If you are an agency or even a small business owner, you have probably squawked at how difficult it is to add simple contact information to your WordPress website. The WordPress platform is supposed to be easy, but often we are forced to use tools like the built in “Text Widget” to display content. This is very poor user experience. It also honestly looks pretty ugly.

Enter “Business Profile”, a free WordPress plugin used to easily add business contact information on WordPress.

Business Profile, a relatively new plugin by Nate Wright, allows for a more visually friendly display of business information. This applies to both how the information is entered AND how it is displayed.

How the Business Profile plugin works

Rather than provide the user with crazy customization, the Business Profile plugin displays your content in a way that is more visually appealing to the user. Small icons are used to break up the contents of your contact information provide a visual understanding of what you are reading.

The Business Profile plugin also interfaces with external services like schema.org. This not only displays your information locally on your website but also technically to search engines like Google and Bing.

In short, the information serves a dual purpose, providing the details of you or your client’s business to the public while helping display relevant information on random search.

Editing information is equally simple. Business Profile provides the user with fields with which to enter their information. This is good because it reduces headaches and also allows for the user to edit content themselves, without using HTML or widgets.

No more calls to the web developer at 5 in the afternoon to adjust the store hours on the WordPress website. 

How to install and set up Business Profile

Installing Business Profile is just like any other plugin. You can add it from Plugins > Add New. You can search for “Business Profile” from the search bar or upload the file from your hard drive if you downloaded it from the repository.

Once Business Profile has been activated, you will want to find the tab called “Business Profile” from the left sidebar of WordPress, towards the bottom.

Enter or have the client enter the business contact information, including:

• Business Name
• Business Type (for Schema)
• Address
• Google Maps Coordinates
• Phone Number
• Email address (if you would like)
• Store Hours
• Associated contact page

Once you have made your changes and added your details, don’t forget to save your work at the bottom of the window!

Displaying contact information on WordPress front-end

Displaying the business contact information on WordPress is as simple as entry. There are two places where you can place your contact information, in the sidebar and in the main contact area.

Place business info in the sidebar

A widget is included with Business Profile called “Contact Card”. Just drag and drop the widget into the sidebar widget area (normally “Primary Sidebar”). This will display contact information in the sidebar area or any other widget area of your WordPress website.

Place business info in the content area

The plugin also supports a shortcode. On your Contact page or other page where you want to display the contact information, you can place the following shortcode into the content area where you want the contact details to display:

Once your page or post has been updated, your contact information will display within the content.

The caveat to “Business Profile”

There is one possibly major caveat to using Business Profile — it will not work if you have multiple locations. For smaller one-off businesses and “mom & pop” shops, this will work well. But if you are branching out or part of a larger franchise, this plugin will not work.

Pretty easy, right?

Now you and/or your clients can manage the store hours and other contact information in an easy manner. Take the design, development, and support out of WordPress contact information with Business Profile.

If you know of other solutions, perhaps one that does multiple locations, let us know in the comments below!