Which of These 15 Thrive Symbols Examples (+ Bonus Templates) Is Right for Your Online Business?

Author 
Matt   80

Updated on December 22, 2019

Recently, we released our new Symbols Feature for Thrive Architect.

The Symbols Feature is a design component that allows you to have multiple synchronized instances of a “thing” you design for your website.

What’s that mean exactly? Modifying one instance of a Symbol will automatically update all the other instances of that Symbol – instantly – across your site.

More...

"Symbols" was an important feature upgrade to Thrive Architect that had been on our priority list for a while because it provides a convenient way for Thrive Themes users to keep their websites evergreen.

If you’re wondering how, this post will show you all the ways...

Symbols for Affiliate Marketers

If you run an affiliate marketing website, the Symbols Feature is just what you've been waiting for.

Here's some ways you can start using Symbols as an affiliate marketer right now:

1. Recommended Products

If you're an affiliate marketer, you monetize your site by recommending products to earn sales commissions for every visitor that buys via your partnership links.

Because of that, I know you have affiliate links for recommended products sprinkled all over your site.

But what if you need to change a product recommendation or update it with a more current offer? In the old days, you'd have to comb through your entire site to find all those product plugs and modify them one-by-one. But with Symbols, now you can change just one instance of your recommended product "banner" and all the rest will update.

WordPress

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WPX Hosting

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed.

MailChimp

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed.

You can start using this "Recommended Products" Symbols template in Thrive Architect by searching for that name within the Styled Box sidebar element.

2. My Top 3 Products, Recommendations or Content

Many you use sidebar widgets or in-line content boxes to showcase your Top 3 Products, Recommendations or Revenue Generating Content in an easy to see place.

With Symbols, you can easily create these profitable affiliate tools and then update them whenever you need. One modification of a particular Symbols instance will change all others across your site. 

My Top 3 Products, Recommendations or Content – Symbols Template

June 29, 2018

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim

July 21, 2018

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim

August 08, 2018

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim

You can start using this "Top 3 Products, Recommendations or Content" Symbols template in Thrive Architect by searching for that name within the Styled Box sidebar element.

3. Disclaimer and Disclosure Links

It just goes without saying that if you're marketing affiliate links, you must disclose that information to your audience.

A Disclaimer and Discloser Links Symbol will help make sure your disclosure information or links to those specialty pages are always up-to-date across all of your website. 

Disclaimer and Disclosure Links – Symbols Template

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, visit my disclosure page.

You can start using this "Disclaimer and Disclosure Links" Symbols template in Thrive Architect by searching for that name within the Styled Box sidebar element.

Symbols for Coaches & Consultants

As a coach or consultant, you're constantly giving talks, holding events and giving out your contact info to capture new clients.

How can the Thrive Architect Symbols feature help make all that much simpler for you? Let's see...

Have You Seen Our New Content Block Feature?

We added new a new feature to the Thrive editor to help you build better looking content faster with far fewer editing steps: the Content Blocks.

These Content Blocks are pre-designed text blocks, ready to be inserted into your posts with one click!

Learn more about this new feature in this post!

4. Contact Information

How about turning your all important contact information contact box into a Symbol?

Should your phone number, email or work address ever change, you can make a single modification and the info will update across your site!

Contact Information – Symbols Template

aDdress

123 Red Avenue,
Dodge City, KS 12345
United States

phone

(555) 555-5555

You can start using this "Contact Information" Symbols template in Thrive Architect by searching for that name within the Styled Box sidebar element.

5. "Contact Me" Button

If your site uses a dedicated "Contact" page, then you can deploy Symbols like internal "Contact Me" ads to give visitors an easy way to come find you.

Should the link change, you want to modify the design of "Contact Me" element or you need to modify the Call-To-Action entirely, just modify one instance of your Symbol and you're good to go!

Contact Me Button – Symbols Template

Want some 1-on-1 Coaching with a Pro?

Now Serving Greater Houston

You can start using this "Contact Me Button" Symbols template in Thrive Architect by searching for that name within the Styled Box sidebar element.

6. Biography Box (for sales pages or landing pages)

If you want to include your coaching or consultant biography box on your landing pages, event pages or sales pages, why not use the Symbols feature to keep your picture and elevator pitch current?

And once you've invested some time and effort into making that look nice, you could even take your Bio Box Symbol and add it to the end of every blog post instead of using your current WordPress theme's article author box.

And if your website has a staff of writers (like Thrive Themes now does), you can even build a multi-author Bio Box Symbol like the one shown below. If your writing staff changes, you have a one-stop-shop to make the necessary changes.

Pretty simple, right?

Multi-Author Bio Box – Symbols Template

Jane Doe

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim

Matt Doe

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim

Kate Doe

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim

You can start using this "Multi-Author Bio Box" Symbols template in Thrive Architect by searching for that name within the Styled Box sidebar element.

7. "Join My Facebook Group"

I've met many online coaches who now use Facebook Groups as a way to provide an additional perk as well as create community with their inner circle of clients.

The Symbols feature offers a way to help promote your Facebook tribe on your own site to advertise one of the perks of following you is gaining access to a whole group of like-minded people.

As the size of your group grows, you can easily reflect that social proof through a simple modification of your websites "Join My Facebook Group" Symbol:

Join My Facebook Group – Symbols Template

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You can start using this "Join My Facebook Group" Symbols template in Thrive Architect by searching for that name within the Styled Box sidebar element.

8. Live Trainings or Bootcamps

Coaches and consultants offer their services through live trainings or intense bootcamps all the time.

The thing is that the dates, locations and times of those events are constantly changing as well.

With the Symbols feature, you'll never have to worry about littering your website with out of date promotions for live trainings...

Just a single info update to the last version of your "Live Training" Symbol will have all your blog posts, landing pages, and opt-in forms operating as current ads for your next event.

That means get to spend your time doing more productive and profitable things—like helping clients.

Live Trainings – Symbols Template

Live Trainings

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do.

You can start using this "Live Trainings" Symbols template in Thrive Architect by searching for that name within the Styled Box sidebar element.

Symbols for Authors & Speakers

Guess what? The new Thrive Architect Symbols Feature also works great for Authors and Professional Speakers.

Here's why...

9. Speaking Event Box

Much like the coach's "Live Training" Symbol we just discussed, you can create Symbols for your upcoming speaking gig and then modify it for all your future events as well.

Update the venue name, address, location, date, link to tickets, Google Map and any other details you want to include.

Speaking Event – Symbols Template

Drake Glass Speaker

Outlaw Books: NYC, USA

August 12th, 2018 - 9:30 PM

Details

Start: August 12th

Cost: $35

Event Category: Seminars

Website: www.google.com

Venue

394845 48th St.

New York City, NY 20004

United States

You can start using this "Speaking Event" Symbols template in Thrive Architect by searching for that name within the Styled Box sidebar element.

10. Promote Your Book or Podcast Box

If you publish traditional books, eBooks or have a podcast, Symbols offer a great way to give all visitors to your website a way to buy or download your most recent release.

This can be especially helpful if you publish a new blog post article every time you release a new podcast episode (like the ActiveGrowth Podcast does) or new book chapter (like Andy Weir did writing his New York Times Best Selling sci-fi novel "The Martian").

If you employ a drip-feed release strategy like this for certain kinds of content, you can then maintain a single call-to-action Symbols template within all of those articles. 

If you ever need to modify that CTA to make it current, just change one instance of the Symbol and each of your many "episode" posts will automatically update.

Book Promotion – Symbols Template

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim

You can start using this "Book Promotion" Symbols template in Thrive Architect by searching for that name within the Styled Box sidebar element.

11. Webinar Promotion

Webinars are still a go to engagement tool not just for speakers, but for most online businesses, so why not use Symbols to maintain a single Webinar sign-up template?

Update the copy, CTA buttons and links for next webinar on a dedicated webinar Symbols template and your entire website will get a refreshed promotion for your upcoming live stream.

Webinar Promotion – Symbols Template

REVEALED! the 5 tactics for how to use our product to build sites

Webinar hosts

Jane Doe

John Doe

What you'll discover on this live webinar:

  • 1
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing
  • 2
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit.
  • 3
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

Webinar date

September 21st

Wednesday

9:00 PM London

4:00 PM NYC

You can start using this "Webinar Promotion" Symbols template in Thrive Architect by searching for that name within the Styled Box sidebar element.

12. Author or Speaker "About Me" Boxes

When it comes to being an Author or Speaker, your product is often selling the person behind the book... you.

That's why you want to maintain a well-designed and current About Me section that can be updated with relevant info as you get more book releases or major presentations under your belt.

Speaker About Me Box – Symbols Template

Full name

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You can start using this "Speaker About Me Box" Symbols template in Thrive Architect by searching for that name within the Styled Box sidebar element.

Symbols for Ecourses & Products

And what if your website monetizes itself through selling online courses or other digital/physical products?

As you may have guessed, there's definitely some Symbols use cases for you too!

13. Guarantee Boxes

If you offer a money back guarantee, then Symbols could be useful for you across all your sales pages.

Let's say that you start by offering a 15 Day Money Back Guarantee, but later decide it would be a more competitive offer to bump that trial period up to 30 days.

If you decided to save your guarantee template as a Symbol, you can simply change it on one sales page, then all the rest do the same.

Guarantee Box – Symbols Template

60 DAYS MONEY BACK GUARANTEE

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea.

You can start using this "Guarantee Box" Symbols template in Thrive Architect by searching for that name within the Styled Box sidebar element.

14. Pricing Tables

Ooo-da-la-li! The new Thrive Themes Pricing Table element!

Not only do you now have the power of a pricing table toggle switch (everybody looooves that feature) and fully customizable design, but you can also be clever and save them as Symbols!

That means if your pricing ever changes, you can easily modify the prices on one sales page with a single click and all the others will do the same.

Pricing Table – Symbols Template

Basic

Simple, fast and effective flexible move


$99.99

/mo

  • Working time 24/7 all days
  • Free Tea & Coffee
  • Max 15 team members
  • Superfast wifi
  • Free Kitchen
Private

Simple, fast and effective flexible move


$299.99

/mo

  • Working time 24/7 all days
  • Free Tea & Coffee
  • Max 15 team members
  • Superfast wifi
  • Free Kitchen
Basic

Simple, fast and effective flexible move


99.99

/mo

  • Working time 24/7 all days
  • Free Tea & Coffee
  • Max 15 team members
  • Superfast wifi
  • Free Kitchen
Private

Simple, fast and effective flexible move


299.99

/mo

  • Working time 24/7 all days
  • Free Tea & Coffee
  • Max 15 team members
  • Superfast wifi
  • Free Kitchen

You can start using this "Pricing Table" Symbols template in Thrive Architect by searching for that name within the Styled Box sidebar element.

15. Time Sensitive Promotions

Does your online business ever have holiday promotions, Black Friday sales (although we never do...), or summer discounts?

It would be a shame to create an element promoting such a sale on certain pages only for it to go stale after its expiration date.

By making such promotions a Symbol, you can make all your seasonal promotions evergreen across your website with a single click.

Time Sensitive Promotion – Symbols Template

Christmas one time offer!

The basic necessities of survival for holidays

  • Download 5 designs per month
  • Add 10 design source files
  • The Upgrated user experience
  • Add 25 Christmas icons
  • Free consultancy

You can start using this "Time Sensitive Promotion" Symbols template in Thrive Architect by searching for that name within the Styled Box sidebar element.

Bonus: We Did the Heavy Lifting for You!

Did you notice all those catchy looking Symbols templates we used throughout this article?

Well, guess what? They're all yours!

That means you have absolutely no excuse not to go deploy at least one of the Symbols use cases we discussed above on your website.

You can access each of the examples you saw in this post as a new "Styled Box" template in the Thrive Cloud (assuming you're already a Thrive Architect user).

Just insert a "Styled Box" element into your content, search for the template you want by typing its name (the subheading listed directly above it in this article), and then save it as a Symbol.

Have any questions about Symbols or maybe some other use cases you'd like to share? Let us know in the comments below!

by Matt  August 21, 2018

80

Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. This means if you click on some of our links, then we may earn a commission. We only recommend products that we believe will add value to our readers.

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Leave a Comment

  • Hey there Matt….love love love this feature! I’m one of the absotively laziest folks on the planet when it comes to creating and managing content (I cut my teeth on single-sourcing projects in the early 90s).

    It took me a bit to understand this use of the word “template” since the tools I’ve used in the past have called this functionality “fields” or “variables.”

    Now that I’ve got Thrive’s definition, I’m jumping for joy.

    Blessings

    MamaRed

    • Love to hear it’s saving you so much time MamaRed! I’m lazy too and hate to waste time on tedious edits so Symbols are a life saver for that.

      To make the Symbols templates available to Thrive Architect users, we had to set them up as “Styled Box” templates. Just drop the Styled Box template in your content, select the template you want and then save it as a “Symbol” in the Archtiect editor.

      Sorry if that process and terms were a little confusing.

      • Ah Matt, then welcome to the “LegallyLazee Folks Club” (lol). If this works out the way I envision it, I’ll be able to drop another plugin from my list. Whooot!!!!!

  • Love the coach emphasis and icons! I’m a career transitions coach and in process of updating an old site to Thrive Theme based with some pizazz! This is very helpful!

  • Thanks, However, I must say that the same as the will for nice clean designs, should be the spoken language with different terms. To my own opinion, using the name Symbols here for this purpose is only confusing & a wrong decision. Yes, it is a nice trend for labels to invent also a language, however, using an existing term with specific meanings & significance for something totally different is only confusing. Sorry Shane… This time I disagree with your idea.

    • Hi Ahrale,

      The term Symbol comes from the design profession. In pretty much every web design or interface design tool, a Symbol is exactly what it is in Thrive Architect: an element that updates across all its instances.

  • I’m giving a workshop today about using your website to save time and this is…well, PERFECT TIMING! 🙂

    P.S. You left a (tk) comment in section 14. Pricing tables – I learned that tip from the Active Growth podcast, which I also love. 🙂

    • Thanks Kronda…glad the post was right on time for you! Also, many thanks for noting my tk reminder notation slip. It’s a cool little writing hack right?

      • Sorry but what is a TK comment and can you provide a link or email me a link to how you would use it. I looked it up on Google and I see it’s a line of code, but aren’t you writing your blog posts in a text editor then pushing to the site? Or am I doing it all wrong? Sorry, beginner to the blogging scene.

      • I don’t think this is general knowledge, but on our team, we use “TK” when we’re writing content, to mark unfinished parts in a draft. That way, you can keep writing and fill in the gaps in a later revision. TK stands for “to come” but with a K, because no word in the English language contains the letter combination TK. So you can search your document for “TK” and find all of your notes easily.

  • You guys do it again and again. Thank you so much.
    I have in the past days worked a lot with symbols – just wonderful.
    Saved me a lot of time.

    And now you offer us a lot more. Super.

    Cheers

    Jacob

    • Hey Bill, they’re all currently available at the very bottom of the Styled Box element options within Thrive Architect.

      When you insert a “Styled Box” element into your content, a “Choose Template” window should pop up. Scroll down to bottom to find the ones shown in this article.

      Then, just save them as a “Symbol” in your editor window to start using them as such.

      If you still don’t see them, try updating to the current version of Thrive Architect and then clearing your cache to see if that fixes the problem.

  • This is useful and done well. Quick question: Since I have a main website and micro-websites, is there any way to use the same Symbols across all the sites? (Especially if all the websites are all made with Thrive Themes and Architect. Then the Symbols can retrieve images and settings from the originating website.)

    Multi-site Symbols would make it easy to (1) add new micro-sites, (2) keep consistent the sites’ design and components, and (3) keep the sites updated automagically.

    If yes, please include a tip or two on how to add one site’s Symbols to additional websites. Thanks!

    • I double checked with our devs just to make sure on your question Dan, but Thrive Architect does not support multi-site symbols.

      You’ll have to keep an updated version of your symbol designs on each of your websites.

      • Thanks for checking, Matt.

        Here’s a final question. It’s on your suggestion below, to William, “load the symbol on a WordPress ‘Page’ draft, and then export /import that single landing page to your other sites. Once it loads up on the other site, save it as a Symbol and you’ll have a **current instance** of that design for other site.” (**emphasis** added)

        If I do this, can I keep the Symbol updated across multiple websites (update on one site, display updates on multiple sites)? Or will this only **copy** the symbol to the other websites, but not keep it updated?

      • Hey Dan,

        That was my suggestion to copy/paste the same design from one website to another. You will still need to update a symbol instance on each website every time you want to make a change (assuming you want them to all be the same across multiple websites).

        Making a change to a symbol will only update the other instances of that Symbol on one website. To be clear, it will not update that particular Symbol on any of your other websites.

      • I wouldn’t recommend that strategy William. Instead, I would load the symbol on a WordPress “Page” draft, and then export /import that single landing page to your other sites. Once it loads up on the other site, save it as a Symbol and you’ll have a current instance of that design for other site.

  • The Quick Navigation summary table, is that an element?

    How can we easily create that?

    Have you guys created a video or post on that?

    Thanks

    • Hey David, it’s called the “Table of Contents” element in your Thrive Architect sidebar.

      Once you drop it in your editor, the sidebar options then allow you to populate it with any of your Header levels that you want. I usually show just the H2 and H3 levels. Each time you make a change to your header text, just make sure to hit the “Update Table” button in your sidebar.

      You can read a Thrive Knowledge Base article about how to use it here.

  • Hi Matt, This is a great list. Bookmarked! Just one glitch it seems for the webinar promotion, it doesn’t load the images. All others I tested worked perfectly. –Cheers Roy

    • Thanks for spotting this issue Roy! It looks like the images and style data didn’t make it through the export process for some reason. I re-exported the template to see if that will fix it. If not, I’ll get it working by the end of the week. Thanks again!

  • Matt, fantastic write-up. I just got into the Thrive Themes membership a few months ago and still wrapping my head around a lot of these features. This really helped me a ton. I was going to do all this stuff manually until I read this. Now you just saved me probably tens / hundreds of hours and countless mistakes / missed updates later on.

    Fantastic and I appreciate your well-written article.

    • Thanks so much Daniel!

      Establishing good practices using of the Symbols feature early on will really help cut down on your time and effort needed keeping your website current.

      Now you get to use all those saved hours of tedious editing work doing more business boosting projects! 😉

  • Awesome set of features. I look forward to implementing many of these ideas on my website.

    Only thing is I feel the word “symbol” does not accurately describe this feature of TA. I would call them “Thrive Architect Templates”, or TATs for short. 🙂

    • Thanks Jeff.

      As for the terminology, Symbols come from the design profession. In pretty much every web design or interface design tool, a Symbol is exactly what it is in Thrive Architect: an element that updates across all its instances. Hope that helps explain why we decided to use that term.

  • I had not really looked at symbols as they did not appeal to me – or so I thought. It must have been our constant heatwaves because this post makes it so clear – even my heat-addled brain can see the many creative ways these can be used [and save me aggravation 🙂 ] TY so much

    • Sometimes all it takes is a few little examples to help show the way. So glad to hear you added Symbols to your toolkit Lynn! I’m all for time savings and less aggravation. 😉

  • Is there a prize for spotting the error in the Contact Information – Symbols Template?

    You might want to switch the phone & email icons.

    😉

  • Nice and thanks for the jump start. I’ve been using symbols for my webinars already and now I have more great ideas.

  • I already loved the Symbols feature just for the post author box. Now with all these new potential uses a whole new world is opened. Thank you.

  • Great content as always – thank you, Matt!

    Is it possible to add placeholders (like the current date”) in Thrive Architect?

    When selling workshop tickets, I would like to have the text “Only 6 tickets left (by today, September 1 2018) on my website without the need to update it manually every day. I guess this function could help some more people, in case it doesnt exist yet.. 😉

      • Thank you for your anwer, Hanne.

        Yesss…. and I guess you guys at Thrive Themes would come up with other amazing use cases for it. I guess this feature could save a TON of time… 😉

  • Is there a similar feature that changes the design across all instances but not the content inside the template?

    For eg, I have a table with multiple products across different posts. I would like to change the template of all the tables together but not the products since each post has a different topic.

    Or to change a button design across all posts, but each to a different URL. Used in A/B testing etc.

    • Hi Owen,

      Any change you make to your Symbol element will change for all the other instances of that Symbol. You can’t change something for one and not have it apply to others… that would defeat the purpose of having a global element feature.

  • Great Post! Straight to the point and no stuff feeding. I will implement the above suggestion on my newly started blog.

  • {"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}
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