Now that you have contributed so much of your time and money to your shiny new WordPress website and have showcased your talents to the world, it is important to ask the questions; “Did you pay close attention to perfecting the WordPress user experience?”

Today’s tech-literate consumers have high expectations, which is why a website that feels clunky and awkward, just isn’t good enough. Providing the best user experience for your WordPress site should be paramount. No matter how professional or high quality your products or services are, if your site showcase doesn’t give a high standard of customer user experience, you will be doomed to failure.

In this blog, we have put together a guide on how to greatly improve user experience in your WordPress site with 7 strategies to succeed. 

Why is the user experience so important? 

In a world filled with so many digital options and distractions, providing a good user experience can be one of the main keys to success. Take Uber for example. Uber revolutionized the taxi industry with a new way to order and track cabs by using an intuitive and simple-to-use app on your mobile phone. Uber is now a world-wide multibillion-dollar company with services in most cities – largely thanks to its innovation and consideration of the end-user. 

The same theory applies when creating your WordPress site. Whether it’s a blog, an online store, a marketing hub, or a portfolio for your services; your chances of success are intrinsically tied to the positive level of user experience you provide. 

Here are some of the most obvious and measurable benefits of a good user experience:

Set a good first impression of your brand 

Setting a good first impression is important for showing potential customers you’re the real deal. It doesn’t matter how good your products, services, or content are, if your WordPress website isn’t aesthetically coherent and functional, no one will want to use it. Users must be able to navigate your pages with ease so that they get an immediate sense of direction and understanding on how your site operates. 

Increased sales

Any website that makes the purchasing process straightforward and easy to follow iis more likely to see an increase in sales and revenue. To put it simply, the easier it is to browse and take action, the quicker users will be able to act on impulse and purchase products and services from you. Simple features like search filters and recommendations can enhance the user experience by giving them multiple options to begin the buying journey. 

It’s a win-win. A positive experience for the customer and more sales for your business. 

Increase user retention rates 

Offering the best user experience keeps customers coming back for more. Satisfied customers will not feel the need to look elsewhere if you’re meeting their expectations. Existing customers are also likely to recommend your site to others and become brand advocates if you offer a professional and friendly UX. 

Improve search engine optimization (SEO)

Take a look at the top-ranked sites on a search engine like Google and you’ll find they all have a professional high end user experience design. The days of cramming as many keywords as possible into your content to rank via SEO are long gone. Google has expanded how it ranks websites and how it views SEO requirements by including such elements as UX design. It is important to remember this when it comes to setting and designing your site using WordPress. 

How to improve user experience in your WordPress site: 7 strategies to succeed

Creating a popular and (potentially) profitable website means putting the user experience first. Try putting yourself in the shoes of a new customer, and design your site around their experience, rather than how ‘amazing’ your product is. The user experience goes hand-in-hand with usability and functionality. 

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Let’s now look at 7 actionable strategies to help improve the user experience of your WordPress site. 

1. Opt for a simple design 

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It is important to remember that sometimes less, really is more. Don’t sacrifice functionality for an overly pretty and complex design. Ask yourself, ‘Would I find this website easy to follow if I came here for the first time?’ Users value usability and useful features over crowded visuals. For example, always put buttons where you would expect to find a button. Make your potential customers’ life as easy as possible, as they will quickly abandon your site if they struggle to perform a simple task or have to go looking for the ‘buy button’.

A conventional blog format is suitable in many instances, that is, a header, followed by the main body and a sidebar, completed with a footer. From here, you can make subtle tweaks to enhance the overall design. Be sure to give it a quick mobile friendly test to ensure it’s appearing correctly on mobile devices. 

It’s all about getting that balance between form and function. 

2. Ensure navigation is easy

Navigating through your WordPress website should feel natural and effortless for the user. Try to build your site to incorporate the following features: 

• A navigation bar (this is a must-have)
  Naming key pages for your navigation bar is simple with WordPress. Simply click (Appearance > Menus) in your sidebar to customize your menu’s order and page names.

• A list of categories in your sidebar
  Having an easily viewable list of categories will allow users to quickly navigate to their general area of interest. For example, if they are in the market for a new TV, they can browse all TVs available on your site, without having to also view Laptops.

• A search tool
  Imagine a customer has come to you specifically for a bluetooth headset, give them a search bar to find them fast. WordPress has several search bar plugins for you to try. Some are free while others are paid for.

• An archives page
  For an Archive page, let users search previous content by date, category, and keyword. This will help users find content fast while also helping your WordPress SEO strategy

• Breadcrumbs
  Breadcrumbs are the navigational links found at the top of a page to tell you where you are on the site. For example, (Home > Blog > January 2022 > How to nail your WordPress website.)

Utilizing these common design features on your WordPress page is a great way to create a familiar experience for users. 

3. Make sure your homepage is useful and informative

Your homepage is almost certainly going to be the most viewed page on your website. Think of it as your personal shop window for what goods and services you have to offer. Feature boxes can be a useful addition to the homepage. A feature box pops up on the homepage and can include content of your choice. A popular strategy is to use an ‘Opt-in’ box to introduce yourselves and encourage users to sign up for deals, information and discounts. 

For example, your feature box could say:  

‘Want to know the best magicjack competitors? 

Sign-up now to receive advice on: 

• The best in VoIP call center solutions. 
• The best alternatives out there for your favorite tools.
• The best tools for collecting and analyzing key data…’, etc. 

A well-placed feature box involves the visitor right away and tells them what to expect and how to get more from your site. This can add to a better user experience. However, it is important to make sure your feature box contains legitimate and valuable information and doesn’t just present as an ad attempting to get the visitors email address. 

4. Is your content easy-on-the-eye? 

Content that looks visually appealing is more likely to attract visitors and keep them engaged. Remember to take inspiration and design cues from other popular websites in your niche area to get an idea of how their visual layout enhances the user experience. 

When designing your site, also be sure to pay attention to design elements, typography choices and formatting. Have a look at other popular websites to see what they look like and what choices they made. Once you’ve found inspiration, you can use a pre-existing layout template to start from, or design your own layout from scratch. 

In terms of formatting, consider the following: 

• Keep sentences and paragraphs short and sweet. 
• Use sub-headers to break sections up and make navigation easier. 
• Use bold to highlight keywords and phrases. 
• Italics are useful for emphasis and speech. 
• Images are useful for adding variety and color to a piece. 
• Other visual elements such as tables, lists and quotes help break up the site and provide extra information. 

Creating a good user experience means nailing a design that’s easy-on-the-eye, while also being practical. 

5. Deliver fast page speeds

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Today’s website users expect fast page speeds and sites that load in a second or two at most. In fact, having a slow loading site is the top reason visitors will leave. 

Ways to increase page speed include: 

• Using only necessary plugins
  Running multiple plugins is one of the leading sources of slowing your site down.
• Watch your image sizes
  Image compression plugins like WP-Optimize reduce the file size of images to boost loading speeds. 
• Use a Content Delivery Network service (CDN)
  This adds a level of protection against WordPress security issues too. 
• Enable caching
  Saves user data to reduce future loading times. WP-Optimize is also one of the leading caching plugins available for WordPress 

6. Include plenty of negative space 

Also known as white space, negative space refers to the parts of your page that have no content.

Somewhat ironically, negative space usually leads to a positive experience. Utilizing negative space lets users focus on the important aspects of your content without being distracted. 84.6% of web designers believe crowded web design is the most common mistake by small businesses. 

Today’s consumers visit dozens of web pages a day. It’s likely they’re going to scan through your website anyway. A clever use of negative space lets them do this at their leisure without becoming bored. 

7. Have a clear call-to-action

What use is your website if you don’t tell users what to do next? Far too often, visitors will leave a website without taking action simply because there was no clear CTA. A well-placed and well-worded CTA is key for boosting your WordPress conversion rates. Modern users want fast results, so placing your call-to-action button immediately after or halfway through your written content is a good way to go. 

Effectively, you want to make it easy for the user to take the desired action without them having to search around for what’s next. WordPress has some useful plugins for managing CTA’s, have a look and see what works for you. 

Final thoughts

Now that you have reviewed all the potential ways you can help improve the user experience for your WordPress site, these tips have got you thinking about the ways you can employ them to help boost your performance and SEO score. 

The strategies above are commonly used across successful business websites all over the world on both WordPress and non-WordPress sites. Failing to have your own strategy could see you fall behind the rest and struggle to gain a foothold in your particular niche. 

Start building your next WordPress website today, and remember to keep the user experience in mind in everything that you do.  

Jessica Day – Senior Director, Marketing Strategy, Dialpad

The post Improve your WordPress user experience: 7 strategies to succeed appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

Now that you have your WordPress site in excellent shape and filled with engaging content and compelling designs, you can start to evaluate if it is enough to retain new visitors and keep them coming back again and again.

With so many online options to choose from, it can be hugely difficult to compete for people’s already fleeting attention. To have a successful site these days, you have to do a lot more than just the bare minimum if you hope to increase the traffic on your page. While colourful designs, well-made content and excellent marketing may bring visitors to your WordPress site initially, it is the efficiency, speed and quality that will get them to stay. 

Given how important speed is to a user that visits your site, one of the most important questions you need to ask is, how long does your website take to load a page? Studies show that more than half of the people who visit a site will leave if it takes over three seconds to load a page. Ideally you should aim to have your site load in around two seconds or less. 

Abandonment of your site is not the only damage slow loading speeds can cause. Google confirmed that the speed of your website can even affect a percentage of search queries – and by extension, your SEO ranking. A very large part of your website’s success reflects on how fast it responds to visitor interaction. 

With this knowledge, it is important that you do everything you can to make sure your WordPress site loads as quickly as possible. A great way to help achieve this is by installing the WP-Optimize WordPress plugin. In this blog, we will take a look at the many features and advantages of WP-Optimize, why it should be your WordPress optimization plugin of choice, and why you should upgrade to the premium version.  

What can performance-boosting plugins do for your WordPress site?

No matter how well you may think your site is set-up, you should always have a dedicated tool that will help with your site’s performance. Performance-boosting plugins like

 help optimize your WordPress site to perform at the best possible level. It can help to speed things up for visitors interacting with your pages for the first time, as well as improve the general efficiency of the website. 

As an all-in-one performance-boosting plugin, WP-Optimize consists of everything you need to keep your website fast and thoroughly optimized. With thousands of 5-star reviews and more than one million active installations, WP-Optimize ranks at the very top of the list of the best performance-boosting plugins in the world.  

Why should you use WP-Optimize?

As mentioned earlier, both the free and Premium versions of WP-Optimize expertly optimizes your WordPress site in the following ways:

1. Cleans the database.
2. Compress images.
3. Caching. 

1. Clean database

Your database stores all the data you require for your website to function properly. Some things you don’t need are also stored in the process. The clean database feature removes all the useless data and even reclaims the space lost due to data fragmentation. Database cleaning is the number one, most basic function of a performance-boosting plugin. 

The database feature is easy to use and especially comes in handy for cleaning out the following: 

• Drafts. Gets rid of auto-draft posts and creates space in your database for new and useful drafts. 

• Comments. Removes Askimets and other such redundant metadata from comments. 

• Trash. Deletes old post revisions and trash.  

• Spam. Zero spam tolerance. Automatically removes all spam, unapproved and trashed comments. 

• Trackbacks and pingbacks. Deletes automatic acknowledgments, references, and notifications ensuring a clutter-free website.

2. Compress images

In addition to cleaning databases, WP-Optimize features a tool for image optimization and compression. Large images that would have otherwise reduced your site’s load speed are compressed and saved to your image library, where they are uploaded instantly. WP-Optimize covers a wide range of image formats including PNG, GIF, JPG, BM, and TIF. This feature frees up space, saves server resources for more important tasks, and helps your website load faster. 

3. Caching

Every website has a reserved storage space, which is referred to as the cache system. 

The purpose of this cache system is to store temporary data like the static versions of your website. This way, your WordPress site won’t have to run heavy PHP scripts whenever someone loads your site. Instead, your cache will collect texts, images, and other required data from first-time visitors. This improves the load speed and general efficiency of the site during subsequent visits.  

Every cache system requires adequate RAM and CPU performance. With time, growing page traffic will overwhelm your RAM and CPU causing your site to render slowly. But that won’t happen with performance-boosting plugins like WP-Optimize. With the WP-Optimize cache 

Why you should upgrade to WP-Optimize Premium

As mentioned at the beginning of this blog, WP-Optimize has both a free and a premium version. The basic features of WP-Optimize are free and can be downloaded here. The Premium version comes with the following additional features:

Premium packages

The premium version is available in three packages at competitive prices: 

	Package	Coverage
1.	Starter	1 to 2 websites
2.	Business	5 websites
3.	Unlimited	No limit

Additional benefits of WP-Optimize Premium

Multisite support

While the free version can cater to ONLY one site at a time, the Premium version offers multisite functions. Optimize all your sites on your WordPress network. 

More options

WP-Optimize Premium offers flexibility and a range of advanced options. For instance, you can optimize individual database tables should you wish to do so.

Remove unwanted images

This newly-added Premium optimization process helps to eliminate orphaned images from your WordPress sites. Images that exceed specific size limits are also removed to minimize server footprint – and by extension cost. 

Lazy load

Not all components are needed to load your page. The lazy load feature helps to prioritize the necessary components while delaying the rest until they are required. This optimization process significantly improves website performance for large sites.  

Scheduling

Optimization might be automatic, but with Premium you can schedule when it occurs. This Premium scheduling feature allows you to set up routine optimizations. 

Logging

Every process can now be documented. Log messages are sent to three additional destinations – including Simple History, Syslog, and Slack. 

Versatility

WP-Optimize Premium is available in multiple languages and subscriptions can also be paid for with multiple currencies. 

Geolocation and WooCommerce compatible

Your international WooCommerce store requires an effective geolocation feature to offer country-specific content, determine appropriate VAT and pricing. WP-Optimize Premium can even help with this. 

Run from WP-CLI

You can run optimization commands straight on the command line and receive detailed results on screen.

Power tweaks

This is an advanced option for experienced users. Power tweaks improve your site’s performance by aiming at certain weak points in your website or other plugins. 

Purge pages

This lets you delete HTML copies of your page(s). With the Premium version, you can purge pages when needed – For example, when you update a media file or create a new post. 

Prevent individual page caching

You can use Premium to prevent selected pages on your website from being cached. An example of such a page is the admin page. This feature can also help improve security.

Premium support

Upgrading to Premium automatically gives you Premium support. Your queries will be promptly addressed by WP-Optimize experts. 

Conclusion

If you are serious about getting the best performance out of your site and giving your visitors the best user experience possible, then the short and simple answer is yes – upgrading to WP-Premium is totally worth it. With so many extra Premium features available, the added benefits will remove all doubts once you realize how important factors such as removing unwanted images, lazy loading, power tweaks and premium support are to the success and speed of your site. 

Download WP-Optimize Premium today and see the difference for yourself.

The post Why You Need to Upgrade to WP-Optimize Premium appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

The free version of UpdraftPlus is fully functional and a great option for a lot of WordPress users. However, we’ve developed a brilliant range of features to make it even better. UpdraftPlus Premium will unlock all the extra features, including a Migrate/Clone tool, multiple online storage options, detailed scheduling, reporting, encryption and much more.

UpdraftPlus Premium also gives you free upgrades and support for a year and plus 1 Gigabyte of UpdraftVault storage, which means you can back up the site without needing to pay for space with a separate remote storage location like Dropbox.

Why go Premium?

No platform offers you the kind of tools to make a highly functional website quite like WordPress. As the platform currently hosts over 40% of the world’s websites, it is a natural target for malicious attacks by bad actors looking to exploit any vulnerabilities. 

As well as the threat of hacks, your website could also fall victim to other issues, such as a server crash due to simple use errors, or the installation of badly coded plugins or themes. In just a few seconds, everything you’ve worked so hard to build could be taken away – leaving you to start again from scratch. 

To avoid such a catastrophic loss happening to you, your first task when setting up a WordPress site should be installing the WordPress backup plugin UpdraftPlus – The world’s number 1, most trusted backup and restore plugin. 

You might think you have every security box checked and have your website running perfectly, with no indication that there are any problems on the horizon. While that may be the case, it doesn’t mean a problem isn’t waiting just around the corner. Think of UpdraftPlus premium as website insurance. If your website never suffers a problem, then great. If it does however, you can rest easy knowing you are in safe hands and UpdraftPlus will be there to help you get all your hard work back.

The benefits of UpdraftPlus Premium: Backup, restore and clone

As the world’s most popular and highest rated WordPress backup plugin, UpdraftPlus Premium comes loaded with features and tools:

Backup
UpdraftPlus can perform total manual or/and scheduled backups of all your site’s databases, files, themes, and plugins. 

Restore
Just having a backup can be pretty useless if it doesn’t you are not able to perform a prompt and secure restoration. With UpdraftPlus Premium, you can restore your backup file directly from the control panel of your site.

Schedule
With most backup plugins, you are left to manually backup your website whenever you remember. With UpdraftPlus Premium, you can set your site up to automatically backup every 2, 4, 8, or 12 hours, daily, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly.

Trusted
UpdraftPlus Premium has earned the trust of its considerable user base as it has provided a trusted service to the WordPress community for around a decade. Little wonder why it is the most installed and highest rated backup plugin on the market.

Easy to use
UpdraftPlus Premium comes with an engaging, easy-to-use interface that lets you backup and restore data with just a click of a button.

What additional benefits does UpdraftPlus Premium have?
If you use the free version of the UpdraftPlus plugin, you will be familiar with many of the basic features available. If you upgrade to the Premium version, you get the following features in addition to those being available on the free version: 

Incremental backups

Incremental backups (as the name implies) only backups changes that have occurred in your WordPress website since your last full backup. If your last backup was 12 hours ago, the new incremental backup will backup only what has changed in those last twelve hours (e.g. a new photo was uploaded) and add it to the main backup file. By making incremental backups, you use less resources and have quicker backup times.

Other backup plugins will typically backup the whole website every time you make a backup. As you can imagine, this is a huge waste of your time and resources which UpdraftPlus Premium prevents by employing the incremental backup process. 

Cloning and migration
UpdraftPlus Premium has features that can clone your whole website and/or migrate it to a new domain of your choice in minutes. With UpdraftPlus Premium, you are also given free UpdraftClone tokens, so you are no longer required to buy tokens when you want to clone your site.

The UpdraftClone and Updraft Migrator features are a way for you to effectively and seamlessly “copy and paste” your website to any URL with no hosting difficulties. 

Prompt customer support
UpdraftPlus Premium also comes with quick access to expert help and support from our product developers whenever you require it. You can reach us through a web forum and ticket. 

Pre-update backups
Other backup plugins typically stand idle when you update a plugin, theme or core updates, putting your site at considerable risk. But UpdraftPlus Premium will ask you if you would like to first back up your site before any update begins. This way, you will have the most recent version of your WordPress site before you make any changes. 

Non-WP files and databases
Besides the obvious WordPress website core data that will be secured, an UpdraftPlus Premium backup will also cover non-WordPress files and databases such as third party themes. Total security is guaranteed. 

Network/multisite
UpdraftPlus Premium works with WordPress Network and Multisite to back them up securely. The backup and restore control panel can be found in the dashboard of the network. You can even restore individual websites within the network.

Advanced scheduling
The premium version also allows you to set a specific time for your website’s backup to be created, retained, or deleted.

More database options
A typical backup plugin saves all your data somewhere safe for when a problem hits your site. Should this happen, you are left with your backup copy to restore your website to its previous state.

But there are times when the hacker doesn’t just attack your site, but also attempts to steal or delete your backup files. With UpdraftPlus Premium and its enhanced security and industry-standard AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) encryptor, your WordPress site’s database (including files, passwords, and list of users) is encrypted and secured in the backup location of your choice. 

Thorough logging and reporting
UpdraftPlus Premium keeps you updated on what’s going on with your website in real time. All backup activities are carefully recorded and the backup status is displayed in the WordPress admin panel – together with warnings and error messages. You will also receive a report for when a backup completes, as well as file checksums for backup integrity verification. UpdraftPlus Premium also allows users to send reports to Slack if desired.

Importer feature
This is easily one of the coolest features of UpdraftPlus Premium. Some backup plugins are just that – they backup your website without any capacity to restore it at a later point. Besides restoring its own backup files, UpdraftPlus Premium also allows you to restore backups from other WordPress backup plugins with our importer feature.

Lock settings
Much like your smartphones, the Premium version locks access to UpdraftPlus using a password. This gives you the ability to control which site users can access the backup dashboard and files. 

WP-CLI
WP-CLI stands for WordPress Command Line Interface. CLI functions by relaying commands to a program using a line of text. So, instead of the cumbersome drag-and-drop plugins, you simply backup files using typed lines of text. 

While it may require some technical know-how, this can be a very handy feature for those that require it. 

Zero ads
No one enjoys random ads popping up, disrupting your workflow and taking up your valuable time. The Premium version of UpdraftPlus removes all adverts and lets you get to work away without any distractions

UpdraftPlus Premium packages

If you decide to upgrade to UpdraftPlus Premium, you can choose between five packages with an annual subscription. Automatic renewal gives you 40% off on renewal. What’s more? You can cancel at any time. 

Personal
Supports up to 2 websites.
All UpdraftPlus add-ons. Free updates. Free support. Free storage of 1GB UpdraftVault. UpdraftClone tokens.

Business
Supports up to 10 websites.
All UpdraftPlus add-ons. Free updates. Free support. Free storage of 1GB UpdraftVault. UpdraftClone tokens.

Agency
Supports up to 35 websites.
All UpdraftPlus add-ons. Free updates. Free support. Free storage of 1GB UpdraftVault. UpdraftClone tokens. 

Enterprise
Supports an unlimited number of websites.
All UpdraftPlus add-ons. Free updates. Free support. Free storage of 1GB UpdraftVault. UpdraftClone tokens.

Gold
All of the same features as Enterprise, but with unlimited annual UpdraftCentral Cloud subscription and an additional 50GB UpdraftVault storage

Why would you need to upgrade?

Premium can be particularly useful if you run a bigger or more complex website (or multiple websites), have a history of being targeted by malicious hackers, make a lot of changes daily to your site, or feel the limited “backup and restore” options of the UpdraftPlus free plugin no longer meet your needs. 

If you fall within the above categories, then UpdraftPlus Premium is for you. 

Benefit from UpdraftVault with UpdraftPlus Premium

This is a built-in storage option for your UpdraftPlus backups that gives you 1GB – 50GB of free storage tailored specifically for the UpdraftPlus platform. This can save you the headache of setting up and calibrating third-party storage systems like Google Drive. 

More remote storage options

With the free version of UpdraftPlus, you can backup your website directly to UpdraftVault, Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3 (or compatible), Rackspace Cloud, FTP, DreamObjects, Openstack Swift and email. 

The Premium version expands your options and allows you to backup directly to Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Storage, Backblaze B2, SFTP, SCP, and WebDAV.

Free and premium versions of UpdraftPlus plugin compared

Get it from	WordPress.Org	UpdraftPlus.Com Buy It Now!
Backup WordPress files and database
Translated into over 16 languages
Restore from backup
Backup to remote storage
Dropbox, Google Drive, FTP, S3, Rackspace, Email
Incremental Backups
Free 1Gb for UpdraftVault
WebDAV, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, SFTP/SCP, encrypted FTP, BackBlaze
Backup extra files and databases
Migrate / clone (i.e. copy) websites
Basic email reporting
Advanced reporting features
Automatic backup when updating WP/plugins/themes
Send backups to multiple remote destinations
Database encryption
Restore backups from other plugins
No advertising links on UpdraftPlus settings page
Scheduled backups
Fix backup time
Network/Multisite support
Lock settings access
Browse backup contents in WordPress
Download individual files from backup in WordPress
Personal support
Run from WP-CLI
Restore a backup from other plugins

Is UpdraftPlus Premium worth it?

For all the additional benefits and perks that it brings, we feel that UpdraftPlus Premium is more than worth it if you truly value the safety and security of your WordPress site. With Premium you can exercise full control over your backups by unlocking enhanced security features and free updates. From accessing the latest UpdraftPlus Add-Ons for a year, to free support via our forum and email for a year, extra remote storage options, incremental backups and free tokens for UpdraftClone.

UpdraftPlus Premium is what total security and peace of mind looks like! 

The post Why you should upgrade to UpdraftPlus Premium appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.