Why Use WordPress?
Launched in 2003, WordPress has grown from a simple blogging platform, to a juggernaut that accounts for over 25% of websites on the internet. Simply put, it has become the most widely used content management system in the world. WordPress is largely used by small and medium sized businesses, but it is used at large corporations, such as BBC, Sony, Microsoft, Disney, and more.
While WordPress has many advantages, we have analyzed the data and here are the top 5 reasons to be using WordPress for your small or enterprise-level business:
1. SEO Ready
WordPress was built to help developers create beautiful, functional websites, at breaking speeds. Since WordPress is a framework, all the core functionality is already built and maintained, developers just need to focus on building pages and style, keeping hand coding to a minimum. The WordPress architecture was built to serve static pages, even if the content is dynamically generated. This static page is great for the search engines, it receives the same information over and over again, so it knows the author is reliable the content is trust worthy. There is also built in functionality for keywords and other SEO metadata, so you can create highly optimized pages to climb the search rankings.
2. Safe and Easy to Update
Having the website code and database up to date is crucial, not only for functionality, but for security reasons. Technology is constantly evolving, and hackers are always finding a new way to break in. Software updates are very easy with WordPress, often done in a matter of minutes. With other website architectures, you need to perform a series of complicated steps to update the files, and ensure backwards compatibility. This would often take days, and would be costly in terms of man power and down times. With WordPress, you can easily ensure everything is up to date and protected.
3. Mobile Friendly Design
Almost 80% of consumers research companies and products online before making a purchase. You need to ensure your website is viewable on mobile, and easy to navigate on cell phones and tablets. Google will actually penalize your website if it’s not mobile ready, so to increase your ranking; you need a mobile friendly design. The good news is that WordPress is built with responsive design, no matter what size screen the user has, your website will fit perfect, and content will be easy to read. WordPress focuses on mobile first design patterns. This means you actually build the mobile site first, and then scale it up to desktop little by little. This ensures the design and look is cohesive across all platforms.
4. Upgrade Site Function Quickly
Need to add a new image slider to your homepage? Or maybe booking functionality to allow people to setup reservations? WordPress is a highly adaptable and scalable platform, so you can quickly add new functionality to your site without a large team or months of development. Depending on the functionality being added, you can be up in running in days or weeks, vs months or years. This quick development time also allows for costs to come down, so you can get quality, new functionality for your site without a huge expense. WordPress has a large number of developers, so the sky is the limit in terms of what’s available. Since WordPress is build using PHP, adding custom code to a website is quick and efficient.
5. Cost of Entry
Since the majority of WordPress code is pre-built, this allows developers to cut down on development times drastically. Once websites use to take years to create, with WordPress, they can now be built in a couple of weeks or months. This decrease in production times has also brought down the costs, so even consumers with limited budgets can now afford professional websites and apps. Depending on the functionality and styling requirements, WordPress sites can range from a couple thousand, up to five thousand or more. These prices are significantly lower than other, more traditional development languages and frameworks. Wordress allows small business and new entrepreneurs the ability to get their websites online and in the search engines, without the burden of huge costs.