WordPress is an intuitive content management system (or CMS) used by a massive international customer base to build and maintain websites. As of 2020, it is estimated that there were 1.3 billion active websites currently online, with WordPress being the program with which around 35% of those sites were built. That means that over 455 million active websites are using WordPress right now, a number that grows steadily monthly! Impressively, WordPress was employed in the making of 15% of the world’s top 100 websites, being the preferred tool used by companies such as TED, Best Buy, and even the NFL! All of these people remain loyal customers because of a few reasons:
WordPress is free
WordPress software can be downloaded, installed, and ready to use in 5 minutes at absolutely no cost to you. To host a website, you will need to purchase a domain (about $30/yr) and third-party website hosting (which, annually, can be about $100-$200 on average or more if you have more than 50,000 visitors per month). However, the near-endless functionality of the WordPress website builder and CMS won’t cost you anything. If you are looking to upgrade and unlock additional functionality, you can purchase the specific plugins your brand needs. However, you can build some genuinely unique websites without any of these premium plugins. This is because WordPress is open-source software. This means one person does not own it but rather that it has been contributed to thousands of talented developers over the years, who continue to expand the CMS’s functionality. Though there is a team of core WordPress developers, anyone with the technical know-how can contribute to patches, bug fixes, and project development.
WordPress is customizable
Though WordPress began as primarily a tool for blogging and online publishing, the development team has created an easy-to-use website builder, as well as a dashboard for continued site maintenance after your website has been built. This website builder is incredibly intuitive and takes the complexity out of creating a site by displaying a visual interface rather than forcing you to write code. If, however, you are a coding whiz, you can bypass this visual interface entirely and input code that does whatever you want it to! Unlike software like Wix, a software that limits your customizability options to fit within the builder’s narrow parameters, possibilities are endless with the WordPress CMS. Further customization can be achieved through free or premium plugins. Because the software has a massive, open-source team of developers, there are over 50 thousand advanced functionalities and themes that have already been coded that you can add to your website through these plugins. WordPress plugins can encompass analytics, data capture, site security, content creation, and more! More plugins are created every day, so you can continuously update and improve your website, often at no extra cost to you.
WordPress is scalable
If you’re looking for a one-size-fits-all solution, WordPress is the right choice. Because the site builder is so customizable, the software is as suited to creating low-traffic websites for small businesses or personal brands as it is for creating high-volume, high-traffic sites for large, multinational corporations. The key to this broad appeal lies in the WordPress community. The teams and developers behind the software offer robust support to their users. The core team hosts international WordPress camps, and there is support provided to local WordPress outreach and development groups, as well as a myriad of supported online guides. This makes the customizability of the software accessible and understandable to everyone who wants to try it out.
WordPress integrates seamlessly with eCommerce Platforms
Most businesses building a website intend to enter into the eCommerce game, whether as an extension of their traditional retail offering or as an entirely online storefront. WordPress sites account for this by supporting a wide array of eCommerce plugins. Our eCommerce plugin of choice is WooCommerce, and lots of others agree; WooCommerce is the most widely used eCommerce plugin on WordPress! The WooCommerce suite on WordPress allows for incorporating dozens of elements and themes, which means you can keep your eCommerce pages in line with your site’s overall aesthetic. The plugin also allows you to keep a detailed inventory of digital and physical products with integrated reporting mechanisms. You can even sell affiliate or external products through the WooCommerce WordPress plugin! The plugin has built-in support for the web’s most widely used payment options. It also supports extensions that widen the array of payment options available to your customer even further. As an established company, WooCommerce also offers extensive support and help networks for users of their eCommerce plugin, which can help guide you through any manner of online store creation.
WordPress sites rank high in searches.
It’s crucial to optimize your site to show up above your competitors in search engine searches. This can be achieved through a process called search engine optimization (or SEO for short), in which keywords are added to your site and tagged as headings to make them recognizable to search engines like Google. WordPress code works in such a way that your chosen keywords are very obvious to search engines, so your site will show up as a better match to anyone looking up the products and services you offer! Another great way to practice SEO on your WordPress site is to use any one of the hundreds of SEO plugins that developers have already created, which will automatically make your website more Google-friendly. The WordPress CMS will also automatically make your website more mobile-responsive, ranking your site even higher when people on their phones search your keywords.
So we’ve established that WordPress is free, incredibly customizable, and offers support to small enterprises and large corporations alike. The CMS also supports eCommerce integration in a flash and encompasses dozens of strategies for making your brand more visible to your target market. As far as we’re concerned, this is the one choice in building a website that’s easy.
Have you seen tons of ads for other website platforms? Keep in mind that all of those paid platforms like Wix have a huge advertising budget because they charge every user per month… That’s why you see ads for them all over. WordPress doesn’t need to invest in advertising because they’re just the best, and free to use.