If you’ve been exploring how to go about building your company’s next website, no doubt you will have stumbled across WordPress. And that’s no surprise, given that WordPress is powering 35% of the entire Web, and in fact is behind over 30% of the top 1000 websites – this is largely down to WordPress’s (we’ll call it WP from now on), unparalleled versatility.
At DayOne, by far the most requests we get when being approached to build a new website, is for that site to be built in WordPress, and while it isn’t right for every website, it is often a perfect partner. This is because it is a dream to work with from a development point of view and a breeze for our clients to add their own content, giving them the freedom to make their own updates to the site. We can create a setup that prevents inadvertent design changes, eliminating the risk of inexperienced hands accidentally uploading holiday snaps to the company portfolio gallery!
Here we’ve summarised the top 5 reasons why you should consider building your next website in WordPress.
- Ease of use
- Choice of plugins
- Search engine friendly
- Scalability
- It’s free
Ease of use
Once your site has been built by your web developer, and they’ve given you access to your CMS (Content Management System), or dashboard as it’s commonly referred to, WordPress is very easy to use and has an intuitive interface. Adding new pages, blog posts, images, etc. on a regular basis is a breeze and can be done quickly. WP is what’s known as an open-source software, meaning it can be used and developed by anyone. So the usual limitations, such as accessing premium customer support, or skill level do not come into play here – there’s a ton of forums and support out there for free, and it’s a doddle to use. Sure, there are plenty of things to learn about WordPress, and you should certainly employ a professional to develop, build and design the site, but anyone could play around with the dashboard and get a good sense of how it functions.
Plugins
One of the most useful resources WP has available to it is its growing bank of 55,000+ plugins. A plugin is used to extend functionality and add new features to your website, without the need to be developing these functionalities from scratch. This means, not only are the majority of those plugins well tested, and secure, they are also a very efficient resource, and will almost certainly save you money on what may have otherwise been some hefty bespoke development costs! Perhaps the most useful and powerful plugin is WooCommerce which is an incredible e-commerce plugin designed for small to large-sized online merchants using WP specifically.
Other popular plugins are;
- Yoast (SEO)
- Jetpack (marketing, design, and security)
- Akismet (Anti-Spam)
- Contact Form 7
- Google Analytics
- GDPR Cookie Consent
Search engine friendly
The code behind WordPress is clean and simple, making it easy for search engines to read and index a site’s content. Each element of your site: pages, posts, and images can have its own meta tags, keywords, description, and title. In addition, you’re able to take advantage of some of the best SEO plugins as mentioned above to further enhance your chances of flying up those rankings!
Scalability
WordPress sites are very scalable. You can have thousands of pages of content on your site without compromising on performance at all. You can serve tens of thousands of logged-in users at a time and comfortably deliver millions of monthly page views. In fact, it would likely be your hosting package to let you down before WordPress did.
Oh yeh, and it’s free!
You’ll be pleased to hear that WP’s core is completely free. WordPress do not charge to use their platform, meaning you’re able to download and install the fundamental elements of WP straight out of the box (not that there’s actually a box!). So, while you’ll still need to fork out for the usual bits: design, hosting, security, backup etc., you’d have to do that with any platform you choose, so WP is a good economic choice as well!
A note on design:
A well designed website can make a huge difference to how long your customers spend browsing it, and ultimately purchase from it, or whether they decide to call you. So my advice on design is – speak to an expert for guidance.
So, that’s about it. To summarise:
- WordPress is free
- WordPress can scale with your business
- WordPress can be modified using plugins
- WordPress allows you to modify further using custom code
- WordPress is very easy to use
- WordPress is SEO friendly
- WordPress is easily transformed into an e-commerce platform
