5 Reasons to use WordPress

If you’re new to the world of website design, the options can be overwhelming. There are so many different ways to build a website that a person can often get lost in a sea of choices. Even if you choose to hire a website designer rather than do the design and development yourself, you still need to make some critical decisions. You’d never walk into a car dealership and just announce, “I need a new vehicle” with no clarity on whether you want a coupe or SUV, a budget car or luxury model. Likewise it is best to have some direction when it comes to the type of website you need before building the website. In another article, we’ll provide some basic direction for how to plan a website, and what types of questions you should ask a developer before the project begins.

This article is dedicated to one thing only – the benefits of choosing WordPress.

DISCLAIMER: Designer Pro Marketing makes NO money from WordPress.com. We do not do affiliate sales. We gain nothing if you choose WordPress. We design WordPress sites, Wix sites, and a whole slew of other options. Bottom line, we have no skin in the game should you decide to take this recommendation.

There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution in website design. WordPress is not for everyone. Large companies like Nike and Apple should develop their own sites. Advanced web applications with large database development and algorithms probably also need their own proprietary development. But for the rest of us, WordPress is an awesome choice.

When building a website, there are many things to consider. Front and center is deciding the basic architecture of the website. How will the information be organized and presented? Years ago website designers would code each site from basically scratch. This is generally no longer the case. Instead, there are existing systems that are used to form the backbone of most websites. These systems allow for greater functionality and security, and are more efficient to manage than the old style of websites. One of the most popular Content Management Systems is WordPress, read more about it here.

WordPress is great, and it’s not just for blogs. The sky is the limit in terms of the applications for WordPress websites. Below are the top 5 reasons to create a WordPress website.

1. Easy to Update and Change

One of the great benefits is that once the website is up and running, almost anyone can learn how to regularly update and maintain it. That saves you time and money, because you will not need a website designer to always make The changes to your website. In fact, many developers will provide a free training so that once the site is up and running, you know how to maintain it yourself. Further, there are hundreds of great, free tutorials on YouTube for WordPress.

Think of your website like a plant or tree in a garden. The soil needs to be prepared before planting, the right variety must be planted in a fitting climate, and it must have the correct look and feel for your garden. But once its planted, it needs to be watered, pruned and cared for. Your website is no different. You need to update and add content, and tweak things as your business changes, and your online needs change.

Since WordPress is so easy to learn, it makes regular updates easy. It’s true, Wix is even easier to learn, see here for a bit on Wix, but WordPress has additional features – keep reading – that make it our number one pick.

2. WordPress is Free

There is no monthly, annual or any other costs involved with using the WordPress platform. There is a cost to hire a designer and there can be costs with certain premium plugins. However WordPress itself is free to use. You can choose to have your WordPress site hosted on the WordPress.com platform, for a fee, but this is not necessary. There are also many hosting companies that provide dedicated WordPress hosting, also for additional fees above and beyond their basic hosting packages. But this is also not necessary. WordPress hosting is nice, and provides security solutions and customer service specifically tailored to WordPress sites. But many, many WordPress sites operate just fine with standard hosting packages.

There are many content management systems that cost money, and they promise all sorts of functionality. But the truth is, most of that can be found in WordPress. And its free. It’s hard to beat free.

3. WordPress is Great for SEO

Once you build your website, you need people to be able to find it on the internet. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. You want your website designed in such a way that the search engines will be able to index your site and show your content at the top of searches. WordPress sites tend to rank higher than sites built on other platforms (there’s lots of literature, and argument, about how WordPress SEO compares with Wix SEO). Now the devil is of course in the details because much care and attention needs to be placed on an SEO strategy in order to really do well. But the best strategy will fall short if the infrastructure of the website itself is not optimized for SEO. A WordPress site will get you off to a good start.

4. There are Thousands of Plugins

Let’s say that you want to add an automatic scheduler or chat feature to your website. All you need to do is search through the many plugins until you find what you need. Sometimes you do need a website designer to help you find the right plugin and install and customize it, but more often than not you can find what you need among the thousands of plugins. You can add really great functionality to your site without having to pay a developer big bucks to build something from scratch.

When you search through the plugins, WordPress tells you how many sites are using each plugin and when the plugin was last updated. So for example, if you search for an automatic emailer plugin, 50 options may come up. One plugin on the list may have 200 thousand installations and have been updated last month, and another plugin may have 100 installations and have been last updated two years ago. (All things being equal, the former option, with many more installations and more recent updates, would be the winner.)

5. It’s Easy to Change Designs

Every now and then, people like to change the look of their website. Well, guess what? With WordPress, you can easily choose a new theme, and with the push of a button can you change the entire look of your website. There is a bit more to it than that depending on what type of plugins you are running and which theme you choose. But in essence, changing themes is very doable. More often than not you don’t need to do complex coding and backups to make the switch. So when your website is ready for a facelift, the process can be pretty smooth and painless.

There are thousands of free themes (templates) available, and thousands of themes available for purchase. The majority of themes have free versions, which can be upgraded to the pay version for increased functionality. Every theme can be modified. Colors and dimensions can be changed, images swapped out, and almost every part of the theme can be changed if needed. All the code is available to you, and you, or a hired web designer, can change anything and everything.

If you see a website that you like, copy the URL and past it into the search box of this website. This site will tell you if the website in question is a WordPress site, and if it is, you will be able to see which theme the site is using and all the plugins that it has. So if your competitor has a really cool feature on their website, it’s very easy to figure out what it is, and how to either replicate that function on your website, or improve on it.

Well, those are 5 great reasons to use WordPress! Are you ready to build a WordPress website? Contact us to get started.