In the world of content management systems (CMSs), WordPress has a gargantuan market share. You’ve probably come across some of the stats before, but let’s just remind ourselves.
According to WordPress themselves, 37% of all existing websites were built using the platform. So, more than a third of the entire web was made in WordPress.
The thing is, that figure includes websites that don’t even have CMSs. If we look purely at websites that do have known CMSs, WordPress’ market share is actually 63.5% (as of August 2020). For context, the second-most popular CMS is Shopify, with just 4.5%, followed by Joomla, with 3.9%. So it’s unlikely that WordPress will be usurped any time soon, if ever.
Here are some key reasons why it is such a dominant platform, and why it’s the right choice for your new website build.
Developers know it inside-out
It’s true that anyone can build a website using WordPress, but a DIY effort should only ever be a short-term measure, such as when your business is in its infancy.
Skilled developers can maximise the WordPress platform’s potential, creating a functional, professional website that can scale with your business. You do get what you pay for, because the resulting site will adhere to web design and UX (user experience) best practices.
A WordPress developer’s work will look unique because it is unique: they don’t just pick from the preset themes and follow templates like DIYers do. They build a bespoke site from scratch. The fact that it’s in WordPress is for your benefit – as you’ll read in the next section.
Anyone and everyone can use it
WordPress is widely considered the most user-friendly CMS of them all – hence why it’s the most common.
Day-to-day content maintenance
Once your site is designed, developed and launched, you’ll obviously want the ability to maintain it on an ongoing basis – making tweaks to the written content, uploading new posts to your blog section, changing images, adding new sales-focused pages and so on. The kinds of tasks that it would just be plain inefficient to pay a developer to do.
WordPress makes day-to-day website maintenance incredibly easy for you, whether you’re a keen tech enthusiast or someone with no interest whatsoever. The backend lays everything out in plain English, with instructions and tips to guide you through each process.
Straightforward scheduling
You can upload your content on the spot whenever you want to, and you can just as easily schedule it in advance. This makes the responsibility of running a website much less daunting and will probably increase your efficiency too: instead of going in and manually uploading each piece at the right time, you can schedule multiple pieces in one setting, giving each one a date and an exact time to go live.
Multiple user accounts
If you need a few people across the business to have CMS access, it’s a piece of cake in WordPress. Each person can have their own account, with the appropriate level of authority attached.
As a common example, if you want someone to be able to draft their own posts but not have the power to set those posts live until you’ve checked them, you can set them up as a ‘Contributor’ rather than an ‘Editor’ or one of the even higher-level admins. And of course you (as the Super Administrator) can go in and change each person’s permissions whenever you want or need to.
It’s easy to customise and change
For big changes, such as those to do with graphic design, page templates or any of the fiddly technical stuff, you should consult a developer. But here’s the beauty of it: given the ubiquity of WordPress and the fact that it’s open-source, this can be any skilled developer – not necessarily the developer who first built the site, as is the case with many custom CMSs.
Your chosen developer can examine your WordPress site to uncover issues, and then go in and set about solving the problems – fixing broken code, removing unnecessary or redundant plugins, etc. If it’s a more cosmetic issue, such as outdated aesthetics, the developer can reskin your WordPress site without having to carry out a costly migration (like they would do if working with a more rigid platform).
Expansion, integration and functionality
Over time, the nature of your business might necessitate changes to your website’s functionality. Say you’re a b2b service-led business and your website is primarily informational, but one day you start to offer paid training courses as a service. The solution? Easy: an ecommerce plugin that allows visitors to book their places on your courses. On WordPress, that’s a simple job for a developer, and it gives you a quick turnaround.
It’s geared for SEO
Naturally, you’ll want your website to be as visible within search engines as possible, ranking for relevant keywords and bringing in reams of new customers/clients.
WordPress is built with search engine optimisation (SEO) in mind, from the easy-to-crawl framework, right through to the auto-generation of semantic URLs, meta titles and meta descriptions.
User-friendly SEO plugins
As a day-to-day user, you can manually go into your WordPress CMS and use a plugin such as Yoast to further bolster those SEO attributes if you want to. For instance, by doing your own thorough keyword research, and then using that to write some new, custom meta titles and meta descriptions, you will take your on-page SEO to the next level. If you have the time or resources to do that, you should. But you don’t have to – WordPress will at least tick the boxes for you as standard.
Speak to our WordPress development specialists
Interested in finding out more about the potential of WordPress and why it’s the ideal CMS for your business? We’d love to talk you through it.
Give us a call on 0161 532 5166 for an informal, no-obligation chat about what you need, or submit a quick enquiry and we’ll get in touch with you. Whatever your sector or budget, we can deliver the right WordPress dev solution.
