Best converting templates

learningcurve

learningcurve

Genitals are funny
Apr 9, 2011
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Out riding my motorcycle
Hey guys, been looking at templates like Thesis and Heatmap and was wondering if some of you had preferences, or if you believe there is a particular type of WP template that aids in increasing CTR?

Thanks in advance and obligatory T and A

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Based on your post you want to increase CTR? As you know CTR is only a small portion to the profitability of a site or campaign.

But in terms of WordPress themes you need something flexible, SEO ready, and flat out easy as shit to launch. But wouldn't it be cool if they made skins for theme frameworks instead of child themes? Take a base theme like Thesis or Genesis and instead of installing a child theme you just install a skin to set your base for your landing page using the same framework. No more dicking around with finding themes to match what you want.

I can not think of any easier theme to do this than Canvas by WooThemes. With Canvas you can design your own landers and export to other projects. You don't even need to know any coding to do this but it does help. Hell I recently launched a site just for this reason called Conversion Canvas.

The site is still in its infant stages but by looking around you should quickly realize that Canvas is the shit. All skins are designed using Canvas options inside the wp-admin. Like I mentioned the site is barely ready as I have many plans for tutorials and other shit but Canvas is the ultimate internet marketers theme. Unlike CTRTheme.com or other high CTR Themes the entire WordPress functionality is at your disposal.

Taxonomies, Post types and conditional tags are the shit to quickly launch a robust lander efficiently.
 
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1nspire said:
Based on your post you want to increase CTR? As you know CTR is only a small portion to the profitability of a site or campaign.

But in terms of WordPress themes you need something flexible, SEO ready, and flat out easy as shit to launch. But wouldn't it be cool if they made skins for theme frameworks instead of child themes? Take a base theme like Thesis or Genesis and instead of installing a child theme you just install a skin to set your base for your landing page using the same framework. No more dicking around with finding themes to match what you want.

I can not think of any easier theme to do this than Canvas by WooThemes. With Canvas you can design your own landers and export to other projects. You don't even need to know any coding to do this but it does help. Hell I recently launched a site just for this reason called Conversion Canvas.

The site is still in its infant stages but by looking around you should quickly realize that Canvas is the shit. All skins are designed using Canvas options inside the wp-admin. Like I mentioned the site is barely ready as I have many plans for tutorials and other shit but Canvas is the ultimate internet marketers theme. Unlike CTRTheme.com or other high CTR Themes the entire WordPress functionality is at your disposal.

Taxonomies, Post types and conditional tags are the shit to quickly launch a robust lander efficiently.
Click to expand...

This is exactly what Clickbump is....
 
Clickbump is interesting. I wouldn't go as far as to say exactly but clickbump does have its strengths. Without buying it my concern is that you are limited to what the plugin installs. If you do need some template editing how easy is it? Do these guy offer support for their theme? The reason I asked is if you search around on the ctrtheme.com guy support is not his strongest attribute.

The site looks like a clickbank thing so I doubt its backed by a 2 mil year theme company where Canvas is.

Watching the video it looks like this theme was designed for novice marketers as the plugin sets the whole site up with default pages, post, navigation and then you have to go and redo everything. I am not seeing the time savings.

With Canvas you can create base templates for PPV, MFA's and what ever your mind can come up with. Its like having a theme framework for any type of site. You can either do it yourself or download skins from Conversion Canvas.

Beyond the theme stylistic stuff with Canvas's Hooks you can easily slap some geo script or any type of javascript and not even open a text editor. The hook manager gives you access you numerous elements of the theme plus you can access the before </head> and </body> tags without any FTP.

Like I said Clickbump has its strengths but it won't move me away from Canvas.
 
1nspire said:
Clickbump is interesting. I wouldn't go as far as to say exactly but clickbump does have its strengths. Without buying it my concern is that you are limited to what the plugin installs. If you do need some template editing how easy is it? Do these guy offer support for their theme? The reason I asked is if you search around on the ctrtheme.com guy support is not his strongest attribute.

The site looks like a clickbank thing so I doubt its backed by a 2 mil year theme company where Canvas is.

Watching the video it looks like this theme was designed for novice marketers as the plugin sets the whole site up with default pages, post, navigation and then you have to go and redo everything. I am not seeing the time savings.

With Canvas you can create base templates for PPV, MFA's and what ever your mind can come up with. Its like having a theme framework for any type of site. You can either do it yourself or download skins from Conversion Canvas.

Beyond the theme stylistic stuff with Canvas's Hooks you can easily slap some geo script or any type of javascript and not even open a text editor. The hook manager gives you access you numerous elements of the theme plus you can access the before </head> and </body> tags without any FTP.

Like I said Clickbump has its strengths but it won't move me away from Canvas.
Click to expand...

I've spoken with the designer(Scott Blanchard) countless times and he's always been there when I have needed help with the theme. I can have a site set up with everything done in less than 10 minutes if I have the content already on hand. It's the quickest solution if you are wanting to scale.
 
Some interesting responses and I thank you all for them. Most of the sites that I want a ready made template for fall into the splog category.

I have a few sites that would benefit from a higher CTR and basically me spending less time fucking around with them. I can see the benefits with all of the ones mentioned and will rep you all.

Faceblogger, I have read that some people have issues with CTRthemes and was wondering if you had encountered any. The main one seems to be with ads not showing because of a padding issue with the template and that G won't serve ads on sometimes because of it.

Canvas by Woohoo looks intriguing to say the least and if I wanted to develop some full on money sites, that would be the go, but like I said, these fall more into the splog category. Do you see any benefit to using it for them 1nspire? Are they quick and painless to get up (looking for the least time spent here) unless it becomes a full blown money site?

jhoffy22, clickbump looks interesting as well, especially with the two second set up. Are they easily customized and if you find a set up you like, can you quickly import it to another site, or do you have to go through the whole process again?

Not trying to sound lazy, I'm simply trying to minimize time spent on this particular part of the set-up process as I already have a shit load on my plate.

Thanks guys. :)

Edit: will have to rep Faceblogger later - too much rep given out apparently
 
secretagentdad said:
Quit fretting about it.
Click through is primarily driven by off page factors. Just get your ads in the top left and adsense will slowly optimize to maximize revenue.
Click to expand...

Not sure I agree with this, although I'll concede that off-page factors are playing an increasing role.

I switched one of my adsense supported sites over this past Summer from a Thesis minimal theme to CTR Theme and immediately saw a doubling of CTR. It went from 5% to 11% and has stayed there since. Because the only thing I did was change the theme, I have to attribute the increase to that.

I've since rolled out CTR Theme to several other Adsense sites and routinely see the CTR increase by significant amounts.

But, and here's the rub, sometimes the CPC goes down as the CTR goes up, so the revenue growth doesn't exactly scale with the increases. It's frustrating, but at least revenue does go up.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with CTR Theme for these kinds of sites. It does have its limitations, however, and aesthetically it sucks balls. But if all you're doing is pumping out thin MFA sites, you really can't go wrong with it.

I'm very interested in digging more into Canvas for some of my higher-quality sites. I use WooThemes a lot and love them. Haven't made the time to explore Canvas yet.
 
Canvas by Woohoo looks intriguing to say the least and if I wanted to develop some full on money sites, that would be the go, but like I said, these fall more into the splog category. Do you see any benefit to using it for them 1nspire? Are they quick and painless to get up (looking for the least time spent here) unless it becomes a full blown money site?
Click to expand...
Without knowing much about what you are wanting to do I could see Canvas being a theme that you would use on your money sites as well as slpogs or single page sites. On Conversion Canvas most of the skins use the 2 column layout with content to the right. With Canvas you can set it 1,2 or 3 column with 1,2,3 or 4 footer widget areas.

So what you can do with Canvas is make a set of skins that would be better suited for each type of site you are making. If you are doing a 1 page lander or squeeze page then set it for 1 column. Then simply download the backup file for the theme setting and import to a new domain. This is how the skin system works on my site.

Other stuff that I will cover in more detail is how I made this basic PPV lander. Basic PPV

Inside the themes options I am able to remove elements of the base theme. Notice on the demo there is no header, footer, navigation or even the page title. All of those elements I removed inside the themes options using the custom.css area. What you do is use firebug to locate the element class or id and then simply add #header {display:none;} to the custom.css and the entire header element will be removed.

Other things I will cover in more detail is lets say you have big money site but you want to make a squeeze page inside your theme template. You want to retain your header footer but remove the navigation for a certain page id. Well with Canvas you can do this easily. Insert .pageid-XX #navigation {display:none;} in the custom.css and your are done. No editing of the template file or making custom page templates.

The bottom line is that Canvas will require some time to learn if you plan to take advantage of what it brings. Or you can use the skins provided from Conversion Canvas as more are created. WooThemes does provide a bunch of information in their support forum and will help you with a lot more than they should in terms of customization. But there isn't a good resource for this theme and is why I started Conversion Canvas.
 
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Thanks again 1nspire. :)

Bookmarking the site to read up some more. Will probably go with CTR theme first and also purchase Conversion Canvas to play with. Figure if I get both, one can act as a stop gap until I fully figure out the other and will give me a greater variety to work with and a skin that I will want to duplicate.

Repped everyone now...big thanks guys.
 
CTR Theme looked pretty cool but I have found many responses on other forums about mixed results. Some even believe that CTR Theme leaves a footprint.

Besides the ability to block referrers when submitting your site to a directory there wasn't anything that CTR Theme had that couldn't duplicated using a plugin.

Say for instance the Easy Money skin. You can use the WP Random Ads to add the rotating ad positions on page refresh. You can also accomplish this WordPress › All in One Adsense and YPN Pro « WordPress Plugins.

To really speed things what you could do is setup a site with all your plugins, theme activated with settings then use Backup Buddy to install on new domains. Everything will be moved and activated. I have not used Backup buddy personally but I was told that this would work. Basically backup buddy will install a site just like it was when the backup was created.

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OMFG guys

its about RPM and RPM alone.

In my experiance themes can make a click through difference of 4-8 % (assuming clean minimalistic themes and top left placements + or - the other ad blocks)

Off page factors can make a can make a click through difference of 20-30%.

++ a good chunk of the off page factors you're looking for for click through typically go hand in hand with higher value clicks.

++ ad rotation is fucking useless for search traffic.

Showing to many ads cuts your cpc. YES google will try to optimize to increase RPM but they kinda fail like 80% of the time.
 
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