About Flagship Content

A StudioPress theme and the Atomic Blocks plugin makes a solid foundation for a service business website.

If you bought your theme directly from StudioPress. You can log in to your my.studiopress.com account and watch a set of basic WordPress tutorial videos. These tutorial videos help you get started building your website.

If a web designer set up your site for you you’ll need a basic idea of how WordPress works. Most libraries have books on WordPress, I suggest you read one of them.

“I know WordPress all-ready!”

Great, you can now start building your own website and promoting your service business.

What you’ll need

You will need WordPress 5 or above, the block editor activated and the Atomic Blocks installed on your site. If you want to follow these tutorials.

Why we’ll be using the Atomic Blocks plugin

The Atomic Blocks plugin is owned and maintained by the people who own StudioPress, WP Engine. Some of the most modern StudioPress themes are designed with the expectation that most users will be using the Atomic Blocks plugin.

So it makes sense that we should use Atomic Blocks rather than any of the other plugins that are available for WordPress.

Like peaches and cream, StudioPress and Atomic Blocks are made for each other.

Atomic Blocks are ideal for service businesses

Look at the list of extra blocks that are added to your site when you install the Atomic Blocks plugin.

Most service business owners look at that list and say “this is exactly what I need”.

What you need to do first

• Learn how to use WordPress.
• Discover what content successful service businesses include on their website.
• Learn how to display that content in a professional looking way.

You’re biggest barrier is overwhelm. That’s why I recommend you keep it simple, at least to begin with.

A clean, simple, minimalist website almost always looks more professional than a site filed with bells and whistles.

The content you’ll need

Most marketing books are written about larger businesses and corporations. Finding good advice, that’s suitable for a small service business to follow, is difficult. Luckily some professionals give freely of their very specific knowledge and experience.

Gill Andrews helps small service business owners hone and perfect their website content. Gill tells you what content you need and how you need to present that content to maximize your conversion rate.

When your business is making money, Gill’s services are a great investment. But to begin with you can use the free tools, guides and advice that Gill provides on her blog.

Start with the free homepage checklist.

Hosting, domain name, WordPress and a theme

If you’ve just started in business, or you’re running a side gig, you need to keep the costs down. For your first year you could use budget hosting from a good quality host such as SiteGround. You could even use a free theme.

Premium hosting for a mission critical website. As your business grows it makes sense to invest more in your website. WP Engine offer high quality hosting. And because they own StudioPress, they include a StudioPress theme with their hosting.

Putting it all together

Once you’ve got some basic content, a domain name and hosting. You can get started building your website.