10 Irresistible Reasons To Move To Thrive Themes (And Never Go Back)

In this post I am going to explain to you why Thrive Themes will rock your world when it comes to WordPress Themes.

I have been using my own variation of a free WordPress theme I downloaded nearly 3 years ago.

In the beginning, it was enough to get me going with my blog, and I did not have the money to invest in premium/paid themes.

As time passed by, I realised that by using an outdated theme that was suited to my needs, I was just shooting myself in the foot – over and over again!

Ouch!

I was compromising on sales and conversions. 

My site was slower than it needed to be (and I have already gotten my site pretty fast)

And I had way too many plugins, including a whole bunch that were not needed…if I used a better theme.

The Choice of a New and Improved WordPress Theme

I use a lot of great themes to create websites for my clients, but none of them amazed me enough to change my theme.

Sure they all look great, are mobile responsive, and have lots of features such as page builders and layout options.

But they are not designed to sell more, keep things simple and load fast.

That is what Thrive Themes is designed to do.

In very simple terms, Thrive Themes offers:

• conversion focused themes (so they are designed from the ground up to sell more)
• feature-rich themes with a whole bunch of options that mean you can delete tons of plugins
• a stunningly easy to use page builder to create modern websites
• landing pages, and optin forms that can be created in minutes (and tested with A/B testing)

and a whole bunch more.

But let’s just focus on the things that made me switch my theme over (not something I do lightly!).

Conversion Optimisation is Built-In

What does that mean exactly? Well, Shane Melaugh and his team are dedicated to creating themes that sell more (or get you more email sign ups).

1. It Starts With Great Design

So the designs are:

• very simple in terms of layout
• with easy to read and larger fonts and lots of white space (have you noticed how easy this is to read?)
• have simple and clear navigation

All of these kinds of best practices for web design lead to better user experience and more conversions/sales.

2. Focus Areas for High Conversions

And that is just the beginning. They also provide you with focus areas, which are specific optin forms or calls to action you can place in prominent locations on your website.

Just like the big guns in online marketing, you will notice they all have a homepage focus area (aka feature box or hero section) designed to get you to do one thing.

Derek Halpern, a big tester of such things has this as his number one place to put an optin on your website, and got a 51.7% optin increase on DIYThemes with this method.

Takeaway: You should be doing this too.

And with Thrive Themes this is built in, so you just design one and say where you want it (top of homepage, blog pages etc)

3. Landing Pages Built-in

Each theme also comes with pre-built landing pages, as well as the 80 or more that you get with Thrive Content Builder (comes with the Themes).

So you can add/build landing pages for almost anything, in minutes, make them look stunning and designed to suit to your theme.

If you want to learn more about how the landing pages work, check out my detailed review here.

So no more Leadpages subscription or landing page optin (which can cost you $50-100). It’s all built in!

4. Thrive Leads For Optins Everywhere

The Thrive team have not stopped there, you also get Thrive Leads with your membership, so you have the ability to add optins or calls to action almost anywhere else on the website.

So you can do all the usual optins you should expect from a modern WordPress plugin:

• Popups (exit intent, timed, scroll triggered)
• Slide-ins
• 2-step optins (triggered from links, images or buttons)
• 2 stage optins (like Neil Patel made famous)
• Header Ribbons (like the hellobar)

And a whole lot more including A/B split testing to make your optins convert even better.

5. Thrive Clever Widgets (Show Widgets When & Where You Want)

Another recent innovation from the Thrive team is the clever widgets. Sure there are other plugins that do the same, but it shows they know how useful it is.

Why is this plugin useful?

Instead of displaying the same things on the same pages, it makes far more sense to show targeted content to an audience.

That means content that is far more likely to convert and sell.

• optin boxes in your sidebar that relate to the current blog posts
• ads that sell products related to the current topic
• even posts or guides you have that are more specific

And these are just some ideas off the top of my head – but it means in the end more conversions, optins and sales!

And then there are all the other plugins you can throw away…

Say Goodbye To A Bunch Of Your Plugins

Thrive Themes has so many great built-in features, you can throw away most of those plugins that are either costing you money or slowing down your site.

6. Blazing Social Media Buttons

This is a more recent addition (summer 2015) to Thrive Themes, which shows that these guys are constantly improving too!

Now you have some of the best social media buttons around built right into the themes.

So now, you don’t need a separate social media plugin anymore.

These buttons have been built to be head and shoulders ahead of most existing plugins out there too, so they:

• load fast because they do not wait for social media sites to finish loading (like most plugins do)
• are designed to match the themes, (not look like random buttons attached to your website like many share buttons)
• are mobile responsive, so they work on all devices (not more disappearing buttons on a mobile!)
• are designed to get more shares – fade-ins when user scrolls drawing attention
• have share specific title, image and description so your social share is optimized (not just the default from the page)

Note: the only thing keeping me from switching this feature on is that it does not have a separate Pinterest image for sharing (yet). So I use Social Warfare for this.

7. Image Optimization For Speed

As many of you know, images are one of the most important things on your website. Get them wrong, and you site will load like a snail!

That is why image optimization is so important and people, including myself, are using a whole bunch of plugins to achieve awesome page load times!

With Thrive Themes, they have taken the best image optimizer and built it right into their themes. So goodbye image optimizer plugins!

All you need to do is switch it on and all your image are reduced in size upon upload, sometimes up to 70-80%. The optimizer, Kraken, is that good!!!

Here is an example using their web optimizer (same tool) I just did to show you the results you can get from some raw images I used on a recent post:

Note: normally you pay $9 a month to use Kraken and their plugin, you get it Free with Thrive.

8. Related Posts That Display Fast

Everyone wants to display related posts at the end of their blog post, to get people to read more content on their website.

It’s a great idea, but these plugins often slow down your site immensely because they have to do so much work (database queries if you want to get technical).

Some are so intense, that people often complain of really slow websites or they are banned by certain web hosting companies.

Thrive again solve this problem by building it right into the Themes!

They even offers two flavors of related posts, so you can choose how you want it to work:

• simple category based related posts
• or advanced related posts (calculated to be more similar)

Usually such advanced related posts are slow, but Thrive solves this problem by calculating related posts when you create/save the post. It means saving it s little slower, but the benefits are huge!

9. A Page Builder That Shows What You Get

Another thing I wanted to mention again, which is one of the main reasons to switch toThrive Themes is the page builder.

Most of the bigger themes I use (X Theme, Divi Theme – see a comparison here) have page builders, and they are all good, but Thrive’s is the most “visual” I have seen.

That means that as you design the page, it is almost 100% the same as the final product. Most page builders are just approximations (boxes and lines).

Thrive Content Builder also has all the other elements you would expect (layout options, elements etc) too.

Note: Most of the page on this site are done in minutes using Thrive. Normally I hand design such things for clients, but this takes minutes!

You can watch a video of how it works here:

10. Maintenance And Support

This is also very important with the heart and soul of your website (the Theme) – it needs to be well maintained and supported.

The guys at Thrive Themes will respond to your issues very quickly, and jump onto your site to fix them too, if it gets to the stage that you can’t.

They are also constantly adding to their knowledge base and “how to” videos to help you get the most from the themes (many of them are linked inside the theme too!)

Upgrades and Changes

You will also notice when you own one of their products (Themes or Plugins) that they never stop improving or updating them.

This site’s Theme: Rise, was only released recently and that was when I updated. Go with the latest and best!

And the plugins that accompany the theme (or you can buy separately) are also updated every few weeks with bug fixes and features!

To Summarize

The Thrive Themes team is not building this product and then just selling it.

They are constantly innovating, improving and taking the latest web, marketing and sales ideas and putting them into their themes and plugins!

So when you switch to a premium theme provider like Thrive, yes it costs you a little money, but:

• it saves you money with all the plugins you DON’T need anymore (speed optimization, social sharing, landing pages, optin boxes)
• it speeds up your site with image optimization and other features (social share button loading speed, related posts optimziation and more)
• most importantly, it gets you more optins, leads and sales (the design and options for optins and calls to action will get you more customers)

So when you are next choosing a Theme, are you looking for the sexiest theme around with tons of useless features, or the one that gets you what you need: customers!

These are just some of the many reasons I switched to Thrive Themes and have been supporting them for over a year.