Thrive Content Builder & Thrive Themes Review

In this post we are going to take a detailed look at Thrive Themes and their Thrive Content Builder, which are easy to use, marketing focused themes and page creation tools for non-tech people! 

And they focus on helping you create websites that get more customers.

Have you ever wanted to have an awesome looking website, or make a simple change, but just did not have the technical knowledge to do it?

Then Thrive Themes or Thrive Content Builder might be the perfect product for you!

Thrive Themes has been busy creating a way of building WordPress Websites that brings awesome design into anyone’s hands.

Their easy to use drag and drop content builder and huge list of content elements that helps anyone create stylish designs with a focus on marketing (ie. more customers).

There are two main areas they have to offer are:

• Thrive Themes
• Thrive Content Builder

So if you already have a theme you like, you can skip down to the Content Builder Section to see how that flies!

Thrive Themes

Thrive Themes currently comes in ten stylish designs ready for for you to use. If you want something great looking and focused on getting you customers, then this is a great way to go.

Note: I even completely switched my blog this year to the Thrive Rise Theme, and you can read about why here.

But there are already some great WordPress themes out there on the market, so why is Thrive Themes different?

Their focus is on conversion, which means getting you paying customers. And quite frankly this is what your website should be about. Building a nice website is a great start, but getting customers is the key!

And on top of that, if you grab their Content Builder, it makes adding or changing a website super simple. Even for non-techies!

Theme Examples

Here are the themes that they currently produce, to give you a feel for the kinds of sleek, modern designs that they create:

 

Lead Generation Built-in

These themes are very similar to many other modern WordPress Theme, but they also come with some fantastic additions – lead generation pages or landing pages:

• Landing Pages
• Sales Pages
• Thank You Pages
• Video Sales Page
• Email Confirmation pages

Basically all of the kinds of lead generation pages you need for marketing your business and getting customers. (Note: The exact pages differ for each theme)

Normally you have to either buy a separate tools like LeadPages, which is a great tool, but costs at least $37 per month.

The other option is to hand code them, which is usually even more expensive, especially when you want to change them all the time.

See a quick demo of the Thrive Landings Pages below:

Features Built In

Thrive Themes stand out because of their lead generation focus and built-in features. So you also get most of the things you need in a WordPress website built in, and also have to load a lot less plugins.

For example, Thrives Themes have the following:

• Mobile Responsive (mobile ready)
• Google Fonts Built In (choose any from Google)
• Icon Library (very handy, and saves on images)
• Image Optimizer (reduce image size, speed up load time)
• Related Posts, Optin Forms, Galleries, Social Sharing (normally need plugins)

Thrive Themes Costs and Pricing

**FOR FULL pricing information head to this thrive pricing page

The Thrive Themes team have split up their pricing so that you can simply grab the theme you like via the Theme Overview page, and each one is $49 (for a single site).

Or you can grab their Membership (which I have done) and get access to all themes, and plugins

This includes:

• Thrive Themes $49 each
• Thrive Content Builder (more on that below) $67
• Thrive Leads (review here) $67
• Thrive Landing Pages (you get some with Themes) comes with Content Builder
• Clever Widgets (for showing different widgets on different pages)

The full membership will cost you $147 for a year’s access (if you let it lapse, ie don’t pay, you miss out on upgrades etc but don’t lose the products). So if you use all three products (theme, builder and leads) it is worth it).

 

Thrive Content Builder – Change all your Pages Without Technical Knowledge

A great companion to the Thrive Themes is their Thrive Content Builder (more on that below) which allows you to easily edit or add content to your pages or posts.

So not only are we talking a simple drag and drop editor with a massive choice of built-in elements (from text & images to testimonials & opt-in forms), but also a level of detail and options that will satisfy any developer.

Note: I was a developer for 12 years, and this Content Builder can do almost anything. It would put me out of a job!

What that means is that you can take a Theme you like, but is not perfect (which is almost every theme) and tweak and change it to your exact needs. And all without a developer on board.

How exactly this works and what you can do with it I will go over below, because you can also buy the Content Page Builder as a plugin.

The really handy thing about the Thrive Content Builder is that it is simple drag and drop (WYSIWYG) style editor. So you can just choose what you want to use, put it where you want it. And then edit it to your hearts content.

NOTE:Thrive Content Builder will be REPLACED with Thrive Architect (the new version) after August 29th 2017 – VIDEO BELOW

Here is a quick review of the Content Builder if you want to see it in action:

See Your Content As it Will Be

What that actually means is that you actually get to see how it looks – LIVE. That is real WYSIWYG. No more guessing.

As you add your elements, they are shown on the page. And that is how it looks. Full stop!

No more preview, adjust, move, preview. It’s all there. It makes WordPress something it never was- a fun place to create and edit pages and posts.

The Menu And Editor

On the right is what the element menu looks like. It sits on the right of any page or post you create (this is not all of it, it was too long to put in this post).

So this is always present when you are editing your post/page and you can choose what you want to add to your content.

Each element on the page comes with an editor to tweak or change it, which looks like the one shown below (or less complex if there are less things to change).

This gives you all the things you are used to in WordPress plus a lot more:

• Alignment
• Links
• Fonts and Colors
• Highlighting
• Spacing
• Icons
• Padding and Margin
• CSS styles and classes

There are also the other fundamentals like save, undo and redo on the elements list.

And last but not least, create a template from your current page! So you can use it somewhere else.

What Elements are Available?

Thrive Content Builder has a huge list of elements you can add to your page such as:

• Text
• Images
• Buttons
• Dividers
• Columns
• Tables
• Grids
• Tabs

Those are most of the basics things you would expect from such an editor. But here are the ones you are going to love:

Optin Form

Easily connect to your email marketing service and add optin forms anywhere

Testimonial Box

Embed 3 different styles of testimonials on your pages

Review Stars

Great for adding to those product reviews

Credit Card Icons

Place these icons near your buy button to show what you accept.

Click To Tweet Box

Embed within your content to get extra tweets on your posts.

Call To Action Box

Great way to highlight a call to action with a title and text, then the actual Call To Action Button

 Google Map

Embed a Google Map anywhere on your site

 

Guarantee Box

Make sure your customers know what you guarantee

Pricing Table

Show your different products and prices

 

There are more, but you get the idea.

There are really a lot of amazing built-in elements and features your can use to create stunning, high-converting web pages just using the Content Builder.

Landing Pages

The Thrive Content Builder also comes with over 100 landing pages you can select from and use to create any page on your site. I am already trying it out as an alternative to my LeadPages landing pages. What I really love is that I can do it right in WordPress, and really customize every single element. (both limitations of LeadPages)

Here are what some of the landing pages look like:

So there are templates for lots of different landing pages such as:

• Lead Pages
• Download Pages
• Thank You/Confirmation Pages
• Sales Pages
• Video Sales Pages
• Welcome Pages

And even if you do not like the page, it is very easy to customize with the Content Builder elements mentioned above. So you just choose a page to start with, then tweak it or change it completely to suit your needs.

Templates

They even allow you to create your own templates based on the landing pages you have changed. So you can make your own masterpieces and use them as the basis for your other landing pages too.

Popups and Event Managers

The Thrive Themes team have added another readlly useful set of features using popups and event management. Sounds a bit complex I know, but let me explain.

What it means is that you can add popups to links, images or buttons and get optins anywhere on your website.

How would you do this? Here is an example of a quick popup I made.

1. Add a Call To Action or Button to your page and then use the Event Manager inside the element editor. 

Below you see a Call to Action box with a Buy Now Button. When you click on that, you can manage the events with the Event Manager

2. Workding with Event Manager, you choose > Add An Event then…

Choose the Trigger option of Click. (this means when I “click” the button)

Choose the Action = Open Thrive Lightbox (this opens a popup when you click)

Next you choose which lightbox (popup), and if you have not made one, you can create a new one.

 

3. The lightbox/popup itself is just an empty panel where you put an Optin Form from the standard elements, and anything else you need.

This is what I quickly created to show you what it would look like. Obviously it can be simple like this, or more complex with more text, images etc.

 

Exit Popups – Catch Visitors as they Leave

A very effective way to build your email list is by using Exit Popups, which open when the user is about to leave the page.

The Thrive Content Builder also has this as an option, so you can add these to your pages as well.

The latest version of the plugin has a new option near the save/redo/undo buttons that opens a Page Event Manager. Which means things you want to happen on the page/post.

Once you are inside the page event manager you can choose the kind of event you want to trigger a lightbox (all similar to the above example with the button).

Again, you need to follow the process of

1. Add Event
2. Choose Trigger (Exit Intent)
3. Choose Action (Open Lightbox)
4. Choose or Create a Lightbox

If you are always using the same lightbox to capture leads, then you only have to select it by name from the list.

 

Timed Popups – Open Popups When You Want

Another option you have on page level is to add a Timed Popup, that opens after a specific amount of time, instead of on exit.

This is very similar to the process above, exit you choose the Trigger > Timer, then you have to use the slider to choose the amount of time before the lightbox/popup opens. You can see that below.

 

How About Animation! – Other Triggers and Actions

The event manager is actually pretty cool and quite powerful, so I wanted to mention the other things you can do with it.

As far as triggers go, you can actually get things to happen based on three triggers:

• Click
• Mouseover (just having the mouse on top of the element)
• Element enters Viewport (ie. when you scroll down the page, the element appears)

So you could get a popup to appear at a certain point on the page, or on mouseover. Although these things are not that common.

What other actions do we have then?  Animation!

You can move elements on/off the screen, fade in/out, up/down and so on. So you could:

• bring in an optin form when the user gets to the bottom of the page
• have a button animate a certain way (roll, zoom etc) to make it more obvious, like a call to action

Now that is a powerful addition to your website!

Also Check Out Thrive Leads- One of the best plugins for creating high coverting optin forms on your WordPress website

Final Words

The Thrive Themes or just the Thrive Content Builder alone is extremely powerful and easy to use.

There is so much you can do with the tools the Thrive team have made it really is quite impressive.

From my perspective the following are the main reasons you would use them:

• Focus on lead generation – so getting more leads and customers
• Simple to use drag and drop with a massive library of elements (no tech skills required)
• Landing pages and popups features that match or beat any tool on the market right now

So why not take WordPress to the next level, and make your Website rock!