WHY WORDPRESS FOR YOUR BUSINESS?
I want to examine why choosing WordPress for your business website may be the best solution for your needs.
You have spent years building your passion into a business. You know you need to look at building a business website to help expand your presence online, with all the options out there this can be a mess.
For many business owners, getting set up online is a daunting experience. afterall, you are great at your business, not necessarily building websites. A typical scenario is you look online, you and are bombarded by commercials promising easy 1 hour websites, no-hassle 5-minute setup and more. These experiences may leave you so frustrated, you end up calling it quits before ever really getting started.
I want to tell you the solution is easier than you think. You don’t need to know HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. You dont want to dive into Wix or Squarespace. Most businesses also don’t need a custom built-from-scratch website that will put you back a minimum of $20,000. Maybe just a one-page website tailored to your business will be all you need. My recommendation is to look for a website designer/developer who can build you a website with WordPress.
WordPress?
WordPress is a free open source CMS (Content Management System) that is currently powering an estimated 34% of the entire internet. How much is that to you and I? Approximately 75million websites are built using WordPress to date.
WordPress is not just for small businesses either. Here is a small example of sites built with WordPress
Now let’s get to the details.
NOW YOU KNOW WHAT WORDPRESS IS, HERE IS WHY ITS A GOOD SOLUTION
1. YOU ARE BUILDING AN ASSET
What do I mean by this in the realm of a WordPress Website? If you believe the commercials or maybe received some poor advice and went with a solution like Wix initially you may be out of luck (or an easy way out).
Wix uses proprietary tools which make it impossible to move your website which you spent money developing, maintaining and building. You cannot copy it, migrate it, download or upload it. If you want to move to a more suitable platform you have to pay for a new website developer to build you a site to mimic your old Wix site. See the below image from their support.
When you build with WordPress you get peace of mind that you own the asset you have been funding. If down the line you don’t like changes to your hosting plan, you are free to move your WordPress Website install somewhere else. Most website agencies will migrate your website for minimal cost.
2. SUPPORT
When you build on WordPress you have already invested in building your asset which is built on a foundation that has extensive support. A worry a lot of business owners have when choosing a website design agency is what if the agency goes out of business. What happens to my website.
If your chosen website designer/developer goes out of business, your website can be picked up by nearly every other agency out there as WordPress is so widespread. They can continue looking after your business.
3. SCALABLE
WordPress has many advantages to a growing website. On top of the themes that are available which we will discuss in the next point. There are also many plugins that enrich your website when you need it.
Maybe people have been asking for you to include a member’s area, or you want to gate off some content behind a call to action such as entering an email or paying a subscription. You can find plugins to enable membership areas and your website designer would be happy to assist in the setup, these features will not be a big expense as the foundation of your website does not need to be changed to add this functionality.
4. THEMES
When you start to work with a designer it can be difficult to communicate your idea of how you want your website to look and feel. The advantage of WordPress is its theme library. You can check out themes on Themeforest while your designer may be against using a prebuilt theme you can at least communicate your preferred style.
Using themes has another advantage as you can get a great looking website and with some theme customizations a unique look and feel, for a fraction of the cost of a custom website build. Many agencies will customize a theme for your needs and make it unique to your business.
5. BLOGGING AND INTERACTION
When it comes to making blog posts, WordPress is the best in the business. Its SEO friendly structure allows you to manage and hit your keywords when you are creating amazing content for your users.
Recently WordPress underwent a large change to its fundamental blogging core. The new editor is just as easy to use as the old one and build on a more robust framework. Making great content has never been easier.
What’s more, having a blog area on your website allows you to keep up engagement with your audience, which in turn will help your google rankings and your community.
THAT’S IT!
Every Website Design Agency out there should be offering WordPress to business owners as a potential solution to their needs, if they are not you may need to ask them why. There is a reason over 75 million websites are currently build using WordPress, it will allow you to get an amazing website online quickly and with minimal fuss.
Before I leave I would like to offer some general advice for working with a website design agency or anyone who is handling your website for your business, community or organization. Ensure your developer provides you with a master access username and password. You never know when you will need it. Most will provide you with a general user account to make changes that will not allow you to break your website, and a master account which is to be used in emergencies.
