While many of these techniques described in the  post should be done by technical people, there are a lot of quick modifications, like low hanging fruits, that you can do all by yourself, which can help you improve the WordPress website load time dramatically.

In the above, our customization led to a 50% reduction in a WordPress website’s load time! How did we do it?

Here are some Easy Do It Yourself Tips to Improve WordPress Load Time:

• Clean Up Code – Remove Code Comments, White Spaces, Line Breaks & wasted spaces in all the template files that cause the template file size to increase
• Clean Up CSS Files – CSS files define the styling of the website & determines which images to use as part of the template. We always find a lot of images that are referenced in the CSS are never really used or do not exist. You can safely delete such references or styling information that you do not need
• Use Thumbnail Images – many designers use various sizes of the same large image file to suite various design layouts. A great example is a magazine layout where designers display the same image in different sizes. The best way is to use WordPress’s Thumbnail Sizes that are of smaller sizes, instead of resizing the original image with a “Width=” or “Height=” parameter
• Eliminate Ads that Take Longer to Load – if you are showing advertisements, then this is one place to look at for improving the website load time. Ads, without any doubt, slow down websites
• Avoid IFRAME – IFRAMEs tend to load an external website onto your website. It is like loading multiple web pages inside one. Naturally the loading time increases considerably if you use too many IFRAMEs

In the website that we recently customized, the load time improved from over 16 secs in one scenario to below 3.5 secs in the best case. However, the client felt the need to have an extremely high resolution, large logo image on the website. The final results were still an impressive 4.5 seconds.

These are 5 Easy to Implement DIY Tips that you can implement on your WordPress sites. These are also standard part of our WordPress Customization Services where we try to optimize business websites running on WordPress.

For example, marketers in the video games business expect people in the younger age groups, from all over the world, looking for the latest in specific categories of video games. This behavior is very different from people visiting dating websites or people who frequent financial or debt relief websites, where they tend to spend more time reading, reviewing & interacting with the content.

Customization Helps Making Business Websites Profitable

When customization is driven with business goals, they tend to drive more profits for your business. Since each affiliate marketing website is focused on a niche marketing area, customizing the design helps to address those design gaps that appeal to the specific behaviors for that niche market.

Customization also helps you optimize the designs further for better organic searches, by eliminating design elements that do not appeal to your customers & by adding the ones that do. Videos, pictures and advertisement positions are 3 key elements of the design whose effectiveness vary tremendously with the niche markets.

Shopping Theme Designs also offer immense opportunities to customize & increase the overall effectiveness & efficiency of the websites by designing the website elements that appeal to your specific customer groups. For example, if you are selling health products, more than pictures, videos are known to influence buying decisions. On the contrary, if you are selling kid’s products from your affiliate marketing site, multiple product images perform better than either copy content or videos.

For more on how to customize your Niche WordPress Marketing & Advertising Theme, click here for our Creative Customization Services.

You need a special software that will simulate the same environment of an Apache Server with a MySQL database on your computer. XAMPP is a free open source software that will do just that.

The process of setting up XAMPP & WordPress on your local computer is quite easy & well documented. There are 4 steps before you could get started with customizing WordPress Themes on your local PC yourself:

• download & install XAMPP on your computer from Friends of Apache website
• configure XAMPP so that WordPress could work on your local PC
• download WordPress CMS system from WordPress.org
• create Themes quickly with the Drag & Drop Theme Generator & modify & test out customized themes on your local computer before you host them on the live website

There are a lot of documentations on how to set up XAMPP on your PC. The best, step by step guide on installing XAMPP & configuring it for WordPress is available in this article Using XAMPP for Local WordPress Theme Development.

Once done setting up, the best way is to use the Drag & Drop WordPress Theme Creator to generate the basic structure very quickly. Using this tool will also help you avoid being caught up in semantics & php programming. It will also help you create the basic theme in minutes so that you can spend more time in customizing them.

When you have customized your theme, save them on your computer & FTP them onto your web server to start using it on the live website.

Click Here to Download the Free WordPress & Business Tools.

The combination includes all the variety of tools that both designers & marketers need to run a profitable WordPress business & marketing websites – a free FTP tool, a top class free file zipping tool, free video players for websites are a few.

These free software tools are all open source software & supported by some of the most successful open source software makers. They are meant to make your technical processes easier, safer & secure.

View the Tools page & download these free marketing & WordPress tools for your business.

A creative Sign Up form that gels with the design of your WordPress theme is absolutely essential for increased subscriptions. It is easy if you are Signing Up with A Weber for Email Lists.

What makes the Sign Up forms Effective?

Tip 1 Keeping Sign Up Forms Design Simple – as with everything else, simplicity is a key factor in the effectiveness of subscriptions.

Tip 2 Keeping the Subscription Form Visible – depending on how important a subscription is for you, you have to decide on the right placement within the creative theme. We recommend keeping the sign-up form above the 600px fold.

Tip 3 Making the Offer – the most effective sign-up forms disclose your offer in short. In the examples below, these forms are designed to match with the creative themes. These forms let the subscriber know what they are signing up for.

Creative & Effective Web Sign Up Forms for WordPress Themes

Tip 4 Keep the Sign Up Process Short – most email services provide you with a lot of additional information by default, like location, country, state, date, time, sign up URL etc.They also provide you with the flexibility of having custom fields if you need them. However, it is best to ask for only the most essential information while signing up. Keeping the process short & easy makes it more effective.

Tip 5 Give the Visitor Another Chance - have more than one ways to sign up. Providing the sign up form on multiple pages is definitely the right thing to do. That apart, provide multiple ways to the visitor to subscribe.

Services like A Weber allows you to replicate the same list in various formats like lightbox, pop-up or inline etc. So anyone missing the sign-up form once, will have the chance to sign up again while they are still on your website.

As a creative designer, make the subscription form an integral part of the entire creative theme design. Consult your customers and suggest them ways in how the subscription could be made effective with further A/B testing & usability updates.

Most of the Creative WordPress Themes designed by our teams are built with top line customization in mind. Such customizations could result in more conversions on Online Shopping Themes & more click through hits for other calls to actions.

There are several examples & case studies on this website showing how small personalization of these creative themes have helped numerous small businesses, affiliate marketers & freelancers increase their realizations & achieved their goals many times over.

Most theme users have a notion that customizations are not required, or the essential customization means adding the advertising codes. However, if you plan to customize your design based on how you are going to use the WordPress Theme, you would be able to create a more effective website.

If you are using any of our themes, email us or call us. We now offer a comprehensive customization service to help you create an integrated online system (Click Here to Read More on Creative Themes Customization).

Behind each of our Creative WordPress Themes there are months of discussions, alterations, tests & tweaks before any of them are released in the marketplace. We know exactly how & where you may benefit from customizations & we could help you set up your online business website faster than anyone else, at a cost that beats anyone else!

Unlike many other so called “business themes” created by amateurs, these professionally designed themes are built grounds up by experienced marketers and business owners. These are not the usual WordPress Themes that are “converted” to show a few ads.

Instead, these are genuinely created to make online business more effective & more efficient by catering to the exact needs of small online business owners.

Why Stress on WordPress – WordPress is probably one of the best creations of the decade, enabling instant publishing and a true easy to use content management systems. The whole idea behind WordPress is to keep is so simple that everyone can use (their 5 Minute Installation Guide should be named 2 Minute Installation Guide! its as easy.)

Anyone using WordPress ends up with running a very efficient online business at practically no ongoing cost!

Why Creative WordPress Themes – there is a ton of options for WordPress users to choose themes for any sort of website, ranging from free to the ones that could cost you a couple of hundred dollars. However, all these are “generic” themes that are often sold as “marketing” themes!

Our Creative WordPress Themes are designed for marketing & advertising businesses, with each feature having its own reason to be present. It also eliminates any feature that marketers do not need in their business. These Creative WordPress Themes are completely different from the tons of generic themes marketed under many names.

Marketing & Advertising Themes Market – there is a very well defined market for these creative WordPress themes. Marketers, Social Businesses, MLM businesses, Photography business owners as well as Freelancers who make money online from blog ads are the perfect fit for these Creative WordPress Themes.

If you are attempting to run an efficient online website with the intent of running a profitable business & making the best use of social networking, affiliate marketing & the high paying blog advertisers, you should be using any of these Creative WordPress Themes.

Customization lends any website the flavor of your business, helps build your brand and makes your marketing efforts more efficient by designing call outs and banners in the right places.

We have a very effective customization service (click here to read about our WordPress Themes Customization). All the Creative Marketing Themes & Advertising Themes can be customized very quickly to match the specific small business needs. Since all these WordPress Themes are specifically designed for marketing including affiliate marketing, MLM marketing & online stores, customization makes such websites extremely effective for the business.

Most of the time we recommend these following customizations on all the Creative Marketing Advertising Themes:

• Optimal Display of Categories
• Effective usage of Categories & Tags
• Effective banner placements
• Effective placement of Calls to Actions
• Integration with online registration forms
• Integration with social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter etc
• Recommendations on Search Engine Optimization
• Branding & recommendations of tag lines
• Ticker Ads placements for most effectiveness

Improvement on any website is a continuous process. However these personalization gives you a head start in the most effective usage of these Creative WordPress Themes.

In a recent survey we found that many of our customers are not using all the essential features of these marketing advertising themes! Doing that basically means they are leaving valuable business opportunities unused – features that could help them make more money with these themes.

If you need more information on any of the Creative Marketing Advertising Themes, as to how you can really make these designs work for your online business, write to us immediately with your contact details.

The WP Pro Stores Theme users, the Pro MLM Theme users & others have written to us over & over again how they have customized calls to actions on these creative Marketing WordPress Themes to increase their overall ROI.

The most popular calls to action depend on the nature of the business as well as the purpose of the website (or the landing page). They could be as simple as Registrations & Sign Ups to more immediate Buy Now calls.

The Creative Marketing Themes are tested before they are released. The testers include successful online marketers, freelancers who make money blogging as well as extensive MLM business owners. Tests include effectiveness of call-to-action placements.

Most of these creative WordPress Themes for Business leave opportunity for the business owners to customize their specific calls to actions with banners, links or even rotating banners & links. We recommend 8 Tips for Effective Calls to Actions & definitely not more than 3 for any business at one time, & preferably not more than 2 on a single page.

These WordPress Business Marketing Themes also make it very easy to experiment & test the effectiveness of call outs with A/B testing without much hassles. Rarely business themes users have to edit any templates & most of these experiments can be done using the custom theme options panels.

If you have any suggestions, please drop us a mail or leave a comment here.

We always recommend our customers to personalize these themes to make them unique for their business. The process is quite simple & usually takes a couple of hours to customize a well designed marketing theme.

Benefits of Personalizing WordPress Marketing Themes

1. A Unique Look & Feel – though the themes generally defines templates, WordPress allows tons of creative customizations that can create a very unique look for your marketing & business websites

2. Makes Your Business & Marketing Site Stand Out – with very simple customizations you can make any out-of-the-box creative marketing WordPress themes stand out from the rest

3. Makes Branding Easier – branding is just not about logo. Sure a logo is important but there could be other ways to impress your brand through a very personalized creative theme design

4. Makes Call to Actions Effective – most of our Creative WordPress Themes are designed with certain calls to action in mind. However, to make it suitable for your business style & calls, you would need customizations to make them effective

5. Make it for your Customers – through easy customizations you can make your website so appealing to your customers. This could be as simple as including a few custom scripts or a couple of custom free giveaways that are so desirable in your niche

6. Leave your Impressions – customizations & personalization leaves a lasting impression in your customer’s mind. This is very important especially when growing your business means building a trust worthy relationship with your readers & customers

With a personalized website you get the best of both worlds – a very affordable & functional out-of-the-box marketing theme & a very effective & unique website for your business. And its has been proved over and over again that these customizations are so worth the price!