If you own or run a business, you might be one of the 64% of businesses across the country with a website to promote it. Some businesses consider themselves too small to warrant a website or can’t justify the associated costs. But from where we stand, we see websites as a worthwhile investment that can boost digital visibility and brand awareness for any business – and we believe WordPress is the best avenue to make these things happen.
A content management system, often abbreviated as CMS, is software that helps users create, manage, and modify content on a website without the need for specialized technical knowledge.
WordPress, if you didn’t already know, is a free, open-source content management system (CMS). Started in 2005 as a humble blogging platform, WordPress has evolved into what is now the most popular CMS in existence – so popular, in fact, that powers about 42% of all websites on the internet (including ours!) So what is it about WordPress that makes it so beloved by so many?
1. WordPress is established and reputable.
WordPress.org (the original open-source, self-hosted software) and WordPress.com (the hosted version of the original software) have been around for over 15 years. It’s regularly updated and is typically very secure, both of which make WordPress appealing to businesses from all industries and sizes, from your local branding and design agency to huge conglomerates like CNN and eBay.
2. It’s fairly inexpensive, partially because it allows users to utilize web-based themes instead of requiring custom coding.
We know cost represents one of the most important factors when it comes to company marketing efforts. And they can be difficult to justify because they don’t usually yield an immediate return, which could explain why over a quarter of small businesses don’t even bother investing in a website. However, WordPress in either form offers users cost-efficient options for custom domain names and hosting – not to mention all of the free web-based themes they offer to get your website established in style, along with many paid themes from third-parties across the web.
3. It’s relatively intuitive and user-friendly in comparison to other CMS platforms.
Even if you aren’t the one building your website, most WordPress themes are user-friendly enough for in-house teams to update on the backend independently after launch, making it a great middle-ground for anyone interested in maintaining their website independently. With countless free and paid online tutorials, even newbies without any technical knowledge can get their hands dirty (not literally.)
Open source software is software with source code that anyone can access, modify, and enhance. The term ‘open source’ refers to something people can modify and share because its design is free to the public.
4. The WordPress software is open source, meaning it’s freely available and may be redistributed and modified.
Besides being free to download, the open source WordPress software and theme coding can be built on and personalized to meet your company’s specific needs, with over 50,000 plugins available in their official directory. Because of this flexibility, users can craft their website (or hire a professional) into exactly what they want it to be, and scale their site capabilities up or down with their business needs. It’s the open source trait of WordPress that allows developers like us to create custom themes to meet the specific needs of many of our clients.
5. It’s SEO friendly.
What’s the point of having a website if no one can find it? WordPress has your search engine optimization (SEO) covered. Google’s Senior Search Engineer has said that WordPress sites are capable of ranking higher in search results because the CMS takes care of 80-90% of Google’s crawling issues. This means WordPress is SEO friendly, making your website easier and quicker to find on search engines.
We expect even more updates from the WordPress team in the future to make the process of establishing and maintaining a website feel more accessible to the average web surfer. It’s proven itself to be a very versatile tool that we’ve used to build a myriad of custom websites for our clients, which you can check out here on our portfolio. If your business is ripe for a website but you don’t know where to start, we’re always here to help.