The 5 Best Reasons to Design a Website With WordPress

Some of the biggest brands in the world build their website on WordPress, including Forbes, BBC America, MTV News, and even The White House! If you design a website with WordPress, you give your business the edge with the freedom to be creative, easy-to-use search engine optimization (SEO) tools, and added functionality that caters to your specific business needs.

Getting started with a WordPress site is free and simple. However, what you pay for is a domain name, as well as premium features such as themes and plugins.

If you’re looking for the right website platform, WordPress allows you to have as many or as few bells and whistles as you need.

Here are our five best reasons to design and create a website, online store, or blog with WordPress:

Design a Website with WordPress = Freedom

One of the many reasons business owners choose to design a website with WordPress is the freedom and flexibility. Your designer or developer has total control over the code and content. This means you can use a pre-built theme right out of the box or tailor it as much as you like to fit the needs of your business.

Think of a theme as a basic blueprint of your website. The blueprint provides the layout and foundation of your house, but you make it your home with your furniture, appliances, paint, and more. You can even move elements around if needed.

There are thousands of WordPress themes to choose from, many of them for free. Some might be better equipped to handle your business than others. There are themes built for just blogging, themes built to support ecommerce, or themes that are highly visual to house artist portfolios. You can find one you like by searching the extensive database and trying a demo version of it on your site.

With the demo, you’ll be able to see how the theme looks and acts with your existing content. Then you customize it by changing layout elements, the navigation menu, page structure, removing aspects that don’t apply to your business, and much more.

All that said, it may be a good idea to design your site with a custom theme. Check out this blog post about the risks of purchasing an off-the-shelf theme for your WordPress site.

In addition, brand identity is important for your customers to recognize your business among the competition. When you design a website with WordPress, you give your designer the ability to choose fonts and colors to align with your specific brand. Customers will get a seamless experience as they move from your Facebook page to your website or even to your brick-and-mortar shop.

WordPress freedom and customization isn’t limited to changing the look and feel of your website but also includes added functionality with the use of WordPress Plugins.

WordPress Plugins – Extendibility without Custom Code

Do you need an ecommerce site for customers to easily purchase products? Or a gallery to display your portfolio as a photographer? What about a contact form for customers to reach you online? What about all of the above?

Plugins may be the answer to all these questions and more!

A WordPress Plugin is a piece of software you can “plug-in” or install on your WordPress site to either extend functionality or even add a new feature.

For example, WordPress doesn’t come with a built-in contact form for your potential customers to ask questions. But there are hundreds of plugins available to add a custom form onto any page you choose.

Most of the time, plugins can be installed directly from your WordPress dashboard and activated after selecting a few options. It is extremely rare that a well-reviewed plugin conflicts with popular themes. But how do you know which one is right for your business? We recommend asking the following questions before installing a plugin when designing a website with WordPress.

What are my business needs, ideas, and goals?

Knowing what feature you are looking for is the first step of the project. Not all contact forms have the same goal. You might need a form that allows users to upload files. What you need to make your site work for you and convert customers may be different than other businesses. Check for those capabilities.

When was the last time the plugin was updated?

Things on the Internet change quickly. Recent updates are an indicator of improvement and bug fixes. Checking the latest update features and changelog will show you how in tune the developers are with the needs of their users. This also means everything will likely work with your theme.

How have other users rated this plugin?

Reviews and ratings can help tell a clearer picture. Once you find out if it offers the feature you need, read some reviews to see how well it works for others.

How is the reputation of the plugin developer?

You can also check how the developer performs overall. How many websites have installed their product? Do they have good customer service or publish an email address? If they put out good products with consistent reviews, chances are you are getting a good plugin.

Is it compatible with the latest version of WordPress?

Each plugin page shows what versions of WordPress it has been tested with. Make sure it is compatible with your website. If you don’t know what version your site is running, check with your web host.

Are there screenshots for me to preview this plugin?

When getting started with your WordPress site, try to get an idea of how it works. Some plugins will have screenshots of their features or a step-by-step user guide. These will give you a better visual indication of whether or not it has what you’re looking for.

Designing a website with WordPress is easy, with over 60,000 pre-built plugins. They are a valuable tool that speeds up the time to build a site, adds functionality, and reduces the cost and effort of website upkeep.

While there is no limit to how many you can install on your site – use only what you need because too many add-ons can slow down your site.

One other word of caution – check with your hosting service as you’re planning your project because your web host may limit what plugins they allow on their servers

WordPress Designed Sites Rank Well

The Google algorithm tends to rank sites higher based on how recently they were updated and the clarity of the metadata. This bodes well for you when designing a website with  WordPress since it is an open source software with great SEO plugins.

Here’s how WordPress SEO works:

Open Source software means that the source code for the platform is available for any developer to study, use, or modify.  WordPress developers all over the world benefit from collaboration, adoption, and transparency.

Since the WordPress community of developers is so large, the platform is constantly being updated. Sites built with WordPress can usually rank best, despite Google making hundreds of ranking algorithm changes every year.

Also, there are dozens of SEO tools to choose from to help you manage your site’s metadata, which helps search engine crawlers understand what your website is about. Most plugins allow you to enter the keyword you want a website page to rank for and give you guidelines on how to optimize that page.

Some of our top picks for SEO tools include SEOPress, Yoast SEO, RankMath, and All in One SEO Pack. Remember, you only need to install one to help your Google rankings.

Additionally, designing a website with WordPress makes it easy to optimize images for SEO. When your page is crawled by Googlebots, images are accounted for based on the alt-text (a descriptor word to understand what the image is of). Some SEO plugins can automatically enter the image alt-text for you.

Mobile Responsiveness is Built Into WordPress

Did you know that 60% of all Google searches take place on a mobile device?

This is why the search giant uses a method called “mobile-first indexing.” In other words, Google will primarily use the mobile version of your website content for indexing and ranking. Also important to note, when the Googlebot crawls your website, it searches for only one index. It won’t take a desktop index into account if it already has a mobile one.

What this tells us is that your business needs a strong, beautiful, and easy-to-use mobile website design to perform well.

Thankfully WordPress has your back. Most WordPress themes are mobile responsive right out of the box, meaning that your website is easily accessible and readable from any device and screen size. In other words, if you choose a mobile-friendly theme, you won’t need to do anything else to make your website work well on mobile devices.

When designing a website with WordPress, you should always take the time to test your site on multiple devices. You want visitors to have a great experience! Make sure that the font isn’t too small, pictures load quickly, and that button and text links are easy to click. Google offers a mobile-friendly test to find out if your website hits the mark.

If you find that your online store, site, blog posts, or individual website pages are loading slowly, your mobile web design. Maybe you get lucky, and they look for another page from your sidebar or the navigation menu on your website. Odds are, people will leave the site altogether.

Google Analytics will tell you if your design is contributing to a high “bounce rate.” This is when people leave your blog page, online store, or site without visiting another page.

Create a Website with a Largest Pool of Experts

WordPress accounts for 43% of websites which accounts for 63% of sites built with a content management system. This number is astounding, given all of the options site owners have today.

With its widespread use, WordPress has the largest pool of experts available.  This drives down the cost of ownership because the talent pool of experts to work on your site is so large. Simple supply and demand. The closest competitor has only 6% of the market share.

If you design a website with WordPress and need help later down the road, finding a seasoned expert who understands how your website works is easy. Search any of your WordPress questions on Google, and you’re sure to find a community of experienced designers, developers, and other users.

Another reason WordPress is the best CMS, in our view, is because the software receives regular performance and security enhancements. When you choose to design your website with WordPress, you’ll get important WordPress updates to ensure your website is running smoothly. We suggest having a WordPress professional on hand to successfully manage these updates.

Let’s Get To Work

If you design a website with WordPress, you’ve made a decision that will work for almost all businesses. The portfolio of websites created with WordPress is limitless! Your web design and functionality can easily support all of your ideas and goals. If you’d like us to help you design a website with WordPress – let us know. We’re WordPress experts!