thrive Theme Builder dashboard. To edit your Typography settings, you'll click the pencil icon to open the Basic Typography editor.
These font settings include choosing font types, font colors, font sizes, font spacing, etc. to populate the following types of text:
- H1
- H2
- H3
- H4
- H5
- H6
- Paragraph text
- List text
- Hyperlink text
- Plain text
- Blockquote text
- Preformatted text
The Basic Typography editor preview window inside Thrive Theme Builder.
Remember that once you get these settings saved in Thrive Theme Builder, they will apply automatically across your theme templates and designs. Saving you tons of time.
5. Set Up Your Core Post & Page Templates
Core Page Templates are page designs that you can save as single templates and then apply on other pages of your website.
That way, you won't need to design each page from scratch. For example, let's say you build a standard blog post template.
Whenever you create a new blog post, this pre-designed template will automatically load and all you'll need to do is fill the page with text & media, and publish the page when you're ready.
No need to design each page from scratch -- Thrive Theme Builder takes care of that for you.
The initial Core Web Page
Templates you’ll design in Thrive Theme Builder are your:
404 Error Page
Standard Blog Post
Default Page
Blog List Page
Blog Archive Page
The Core Page Template area of the Thrive Theme Builder dashboard.
You can also create and manage as many extra page templates as you need from the "Templates" area of Thrive Theme Builder.
6. Explore Thrive Theme Builder's Site Speed Optimization Tool
Thrive Theme Builder also includes a Site Speed Optimization tool that makes establishing your site's performance settings in one click simple!
Simply put, this tool focuses on putting out clean, lean code.
Leaner code = less to load = faster website response times.
This feature is automatically activated on your website, so you don't need to do anything here.
Next, the Site Speed Optimization feature helps you configure your caching settings with either WP Fastest Cache or W3 Total Cache in just a few clicks.
Our site performance optimization tools are simple to understand and straightforward to use, so you can complete this setup in less than a few minutes.
7. Finalize Your Homepage
When you were working through the Thrive Theme Builder Setup Wizard, you got started creating your Homepage template...
A homepage is automatically generated for you, and you'll find it in the "Pages" section in the WordPress Dashboard.
Search for the page titled "Generated Homepage".
Generated homepage from Thrive Theme Builder
Launch the page in Thrive Architect to finalize the design and add compelling copy, high-quality images, social media links, simple animations, etc.
8. Creating & Customizing Your WordPress Site Pages
Creating a new page for your WordPress website is super straightforward.
In the WordPress Dashboard, select the "+ New" button at the top of the page and select "Page".
Creating a new page
When taken to the next screen, name your page and select the bright green "Launch Thrive Architect" button.
Give your page a title
Thrive Architect, our powerful visual, drag-and-drop page editor, will provide you with four options:
1. Normal Page
2. Blank Page with Header and Footer
3. Completely Blank Page
4. Pre-built Landing Pages
Select the type of page you want to create in Thrive Architect
To create clean, conversion-focused pages that are aligned with the website layout you built in Thrive Theme Builder, we recommend the "Pre-built Landing Page" option.
Landing Page Library in Thrive Architect
In the Landing Page Library, you can select a Smart Landing Page from any of our companion themes.
Our Smart Landing Page sets are designed to help you create stunning, conversion focused pages in minutes.
It's as simple as perusing the Landing Page Library, finding a landing page template you like, selecting it, and customizing its design to fit your branding.
Watch this video to learn how to use smart landing page sets like a design pro:
9. Additional Site Settings in the Thrive Dashboard
Once you've completed the Setup Wizard and finalized your site's typography and branding, head over to the Thrive Dashboard.
Conversion Rate Optimization with Thrive Architect
Thrive Theme Builder helps you achieve the "Clarity, Readability, and Structure" and "Site Speed Optimization" conversion focus checkpoints for your website.
And Thrive Architect helps ensure that your pages convince your site visitors to take action.
Thrive Architect's Page Block templates are one of the most powerful features inside Thrive Architect that you can use to quickly customize and optimize your pages for conversions.
Thrive Architect is packed with all the features you need to easily design attractive site pages that make your audience want to become your customers, clients, or subscribers.
For example, if you want your website to include a search bar on your pages, you’ll find this element in our drag-and-drop editor.
It saves you hours in fretting over design trends & figuring out complex tools, while giving you complete freedom to match your website with your brand's style.
If you’re new to using WordPress and Thrive Themes tools, don’t let the learning curve intimidate you. You have everything you need to get started and build a site you'll iteratively improve upon over time.
The following resources are available to help you out:
Next Steps: Grow Your Online Business
Now you’ve seen how easy it is to go from zero to a clean, conversion-focused website using Thrive Architect and Thrive Theme Builder.
And if you need more guidance on how to create a stunning website for your business, take a look at these resources:
30+ Must Have Website Features for an Amazing User Experience
How to Create SEO-Friendly Blog Posts Users and Bots Will Love (14 Tips)
As you get more comfortable with our user-friendly tools, you'll start refining every detail to turn your simple design into an impressive website that offers your visitors an amazing experience — and also gets them to convert.
But most of all, make sure to have fun and we can’t wait to see what you build!
Are You Using the Right Tools for Your Online Business?
Thrive Suite is your all-in-one solution to building a thriving online business on WordPress – all by yourself.
With Thrive Suite, you’ll be miles ahead of your competition.
