In our never-ending quest to do great stuff that blows your socks off and puts a grin on your face, we’ve updated the WordPress bit of the Christmas Sales Page Templates.
There were two big problems with the original version.
Problem #1 – The elements on the templates were fixed in place.
Problem #2 – The order button had text on it as part of the button graphics.
We’ve now fixed both of those.
Solution #1 – We’ve created short code tags to represent most of the elements on the page.
This means you can now write your sales copy in the main editor, and position the elements wherever you want them within the copy by adding a tag where you want it to appear. 🙂
The short code tags you can use are:-
[product] – Inserts a johnson box with the contents of the Product Options fields.
[testimonial-1] – Inserts a johnson box with the contents of Comments Options 1.
[testimonial-2] – Inserts a johnson box with the contents of Comments Options 2.
[testimonial-3] – Inserts a johnson box with the contents of Comments Options 3.
[certificate] – Inserts a certificate graphic with the contents of the Certificate Options fields.
[purchase] – Inserts the order button with the contents of the Purchase Options fields.
[ps] – Inserts the PS detail with the contents of the P.S. Options fields.
[footer-links] – Inserts the footer links or text with the contents of the Footer field.
[br] – Inserts a single line break and is incredibly useful as the WordPress editor (TinyMCE) will strip out extra breaks in visual mode editing.
That last one was a spark of brilliance from the plugin developer and I’ve asked if we can have it included in the next version of Big Ed too.
You’ll notice that the exception/exclusion with the above tags is the Header Option.
It has to be at the top and will break the appearance of the page if we tried to make it movable.
This means you can now do things like create your page sales copy so it looks something like this:-
———————
[br][br][product]
Yes! That’s right! You can… blah, blah, blah.
[testimonial-1]
This enables you to… blah, blah, blah.
[certificate]
[testimonial-2]
So why delay? Order now!
[purchase]
Closing text… blah, blah, blah.
[ps]
[testimonial-3]
[purchase]
[footer-links]
———————
Note that the [purchase] tag has been used twice so that you can put the order button in its regular place and also at the bottom for those people who go straight down to look for the price.
Cool huh?
Solution #2 – Alexandra L wrote to us to say that as a French speaker she wanted a method of changing the text on the order button or for us to supply the blank graphics.
D’oh!
Fixed. So now you can do that too.
We’ve added a new Purchase Option called “Purchase Button Text”. Any text you enter into that field will appear like magic on the order button. No graphical editing required.
😉
The text itself appears to be embedded into the button and part of the button graphic (done with CSS I think), so again it’s another bit of brilliance from the designer and developer.
…
The result of these two changes means great looking sales page designs which anyone can use on any of their WordPress blogs without really needing to know anything about HTML.
Just upload, activate and add sales copy.
The only thing we can’t make easier for you is the sales copy. It’s a skill you *need* to learn for yourself. Practice makes perfect.
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The plugin isn’t perfect yet and there are a few inconsistencies such as the short code tags not matching the option description, but we’ll fix that with the next release. I wanted to get it out to you ASAP while it’s still leading up to Christmas. 😉
Just go back to your personal download page (you DID bookmark it, right?) and grab the zip.
What you’ll find when you upload and activate it is that the page looks EMPTY when you first select a template and publish.
Don’t forget (like I did) that you need to add all the short code tags in your page editor before they show. Ahem. 😉
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Finally, Multiple Streams Themes 4 and the squeeze page templates that went on sale on Friday now have just a few copies left at the $12.50 price point, so they’re still quite cheap if you don’t already have them.
Probably the next release of the Page Template Plugin will incorporate both squeeze and sales page functionality and you’ll be able to choose between the two with templates being optional extras.
Have fun…
-Frank Haywood
