When you first start a business you will need a website as more business is moving online and less business is being done locally. If you weren’t sure where WordPress would fall for your business then this article will help you.
What can WordPress do for my Business? WordPress is one of the best website platforms that has taken the web by storm with 35% of websites being powered by WordPress. You also have access to hundreds of thousands of themes and plugins that can do almost anything.
We will go overall the details of how WordPress can help expand your business and make your website gain customers and traffic. We will also discuss details of what type of plugins you should run for a basic WordPress install.
Why Does my business need a website
With the world expanding their technology every day it’s a matter of time before local businesses turn into online businesses. There will always be a place for a local business but that doesn’t mean that online won’t dominate the world with time. Local will eventually become secondary to the online websites which will continue to be important.
Perhaps with so many businesses that are online that you would get lost in a sea of websites. However, when you create a website, you make sure hundreds if not thousands of potential customers can find that you business.
You don’t have to spend the millions of dollars to build a website and get customers to find you online. Many businesses might feel like it’s a pay to play situation, but that is not true, there are tons of businesses that zero marketing and still get found.
If that doesn’t motivate you then it should motivate you you could get found by tons of potential customers without a bunch of money involved. Let’s talk about the other solutions which could cost you much more money.
WordPress? Why not <Insert solution here>?
To be honest, the building website space has become so crowded that I couldn’t, possibly name every single company on the web that deals with building websites. You have things that range from very simple such as Squarespace and Wix to things just like WordPress such as Joolma and Drupal. And the funny thing is none of these matters if the website doesn’t work.
So why not use just regular html and CSS to code your website for free and be done with it? Well, I am not sure if you are like me but if you are, then you know you need your site to do more than just be on the web, it needs to work.
That’s what WordPress does for me. It’s a reliable framework that I can use for most situations that I run into with building a website, that could be a blog, store or even just a portfolio site. WordPress can do all those things and much more. Does it have its own set of issues? Without a doubt there are things you have to do with a WordPress site.
However, if you can look past these very basic objections you will find a solid framework which is so flexible that ultimately there isn’t too much you can’t do with it. We wrote a blog post about why we think WordPress is better than Wix, although I think you can find more posts just by searching Google.
There is no one solution for businesses, a business should be flexible as its website is. Pick what works for you, for me WordPress is my 99% go to in most cases.
Reasons why you should use WordPress for your business
1. The platform is used by over 30% of the websites
That means out of every 10 websites that you visit at a given time somewhere around 30% are WordPress. There’s a reason that WordPress is so popular that happens overnight nor does it come from a weak product. WordPress is here to stay and there are several people who hate on the product but we will cover those objections more down below.
The point being many popular websites love and use WordPress; you need not be the popular kid but there is a reason they use WordPress. It’s a really cost effective platform to run a business off of.
2. WordPress is free
WordPress does not have a price tag like Wix or Squarespace. WordPress is a free product which may be installed on anything you want it installed on which means you have total control over your website. The biggest downside to free products are that they have limited support, which is partially true more on that below but you find that a quick Google search will solve most of your issues.
WordPress is so widely used that there is a large amount of information such as this article which is published on the web daily talking about WordPress.
3. WordPress is versatile
WordPress does so much as a website that it can be very hard to pin it down to one thing it does well. It can be a blog, it can be an ecommerce solution, it can be a regular website, it can be a one page website, and the list continues. The flexibility behind WordPress lends to its strength and weakness, it’s so flexible you can get lost in the details of just what it can do.
The best WordPress sites have a written plan before they ever do anything involving building a WordPress site. Without a roadmap, you can’t know where you are going.
4. WordPress is powerful
WordPress is powerful when you consider what it can do compared to some competitors that are also competing against WordPress. They have hundreds of thousands of programs that WordPress can tap in to expand the functionality of the basic WordPress. Almost every other CMS will have limits of what it can do based upon the number of plugins and additional files that it will use.
WordPress’s popularity lends to the fact that it has so much support that can do just about anything that we can make a website to do.
5. WordPress is search engine friendly
They build WordPress for search engines right out of the box. You don’t need additional plugins if you don’t want to. They are already most SEO included into WordPress which makes it much easier for someone to build a website that is friendly for Google.
Still if you want more control over SEO then there are tons of plugins that you can use to expand the search engine optimization.
6. You own the content
Unlike other solutions that are out there the content is 100% yours. Some other solutions will only grant you content after you have paid fees but with WordPress, you own everything that you ever publish. It’s not on someone else server or you are paying someone else to use their system, it’s your system and content together; you own it all.
WordPress unlike many other solutions is one of the best for owning all of your own content.
7. WordPress is customizable
Just as we said above with all the plugins and support, all of this makes WordPress one of the most adaptable programs that you can use on the web. Many plugins can completely change your website from a blog to an ecommerce or ecommerce to just a regular website.
8. WordPress is easy to use
Regardless of what you think once you know how to use WordPress, it’s very easy to use. There is a rather longer learning curve than something like Wix but that doesn’t change that it’s easy to learn. One of the best things about WordPress is once you get it down, it’s much easier than any other solution. Don’t let other people tell you that WordPress is hard to understand because that is not true.
When you consider things like page builders which make building the whole website easier, you have a solution that works very similar to the other solutions on the market which do not require things like coding or design.
9. WordPress has lots of tutorials
The large number of people means that you have training worldwide just like this website. You even have things like our YouTube channel which gives you tutorials which can help you learn WordPress. There are several channels which will teach you WordPress and web design. While it might not make you a world class designer it will help you better understand what to ask a designer.
Always research your question on Google and then go from there.
10. WordPress has excellent integration
Now that you know how popular WordPress is one thing that beats every other solution out there is integration. When a very popular plugin comes out, it will come out for WordPress. All the major services that you would expect to be inside of WordPress are there. We cannot say the same of other solutions which are very limited in what they include and what they do not include.
11. WordPress is easy to manage
WordPress is easy to manage as most people would have you think. Services which as ManageWP and others will even allow you to update plugins, themes and everything else without even logging into your website. While you will still need to log into your website every so often to check on things, you won’t need to do it every day.
12. WordPress not stuck with one hosting platform
Other solutions are on the market use their own hosting which means you can not have your own hosting. It means if that host gets hacked, goes down or otherwise stops your website from working; then you are stuck. When you own your own hosting service, you can change your website over to whoever you think is best. This will change often as most hosting is not static, good hosts can be bad after many years.
If you want more flexibility in what your host can or can not do without you then, you can decide. I prefer to use Blue Host for brand new websites just starting out on the web, it’s the best bang for your buck.
13. WordPress keeps your site fresh
WordPress unlike a static website will always give you the ability to keep your website fresh and ready to move forward with everything going on. WordPress comes with so many bells and whistles that you won’t have any problems making sure that you can add new and fresh content without coding. That’s the power behind WordPress, you don’t have to code to use it, you just can when you need to.
14. WordPress is a multi-user capable solution
This means that if you want to have things like a designer, editor, writers or even just other users WordPress gives you the ability to add these people to that platform by allowing them to register with your website. Most other paid solutions will offer you a set number of people who can log in and access the site and others will charge you per user. This is considered an extra expense in their plans.
15. WordPress is more than a blog
While WordPress started off as a blogging platform, unlike blogger.com which a very popular blogging platform WordPress has evolved past the point of just blogging. Now the platform allows you complete control of your website through the use of plugins and themes which allow you to customize your website beyond what you could image.
16. WordPress has ecommerce solutions
Not only can WordPress help your business get noticed, but it also has the power to sell through the use of plugins and integrations with highly rated selling platforms. Using plugins like Woocommerce or other plugins it can be easily taken care of with no issue. WordPress can be just as powerful as shopping platforms like Shopify.com.
17. WordPress can run a membership site
Just like we have mentioned repeatedly, you have no limitations unlike other sites such as Wix or Sqaurespace. If you want to build a membership website, then WordPress will work prefect for your business because you will have full control to add members and tiers through the use of plugins which expand WordPress content restriction and additional user features which expand the ability to add or restrict users.
18. WordPress allows remote updates to the blog
WordPress will allow you to send blog updates to your website through email which is one of the unique features I have found. Rather than logging on to your website directly you can send a post in directly through email which is helpful if you want to put shorter content out faster. That is a feature you won’t find with most other solutions that exist on the market today.
19. WordPress saves your money
If you haven’t noticed that most of these options are free then you probably aren’t reading well enough. You can do most of the things I talked about above by just installing a plugin and most of them are free. While these plugins have paid options many of the plugins, you will not have to pay for most. This allows you to pick what certain areas of your website you would rather be frugal in and which areas you want to spend more money on.
20. WordPress is mobile friendly
Google has changed the world in so many ways and one of those ways was for the best but it’s hard for older website owners; they forced mobile first. This means that your website should be mobile friendly no matter what and this forced software like WordPress and developers themselves to build websites using more friendly standards to all devices. Now in 2019, WordPress is a mobile friendly platform which means 99% of themes you buy will be mobile friendly. It’s become such a mandatory thing that you have no choice but to be mobile friendly.
21. WordPress is a universal platform
When you build out your website, it will push you to use all different solutions that exist in the world and there is no wrong choice other than one that doesn’t work. WordPress is a platform that is used by over 30% of all websites on the web and so it’s important that you understand you are buying into a solution that is used across many business and personal solutions. That should give you a boost in confidence knowing you are backed by such a popular system that finding help or even going further won’t require very much research on your part.
22. WordPress keeps getting better
WordPress has never stopped developing their software. In fact, in our recent video about Gutenberg we talk about how WordPress will start allowing Gutenberg to develop websites which will change WordPress. This constant revolving cycle may scare some people but with each upgrade brings better security, support and features that you did not have before. So it’s important that while you should be wary of change for change’ sake, WordPress is making their solution better.
WordPress Objections
Now that we have looked at what WordPress can do for your business and talked about the features. Let’s talk about some common objectives you might have and break these objectives down for you so you can understand why many of these are fear mongering techniques.
1. WordPress will drive you down a dark path of coding and customization!
While WordPress can be an endless cycle of development which can last for years true of all websites. Gone are the day of throwing up a website and spending only $500 dollars to developing and upgrading it every five or ten years.
Google the most popular search engine likes fresh content. So if you don’t update your content now and then you will rank lower and lower over time because of a lack of updates.
Also, while we are on the topic, if you give someone a blank statement such as build me a website that can means millions if not billions of things so you want to get intentional and specific. I would urge you to come up with a game plan before you ever dive into a website program and have a clear ending in mind for what you want.
2. WordPress is expensive to manage!
WordPress has no monthly fees and while they will force you to pay for things like themes, plugins and WordPress services like these things are optional. No one forces you to pay for these things against your will, you can freely choose not to use a service and find a cheaper alternative. So no, managing WordPress is not expensive to manage. Most of my customers manager their own websites and they call me for help.
3. You won’t be able to edit your own content!
While a sneaky web designer can block you from breaking your own website by assigning you as an editor rather than admin, this is not true. You set the rights when you first sign up with a designer. If you want full website rights, then you should get full website rights. This comes from people who do not have enough knowledge to know that they should ask while designing a website for full website rights.
Many companies and designers will use this against you to make extra income by charging you monthly for things like updating content and keeping your website secure. But once again this is something you can do, I have maintenance packages similar to this but I don’t push my customers to buy them, they can if they want. Each customer situation differs from others who might require more help or less help depend on how much they want to learn.
4. WordPress breaks down frequently!
This is once again not true. WordPress has updates which give you new features and protect you from people who find exploits, this is true. Sometimes those updates will have a conflict with a plugin or theme which is again true and that can cause problems but those problems are often temporary while the developer of the plugin you use gets out a patch to fix the problem.
This is so common in development cycles that it can’t be stressed. A bigger example of this is recalls on cars, when an airbag is recalled and you need to bring you car in. That’s the same thing as this, it’s an update to something you are using, it might not be a software update but it’s an update no less to help you.
Anything that updates has a chance of breaking because of the update, sadly this is par for the choice for things being rushed out the door and less quality control happening.
5. WordPress is not the only platform that works on SEO!
That is 100% true, other platforms like Squarespace and Wix do work with SEO and they work well. But here is the general problem with this thinking. The most popular sites that show up on most pages of Google are not Wix nor Sqaurespace. They are WordPress and other solutions so those platforms give you a disadvantage from using them.
If you Google anything right now and look at the top results, in most cases you won’t find Squarespace nor Wix as being the top search suggestions. This is data that top SEO people have gathered through doing large-scale search testing. This may change as these platforms pick up steam but for right now WordPress is king.
6. WordPress gets hacked too easy
WordPress is the most targeted software for websites and that is true. Just like Windows is the most targeted software for computers. If you are #1 in anything you become a target to people who are looking to exploit many users. However, because WordPress is so large it often patches these problems before they are even an issue.
Still the best way to protect your use is to use some tips we provide in this article on security. Security is a problem for every website solution, there is no exception just for WordPress.
7. It’s bad for small business
Hopefully, this article has changed your mind but once again this is not true. WordPress is the best thing to happen to business because it allows faster pro-typing of ideas. if you follow something like the lean startup method, then you know they recommend that you put out simple ideas that don’t cost money and then build on those.
What is a better method something free to download and used by 30% of websites or something that has a monthly subscription and will charge you per feature you need? Sounds to me like WordPress is a clear win.
Conclusion
I hope this article has helped you better understand how important WordPress is to websites and small businesses alike. I think WordPress has changed the game for the small business website and you shouldn’t feel you are behind for your website, so why choose the wrong platform.
If you liked or disagreed with this article, then comment down below and if you are interested in more WordPress content, check out our blog and learn more
