Summary: Creating a website is essential for a business in the modern day. There is much talk about the need and benefits of Digital Transformation. WordPress is a way that you can create a website or e-commerce store for your SME.

When it comes to creating a new website for your business, choosing a platform is one of the most crucial decisions to make. A content management system (CMS) is a software application or set of related programmes that are used to create and manage digital content. It helps to determine how well your site runs, along with the number of tools and customisation options available to you.

Fortunately, WordPress is a safe option for almost all requirements. It is free to install, deploy and upgrade. Thousands of plugins and templates power a flexible and simple interface, which reduces development costs and deployment time. This open-source CMS is the perfect framework for building anything from a simple blog to a thriving e-commerce site.

WordPress is popular

WordPress holds the largest CMS market share of more than 56% and accounts for around 30% websites on the internet. As a result, many developers are already familiar with WordPress CMS and its advantages making it the most popular choice.

Just because everyone else is doing something is not an excuse to go with WordPress. But it has been always proven its capabilities of being the one of the best open source content management systems. Below are some advantages of WordPress.

1. WordPress is a free and open source

WordPress’ unique selling proposition (USP) is that the core platform is entirely free. It is a self-hosted CMS, without any cost of downloading, installing and upgrading. Both WordPress.com and WordPress.org are completely free to use.

WordPress.org is a self-hosted version where you control more of your site and take advantage of advanced plugins. WordPress.com works great for complete beginners, I won’t recommend it for any business that plans to make a profit. Despite the premium paid plans, it is suitable for personal blogs and not for organisations.

Taking the advantage of millions of free plugins, themes, large community and additional features cost of having a website can be kept well in budget. Although there are premium plugins and themes that provide better features, some additional features and services that provide better quality but these costs usually all depends on your experience and the scale of your website. But overall, you can absolutely keep your WordPress costs to a minimum. Many experts end up only paying for hosting.

2. Designed for anyone - easy to setup, manage and update

WordPress was designed for bloggers who lacked technological know-how, so the user interface has always been user-friendly. Manuals are available for understanding how to go about using WordPress.

3. WordPress is mobile-friendly

We live in a mobile society, so don't forget about optimising your site for mobile. As much as 80% of internet users own a smartphone and usually, people are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing.

WordPress themes are mobile-friendly and responsive to work smoothly on different screen sizes. Moreover, WordPress dashboard is developed to work on smartphones as well as full-sized PCs, making it easy to manage a website from anywhere.

4. Search engine friendly (SEO)

When you get a website for your business, you would obviously want it to be visited by as many users as possible. Search engine optimisation is a practice to boost traffic to your websites. It drives users searching for related topics on various search engines to your website. WordPress is an SEO built-in CMS platform. It generates tags, meta descriptions for the content. Having awesome content, relevant and detectable by search engines increases the ranking as well as the impressions.

5. WordPress has a huge community

Although the CMS is user-friendly and easy to manage, making a website is still a big task at hand. Having so many users, WordPress has a huge and generous community that provides support, guidance, advice, or even direct assistance. There are a number of blogs, forums, online courses, seminars, webinars, and books, all outlining different aspects of the WordPress platform. Then there is the more official customer support from WordPress.

6. Availability of thousands of plugins and themes

As we have been discussing, WordPress themes and plugins have made the task of developing a website easier. A theme acts as a base with some tweaking, adding a logo, branding, colour coding and adding new pages and content. WordPress plugins add complex business features to your website without having to hire a coder.

But every now and then, there is a need for a website to adapt to user needs. Your website may require a feedback form or complaint filing system. These can be added with the help of plugins. Some of them are free while others are paid.

7. WordPress is highly customisable and offers great flexibility

It has always been a myth that WordPress is mainly for blog posts. Originally it was, but it was drastically advanced  in 2003. Truth is, one can of course create blogs but also business websites, portfolios, e-commerce sites, rating websites, business directories and many more.

WordPress also meets the demands of many users with its flexible framework, which allows designers and developers to create and modify layouts and applications. It is highly customisable and supports a number of media forms like images, documents, audio, videos etc.

To explore business opportunities, link with us by clicking on the 'Invite' button on my eBiz Card.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views, official policy or position of GlobalLinker.