WordPress is a great platform for websites and blogs, but why? Programmers love it because it is open-source, adaptable, fast, easy to develop in, expandable, and community supported. Business owners love WordPress because the system has no licensing fees, it is less expensive than most other options, and they can add content or update the website themselves. Most of all, WordPress is very SEO friendly. After switching to WordPress your website’s search engine placements (SERP’s) will and automatically go up.
Ease of Development
The next great thing about wordPress is that there is a is a huge variety of tools and products to help companies design and develop the WordPress site that is ideally suited to their needs.
WordPress Themes
A theme has a set of formatting code and features that affects is functionality and is prebuilt by companies like Theme Forest and others. A theme dictates the core structure of your website. This can be limiting at times but for low budgets it can be the right temporary solution. There are thousands of free themes are available, and many others are available for a modest license fee. Most themes can be customized with your choice of logo, color scheme, typography, etc. Some offer a richly featured development environment that controls many aspects of appearance and function. And if the developer cannot find a theme to the client’s liking, a specialized theme can be created, uniquely tailored to the requirements.
WordPress Plugins
WordPress is highly functional right out of the box, but most developers add a suite of plugins to increase functionality. If you can think of a feature that you would like to see on your site, chances are there is a plugin that does it. There is a registry of plugins that lays out the function and features of each, and maps its compatibility to the version of WordPress you are using. And the vast majority of plugins are free. A few plugins that are very complex or have a high requirement for maintenance are fee-based, but many have a free, simpler version.
WordPress’ Focus on Content
Website owners discover that adding content to WordPress is as easy as using a word processor. The company is free to add content without concern for its presentation. All you have to worry about is selecting the right formatting template for the information you are creating and WordPress will take care of the rest. There is a built-in text editor based on TinyMCE. If you want to get fancy, several plugins are available to add richer editing capabilities. Changes to text are automatically protected with backup versions, with a good mechanism for identifying and restoring previous versions. Users can easily add pictures and links. This is so important for search engine optimization and independence.
WordPress Support and Development Community
There are more than 60 million installations of WordPress out there. The breadth of availability to practical answers to questions and problems is unparalleled. And the people who develop and support WordPress sites are only too happy to offer advice and assistance to their fellow WordPressistas.
SEO — Search Engine Optimization
A blog-based website is already favored by search engines because of its ever-growing content and the way it helps crawlers find all its posts and pages. Website owners need to make sure that someone is posting to the blog regularly to keep the momentum going. The WordPress development community augments this with a host of checklists, advice, and plugins to help you get the optimum exposure for your site. Each blog post has headings, tags, and categories that can enhance SEO.
Adaptability
A skilled web design company or developer can get a very simple blog up and running in no time. It is quick and easy to customize. And on the same platform, they can build a full-featured commercial website with nearly every feature you can envision. No other platform comes close to this range of adaptability.
But WordPress is not limited only to simple websites or blogs. WordPress is suitable for small scale e-commerce websites as well. Setting up a store in WordPress is done by installing shopping cart plug-ins, that can be scalable but have their limitations down the road. Many businesses choose to have their ecommerce website developed in an ecommerce platform such as Magento and then have a WordPress blog added on to improve search engine optimization.
WordPress Cost
The price of the WordPress license is right — free! A developer can download and run WordPress for personal or commercial use without cost, and there are free and paid themes and plugins. Where WordPress can get expensive is when building a completely customized website. This route is usually chosen by multi-channel companies who want a uniques website and need to represent their brand right. This is where where companies like Shero Designs come in. Equipped with experienced developers and designers allows for a website to be produced more quickly without being encumbered by thousands of lines of code or partially-compatible components. To read more about the cost of a custom WordPress website read our article here. It so thorough, that is ranked the highest article on Google for the kew words “WordPress Website Cost”.
Concluding, WordPress is a coherent, expandable and adaptable system that cannot be beat for website and blog development. If you are thinking about starting or re-doing a website,WordPress is the way to go. We build small business and ecommerce sites in WordPress, and larger sites in Magento with an added-on WordPress blog. Let us know if we can help?
Best,
Gentian, CSO and co-founder of Shero Commerce, guides the company and client digital strategies. He's an expert in technical SEO, Inbound Marketing, and eCommerce strategy.
