We favour WordPress for building and managing the content of our clients’ websites (and it goes without saying that we use it to power our website too).
It seems that we are not the only ones, with WordPress remaining the fastest growing content management system for the 6th year in a row[1]. But we realise that, although it is something we know inside out, many of our clients aren’t that familiar with it or how it might benefit their organisations website. So we’re going to reveal our top reasons for using WordPress.
Maybe we should begin by naming a few notable websites powered by WordPress. When you see the list, you’ll hopefully agree it’s an impressive place to start. Forbes, Sony, CNN, ebay, Microsoft News, IBM jobs all use WordPress. Honestly, it’s a list that could go on and on. You may also be interested to know that WordPress was named Content Management System of the Year in 2015 and has already reached an impressive milestone by running a quarter of the web.[2] Why the ever-growing popularity? Could my business be missing out? Well, those are just a few of the questions we wish to answer.
Before we go any further, we should cover the basics. What is WordPress? In brief, WordPress is a web-based application for creating and managing the content of a website. It really is that simple! (And we’ll get back to that later on in this post.) But what you really need to know is why WordPress might be considered better than other content management systems.
Stand out from the rest with bespoke WordPress development
At Platform Twenty we think WordPress is a fantastic application for creating a completely bespoke design for our clients. We begin by creating a prototype in Photoshop and presenting the design to our client for approval. Then we code the WordPress theme templates from scratch to match the approved design, thereby setting the overall style and layout of the new website and creating a custom built web design. Coding from scratch ensures that the look and feel of our clients’ websites is exactly suited to meet their unique business requirements.
A highly functional website
Enabling visitors to interact with and react to your website is critical to converting them into a customer. This may be achieved by ecommerce, members login/restricted content areas, forums, interactive forms, embedded video, embedded google maps and more. So once we’ve perfected the style and layout of a new website, we add the content supplied by our client to each web page and look to provide as much additional functionality as required to ensure the new website will engage visitors. In part, this is made possible by the plugin architecture available with WordPress and there are thousands of plugins, widgets and themes to choose from. We only use plugins we know are robust and secure and if there isn’t one that suits the needs of our client, then we’ll develop a bespoke plugin to meet their requirements.
Improve your site’s search engine optimization (SEO)
It goes without saying that you want to make sure your target audience reads your website. So creating a new website that is search engine friendly is an important goal. Luckily, WordPress comes with several built in search optimization tools and plugins which can be used for this purpose too. We’re not saying WordPress will do all the work, but it will help achieve this goal.
A website that is mobile and tablet responsive
With the ever-increasing mobile phone and tablet usage for web browsing, this is another important consideration when creating any new website. At Platform Twenty, we only create websites that are fully responsive and so look great on all screen sizes. Anyone looking to create a new website should do the same and with WordPress you can.
A website that can manage different media types
Google owns YouTube? So a video on a home page is invaluable. Fortunately, WordPress comes with built in support to manage different media types. So if you would like your website to contain images, audio or video content, this is no problem with WordPress.
A website that is easy to extend, manage and update
I did say I would get back to how simple WordPress is! The truth is that WordPress is super user-friendly, having been designed for anyone to use rather than being a product aimed at web developers alone. So if you decide to use WordPress to power your new website, you can be sure that once your new website is live, updating content or adding new functionality will be straight forward. We train our clients so that they have the tools to do so themselves. But if time is an issue, we also offer maintenance packages as a solution.
A secure website
At Platform Twenty we know that by using WordPress we are providing our clients with a content management system for their new website that is mature and robust. It’s been around since 2003, which is a long time in the world of content management systems and it’s constantly being developed and improved in terms of both usability and security.
We hope we’ve highlighted some salient points for you to consider for your next website project. If you already have some ideas about what you would like to do to improve your website, but you’re not sure how to get started, please get in touch and we’ll be happy to help.
[1] “Web Technologies of the Year 2015”. W3Techs. January 2016.
[2] “Web Technologies of the Year 2015”. W3Techs. January 2016.