Tyler Horvath — January 5, 2017 Follow @tyton_mediaWordPress is a content management system that is used by over 75 million websites worldwide.
There are a plethora of reasons that this crazy amount of people use it but we can boil it down to about 9 main reasons that WordPress is perfect for small businesses.
If you are a small business owner, then I am sure that you don’t have any time to manage your website.
You are probably busy selling your products, services and company… why waste time on your website?
With WordPress, you can enjoy the freedom of automatic updates and reliability that comes with a 12 year old software.
So what makes WordPress so great?
Here are the 9 reasons that small business should use WordPress for their website:
It’s Free
That’s right! WordPress is completely free to download and install on your server.
But how do they make money you may be asking?
Well, many people get confused between Worpress.com and WordPress.org.
WordPress.org is free open-source CMS software that is free to use, download, modify and redistribute under the GPLv2 license.
While, wordpress.com is a privately held company launched by the original creator of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg which offers hosting services for WordPress sites.
Although downloading and using WordPress is completly free, there are some things you may have to pay for if you want a quality website:
- Hosting: You will need a server to host your WordPress script on but you can find hosting as low as $ 1.99/month.
- Theme: There are thousands of free WordPress themes, but building your brand and standing out will mean you may have to pay for a custom designed theme.
- Paid Plugins: While there are over 30,000 WordPress plugins, not all of them are free. If you want advanced functionality, you may have to pay for it.
Quick & Easy Setup
Another great reason that small business should use WordPress is that is super easy to set up.
A professional web designer like myself, can install WordPress and set it up within minutes.
Even a small business owner or amateur webmaster can set up WordPress on their server without knowing much about I.T. or code.
In fact, most hosting services come with 1-click install software like Softaculous, that allow you to install WordPress on your server with just a click!
User-Friendly
WordPress was created so that almost anyone could start their own blow or website.
That is what makes this software so great for small businesses and other non-technical people who want to launch a site.
The backend has a small learning curve but allows you to create pages, posts, menus, widgets, forms and even manage media like images and videos with ease.
You can even find plugins that allow the admin area to be even more non-coder friendly.
Big Support Community
One of the biggest reasons that WordPress has become such an institution for websites is because of the large community of users.
If you ever come across an issue with your WordPress site, its very likely that someone has already had that problem and knows how to fix it.
There are tons of WordPress how to guides and support forums that allow you to use your WordPress site to its full potential.
You can even send features request to the WordPress developers to add specific functionality to the CMS software.
Themes
When you build a site from scratch, one of the most expensive and time consuming parts is getting a design for your website.
But with WordPress, you have access tens of thousands of free WordPress themes that can be installed with just a few clicks.
For this reason, Small businesses love WordPress because they can find a theme they like, customize it and not spent thousands of dollars.
You can even find a professional web designer to create a custom WordPress theme if you want your brand to really stand out.
Many newer themes come with options to change/edit your website or layout with even touching a single piece of code!
Plugins
WordPress plugins are an important feature for small businesses.
It allows you to add and extend the functionality of your WordPress site very easily.
Currently, there are over 50,000 plugins that you can add-on to your WordPress site extend its functionality and usability.
For example, you can add plugins that allows you to create custom forms on your website or even plugins that allow you to add a shopping cart to your WordPress site.
If you want to see all the plugins offered for WordPress, just check out their plugin directory.
SEO-Friendly
By default, WordPress is pretty search engine optimized since Google is already familiar with the structure of the WordPress software.
But just but by installing a single plugin, you can make your site a SEO powerhouse.
There are plenty of great SEO plugins but the best of probably the Yoast SEO Plugin.
Its very simple to install/configure and will add all the latest on-page SEO elements like meta tags, canonical URLs, alt text, etc.
Open-Source
Since WordPress is completely open-source, you can literally download the code and change it however you’d like!
This makes the software VERY powerful if you are wanting to customize WordPress’s default functionality to power your small business.
For example, if you are a real estate company, you can customize WordPress to function like Zillow or Realtor.com…The possibilities are endless!
Great Security
WordPress has been around the block… and this has made it become a very secure software.
The software is constantly being updated to fix security patches and create a secure environment for your small business website.
Although there is no such thing a 100% secure website, WordPress is probably the most secure CMS out there on the market today.
Wrapping Up
In conclusion, WordPress is a really powerful content management system that provides small businesses with a secure, customized, SEO-friendly website that will bring in customers from all around the world.
Whether you just need a simple website or a high customized web app, WordPress can power your small business site with ease.
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