What’s all this talk about WordPress? You’ve likely come across the popular content management system (CMS) at some point as a user or as a content creator. With almost 75 million websites currently powered by WordPress, it has become the most widely used CMS in the world – making up 27% of the web.
Notable brands using WordPress include companies such as The New Yorker, BBC, BestBuy, TED, Forbes, Ebay, Trello, Vogue, Nikon and Hoostsuite to name a few. Even Beyonce and AMC’s The Walk Dead websites are using it (2 of our favourites!). If you’re new to WordPress, here are 5 reasons you should consider using it for your business’s website.
1. It saves you money
WordPress is free to download and easy to install. It also offers free templates for businesses and start-ups on a budget. If you’re looking for the next step up, there are also thousands of pre-made templates available, ranging from $49 – $89. Within these templates users can typically update colours, imagery and content to fit their brand with little to no coding knowledge.
If you are considering a more custom design and your budget allows for it, the third option is to engage a web developer to create a theme based on your goals and functionality needs. While it is an investment up front, this option still allows businesses to update their own content once the site has been launched. Custom sites that aren’t built with WordPress may not be so friendly for DIY updates, meaning businesses have to pay a third party developer every time a change is needed. This is not only costly, but time consuming.
2. It’s SEO friendly
Another great thing about WordPress is that it has SEO (search engine optimization) functionality built directly into its platform. The dashboard allows you tag content, integrate social media and create keyword URLs which all help your site in online organic searches. Popular search engines such as Google actually prefer sites that are powered by WordPress because its content is easy to crawl and updated regularly with its built-in blogging framework.
3. It’s user-friendly
WordPress dashboards (the “back-end” of your website) are known for being easy to navigate to post content, even for those with little or no coding knowledge. Add a blog post in a simple built-in word editor, add images and multi-media, or update basic information like your business hours. If you’ve hired a development team to design a custom site, your dashboard should look about as easy as it gets. As an example, below is our website’s homepage on the front-end and then what that looks like in the back-end through our dashboard. Headline and body copy fields are clearly labelled, making it easy for our team to navigate where content needs to be updated.
4. Easy integration
WordPress is an open-source platform, meaning thousands of developers are contributing to CMS improvements every day. One of its best features is the ability to integrate e-commerce, social media and marketing functionality through powerful plugins. Users can integrate major payment processors such as Paypal and Square, or add a Mailchimp newsletter sign up form. Big on social media? Add your latest tweets, instagram posts or facebook activity to your website with one easy plugin install.
5. It’s customizable
We mentioned the ability to create custom WordPress themes for your website earlier, but we can’t stress enough how unique this is. Other DIY options such as WIX or Shopify for example, do not offer this kind of flexibility to your design. At the other end of the spectrum, websites developed professionally without using WordPress although are fully customizable may not offer the same ability to easily manage content after the site is up and running. WordPress offers the best of both worlds – a unique, professionally designed website that you can easily manage in-house.
Interested in learning more about WordPress? Give us a holler and we’ll tell you all about it!