How to Create a Clean, Conversion-Focused WordPress Website

When it comes to creating a conversion focused website for your online business, you need to do more than make it look nice.

In this post, you'll learn how to create a clean, conversion-focused website with only 2 plugins.

If you have limited to no design or coding experience, but want to build an impressive website for your business -- you need Thrive Theme Builder and Thrive Architect.

Read on to learn why these two plugins are all you'll need -- and why they're much better than other site building tools and solutions.

If you want to get the most out of this tutorial, download and install Thrive Theme Builder and Thrive Architect today.

Let's dive in.

Plugins You Need to Create a Clean Conversion Focused Website

Downloading and install the following plugins on your new WordPress site:

• Thrive Theme Builder + Thrive Architect - the ultimate no-code, visual building combo! Use Thrive Theme Builder to fully customize your WordPress theme and Thrive Architect to build any landing page or sales funnel you need to grow your business.
• AIOSEO to help you with Search Engine Optimization
• WP Legal Pages >> use this plugin to help generate the privacy policy, disclaimer and terms & conditions pages you need on your website.

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:

1. Clarity, Readability and Structure
2. Site Speed Optimization
3. Explicit Calls to Action
4. 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 Site’s Structure

1. Install Thrive Product Manager to Activate Thrive Theme Builder + Thrive Architect

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 install and 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

Once you've bought and installed Thrive Theme Builder, you won't need to purchase an additional WordPress theme.

Thrive Theme Builder comes with 4 professionally designed companion themes (Ommi, Shapeshift, Kwik, and Bookwise), complete with conversion-focused pages and block templates for every part of your website. 

Each theme is professionally designed and 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

Follow each of the steps in the Setup Wizard to get the nuts and bolts of your new theme designed fast:

1. Upload a dark and light version of your logo
2. Select your main brand color
3. Pick a conversion-focused header
4. Choose a footer
5. Select a Homepage template
6. Pick a Single Blog Post template 
7. Choose a Blog Post List template
8. Select a Page template
9. Choose a Menu template

By the end of the Setup Wizard, you'll have created a clean site structure 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.

These font settings include choosing font types, font colors, font sizes, font spacing, etc. to populate the following types of text:

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 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

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 comes packed with a Site Speed Optimization tool that makes establishing your site's performance settings in one click simple!

You get access to Project Lightspeed, our website asset optimization tool. 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.

We strongly recommend configuring caching settings for your website because it can help improve your site's speed and performance.

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.

Third, the feature manages your site's image optimization settings by either integrating with Optimole or Smush to then configuring those tools in a couple clicks.

Finally, for more advanced users, Thrive Theme Builder currently offers a Beta version of our Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) feature now in development. Try it out on a test site and give us your feedback to we can move it out of Beta as soon as possible.

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".

Launch the page in Thrive Architect to finalize the design and add your compelling copy.

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".

When taken to the next screen, name your page and select the bright green "Launch Thrive Architect" button. 

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

To create clean, conversion-focused pages that are aligned with the website structure you built in Thrive Theme Builder, we recommend the "Pre-built Landing Page" option.

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.

It saves you hours in fretting over designs & 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.

As you get more comfortable with the tools, you'll start refining every detail to achieve both conversion focused effectiveness as well as jaw-dropping design.

But most of all, make sure to have fun and we can’t wait to see what you build!

Start building your clean, conversion-focused website today!