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My name is Tom Nguyen, and I’m a web designer in Atlanta, GA. I have consistently used WordPress for web design projects since 2011. Before then, 95% of my websites were static coded in HTML and PHP includes.

My journey into WordPress started when someone who wanted to outsource me for web design told me about ElegantThemes in the summer of 2011. I loved the look of the themes that ElegantThemes offered and immediately purchased a developer’s account. I planned on using these themes for my clients’ websites as well as my own website.

Making Use of My Developer Account

For my own website, the theme that appealed to me the most was the Webly Theme. I loved the color scheme and the home page slider. It just looked like a theme tailor-made for a web design company, so I decided to use it on my website, Mr. Technique. I customized the Webly Theme by creating a child theme, so my changes would not be overwritten when the parent theme was updated.

Having Mr. Technique in WordPress made it much easier to add content which is key to SEO. I began picking up more and more web design clients in the Atlanta area as a result of my growing WordPress and SEO knowledge. For my clients, I’ve used plenty of WordPress themes from ElegantThemes: Modest, DeepFocus, TheProfessional, Nova, and Aggregate just to name a few.

Climbing up the ranks

What I did in the next couple of years was amazing. I went from being an unknown web designer to being an authority in my field. I was on the first page of Google for multiple Atlanta web design related keyphrases, and the public started to take notice.

Other websites started mentioning me. First, I was interviewed by Entrepreneur.com regarding the importance of an About Me page. Next, I was featured on UpCity’s list of top web designers in Atlanta. And finally, I was interviewed by Jenny Munn, an SEO expert in Atlanta, on my SEO success.

Keeping Up With Technology

Although I was getting all of the business that I wanted, I knew that I needed to upgrade my website. I loved the Webly theme, but it wasn’t responsive. If I was going to compete with the big dogs in Atlanta, I needed a responsive WordPress theme. Then I saw Divi.

From the minute I saw Divi, I knew it was going to be my website’s WordPress theme of the future. It was responsive and came packed full of features. Whenever I had free time, I would work on the newest version of Mr. Technique.

Divi allowed me to give Mr. Technique the look and feel that I wanted. I could give each page a different background image by just giving a section a CSS id or class.

I could have complex layouts without having to manually code divs or type in shortcodes. Divi allowed me to add icons without having to construct them using Photoshop or Illustrator.

The Big Release

I released Mr. Technique’s new web design on Memorial Day and mentioned it on my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus pages. I’m pretty proud of my work on it.

I added testimonials and a section on the past versions of the Mr. Technique website to show how my skills have improved over the years. I also added a new newsletter sign-up section in the footer widget section.

After the holiday, I received a flood of calls from potential clients who needed a website designed. Changing my theme to Divi hasn’t hurt my Google search engine ranking at all. My visits have remained about the same, but more people are filling out my inquiry form or giving me a call. I’m guessing that’s a result of the new web design.

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