There’s a reason why WordPress is powering over 35% of the internet; it’s the best platform to build your website! It’s the world’s most popular CMS (content management system) and has over 60% market share in the CMS market! For example, over 500 WordPress websites are built each day compared to just 60-80 built on Squarespace. So why is WordPress still the best CMS in 2020?
We explore just a few of the reasons why people love WordPress and it’s by far our CMS of choice for the majority of our clients.
WordPress is FREE
Yes, that’s right; WordPress is actually free! A lot of our clients do not realise this! They come to us having purchased a package on WordPress.com and think that’s the same professional software that huge sites such as Disney or Sony Music are built on! Unfortunately, WordPress.com and WordPress.org are very different things and we explore the differences in an earlier blog post.
WordPress itself is completely free; it’s an open-source platform with developers regularly contributing to it and updating it. You can go to WordPress.org and download WordPress on your desktop and build a website locally using the files. The only things you need to pay for to get your website online is you domain name and WordPress hosting.
WordPress is easy to set up and easy to use
Most WordPress hosting companies provide things like “one-click installs” where you can use an app to set up your WordPress site in seconds. You do not need to have any technical knowledge and you can access it from any device.
There are already thousands of free themes and plugins in the WordPress repository ready to download directly from your dashboard, which means you have the ability of having a fully-designed site with tons of features readily available in minutes!
It is very possible to have a professional WordPress site created without having any coding knowledge whatsoever.
WordPress can be used for any kind of website
Many years ago, WordPress was considered to be a blogging platform. In 2020, WordPress can pretty much be used to create any type of website you like. Yes, blogs are still a popular choice and with the many ready-made blog templates out there with pre-configured styles, it’s really easy to have a good-looking blog up and running quickly.
However, with the WooCommerce plugin, you can turn your WordPress website into a sophisticated e-commerce store, offering advanced features such as wishlists, free samples, loyalty rewards programmes, sell through Instagram and even chase up customers who left products in their shopping cart but didn’t check out!
WordPress can go even further with plugins like BuddyPress which will turn your WordPress website into a community website allowing your members to create profiles, message each other, post on activity streams and create groups!
The possibilities are endless with WordPress!
WordPress is scalable
One of our favourite things about WordPress is that it is future proof. You can start off with a basic blog and develop it into a full-blown e-commerce store. Many businesses just want some kind of online presence and do not have a lot of content ready yet. WordPress is then ideal, as you can start off with a one-page website that still looks slick and professional and you can pop this online with some analytics and learn more about your customer before committing to full website.
The scalability is especially handy when using WooCommerce, as many e-commerce businesses start off with just a handful of products but will then grow rapidly and will need a website that will accommodate a large e-commerce store and can handle the increase in traffic to the website.
WordPress boosts creativity
Even if you are not necessarily a creative person, with 7466 free themes to choose from, you can let someone else’s designs do the work for you! These themes can be installed in just two clicks from your WordPress dashboard and a lot of them come with a demo so it can be styled automatically. Just replace the text and images with your own data and you have yourself a website!
However, if you’re feeling a little more adventurous, then you can install a page builder such as WP Bakery or Elementor which provides advanced functionalities in a drag and drop style so you can create a more sophisticated website.
If you still don’t like the sound of this, then it’s probably better to let someone like us design your site for you!
WordPress is feature-packed
Any sort of functionality you want on your website, WordPress have probably got a plugin for it! One of the great things about the software being open source is that there are so many people consistently contributing to it!
Typical features that our clients ask for can be either integrated manually with some code, which we’re always happy to do. But if you’re starting out with WordPress, you may want to look for a plugin. These features include things like:
- Being able to see who’s visited the site and from where
- Having a newsletter sign-up
- Integrating social media feeds
- Automatically posting new blog posts to social media
- GDPR cookie warnings
- Invoicing features in e-commerce stores
- Live chat
These are just a few of the things that are easily implemented into any WordPress website.
WordPress integrates with almost anything
Another major benefit of WordPress being so popular is that software developers have all produced seamless integration with the most popular solutions out there. So, if you’re looking to have newsletter sign-ups automatically go into your MailChimp folder, that’s super easy to do. Or, if you’re looking for enquiries to go into the right pipeline of your CRM, that’s also super easy to do.
Most software developers are aware of how popular WordPress is and so they already have an integration solution for it. If you’re not sure if it exists, just reach out to the company and they will often provide a code snipped to add to your site!
WordPress is great for SEO
Google loves WordPress, which is great, because so do we! This means that all our websites that we design do pretty well in search engines as we know how to build them to allow great search engine optimisation. WordPress is already really SEO-friendly out the box compared to most other CMSs, but on top of this, WordPress has great SEO plugins that can be installed and guide you on how to rank even higher on search engines.
Support
Despite everything we’ve been telling you about how “easy” WordPress is, in reality it can still be pretty tricky, even for us professionals. It’s definitely the best CMS out there, but if you want to do anything that’s not basic, you can run into problems.
However, WordPress has an absolutely huge community out there with thousands of people ready to help you with whatever query you have. Some people work for WordPress directly, but others are just helpful WordPress users.
Easy to learn
If you do want to learn about how to use WordPress properly, then you’re in luck, because there are thousands of courses out there on the likes of MOOCs like Udemy and lots of tutorials on YouTube. You can probably find 5 minute how-tos to solve most of your WordPress needs.
However, here at N0BS Agency, we also provide tailored WordPress lessons either on a one-to-one basis or as a group coaching session. Your WordPress lessons are always tailored to your own site so they are not generic. We will use your own WordPress website’s dashboard as the “training ground” and teach you how to edit things yourself.
As standard, we also provide walkthrough videos for our clients when they take out WordPress design packages too.