Which Web Platform is best for me, and why?

There are so many benefits of WordPress. I’ve heard it time and time again, that many people come to me and they have their website on Wix, Weebly, GoDaddy, or Squarespace

These different platforms can be good to start with if you’re just starting off, but eventually when you’re really trying to grow your business and take it to the next level, having a WordPress website is a must. I’m going to take you through the top reasons why a WordPress website is a must-have for any business.

WordPress is so powerful. It’s not just for blogging, it also offers a lot of purposes. It’s used to run complex sites, you can run e-commerce, you can manage a small business and create blogs, but you can also have a portfolio, host a social network, or even a podcast, whatever you want to do WordPress can do it for you 100%.

There’s no real way to say, is WordPress right for me? Of course, it is. You can do so much and the best part about it is that you can have everything go together: you can have a blog, your podcast, your e-commerce shop, and then a little bit about your company as well.

1. USER-FRIENDLY: WordPress is user-friendly even for beginners; it can be up and installed and running in a matter of minutes. You will still need to set it up, design the overall site, make it on point with your Brand. The reality is, it can be updated quickly and easily.
2. CUSTOMIZATION: However, if you are looking for something more than just a template, that’s when hiring a team or an agency like ourselves is beneficial. We can take that template or create a customize a whole new look. It will fit your brand cohesively and that is one of the many benefits. All these other platforms you don’t get to customize as much as you think it’s a lot of plug-and-play. You can adjust the site’s heading, the layout you want and you can start creating posts, all of these things you can do right inside of WordPress. It’s amazing.
3. PLUGINS: Plugins are something that is an extension on your website, a lot of times people don’t understand what a plugin is.  It’s where you can add in features such as security, CTAs, SEO, newsletter sign-up, and so much more. You’re able to have these items set up for you from a third party, but still on your website. With that, plugins can be great if you have your e-commerce shop, contact forms, galleries, and SEO.
4. SUPPORT: Plug-ins can be activated or deactivated as the site evolves so it’s not just a one-time thing. The biggest thing I always tell people, when you have plugins and even themes in WordPress you can’t just sit back and let it all automate and populate. You have to keep updating, and that’s why website management is so important and critical because we can go in and update all these things for you and make sure that it’s working.I actually have a story real quick about a customer I was working with.
   

   She was on WordPress, but she never touched her website in years and I was in the process of redoing her website and what had happened is when I went in her whole site just locked down the PHP wasn’t updated, the theme was outdated, the plugins were outdated, so basically you couldn’t even log in to WordPress. I basically had to recreate a whole new site.  We were already planning on doing that but we lost all of her stuff. That’s the other big thing, always have those backups that can be installed through a plugin as well. When you don’t have things updating, it can cause your website to crash. I’ve seen it firsthand and it could cause a whole bunch of security issues and so much more.

5. RANKINGS: WordPress sites rank higher than most, and that’s just because of the searchability on Google. WordPress has a tendency to rank higher for keywords because they’re being updated more frequently and because WordPress has a variety of tools for SEO. There are tons and tons of tools that you can use for SEO right inside of WordPress. Whereas other ones you might have to hand-code and add some keywords and some phrases and do a lot of updating, but there are also plugins that can be beneficial for your website.
6. MOBILE-FRIENDLY: WordPress sites are mobile-friendly. Now this one is a little tricky to understand and know because of the simple fact that a lot of websites nowadays are mobile friendly and they might have already established templates. The thing about WordPress is you can go in and update how it looks on your website and even do some coding on your phone. If it doesn’t look right on your phone you can go in and hand code some stuff and tweak it to be fully responsive. A lot of times when you’re on different platforms you’re not really able to adjust as much. The worst thing that anybody wants is to see your website on mobile looking like crap. How many times have you been on a website where you left it because it wasn’t functional, it wasn’t easy to navigate, it wasn’t any of those things?
7. CONTENT DRIVEN: WordPress websites have a built-in blog so it’s super easy, user-friendly, and one of the best tools for blogging.  I have a professional blog and podcast. I have all of those things that are already established and you can automate it and have more benefits with WordPress blogs. I’ve worked with clients in the past on different platforms like Wix, Weebly, Shopify, and Squarespace. All of those have blogging features but they’re not nearly as good as the WordPress benefits.
8. SUPPORT: WordPress also offers support and they always are responsive. I’ve been with other website platforms and they are not nearly as responsive as WordPress. They have a bunch of forms to fill out to get sent to a forum. WordPress has great stuff going on for them if you need help and assistance they’re there. They have the chat feature, but a lot of times when people hire us. We basically know what to do and how to reach out to support. If a plugin is broken or it’s not working the way it should we either find a new plugin or we reach out to WordPress support and we say hey, what’s going on with this? Is this going to be fixed or can we find something else to use in the meantime?

There’s a lot to a website and it’s not as easy as just hitting publish and plugging in information. If you truly want to grow your business, the content, the images, and the branding matter on top of which platform you use. If you use something mediocre, it’s not going to give you as much as you’d hope to get.