When you want to invest in an online business, website creation technologies can be really confusing. There are a lot of them, and it’s really difficult to make a decision about which one to use.
Web development companies tend to drive their client to the technology they know best, and sometimes they overrate certain technologies to convince their client to choose it just because they prefer it. In this article, I’m going to list the top reasons to use WordPress for your next e-business since it has a lot of advantages for you as a non-tech investing in online business.
Let’s start by defining WordPress
WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world. More than 35% of all websites are powered by WordPress (75 Million Websites), which means one of every 4 websites you visit is probably powered by WordPress. Whether you’re planning to launch an e-commerce site, blog, portfolio, forum, social network, membership site, or any kind of e-business, it can be done using WordPress, perfectly and very fast. But before diving into WordPress features and why to choose it as a CMS for your e-business, you need to know the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, as this plays a major role in your e-business and a wrong decision can end up in a very bad result.
WordPress.com VS WordPress.org
The major difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org is who’s actually hosting your website. Think of WordPress.com as an easy website builder for non-tech users who want to create a simple website with basic features and design and have no plans to freely develop their online business in the future.
WordPress.org is an open-source software built for web developers and web designers to create and customize websites with no limits, using code and advanced tools.
In other words, WordPress.com is very limited, and I don’t recommend it for e-business as you never actually own your website (since you don’t host it, and you don’t have access to its files and codes), while in WordPress.org you own every single code and part of your project, and it is very suitable for business owners as it can develop with no limits.
Top Reasons To Use WordPress For Your E-Business
In the list below, I’m referring to WordPress.org, the open-source CMS.
1. The Most Popular Content Management System in the World
WordPress is being used by individuals, businesses, and everyone in between! And as I mentioned above, more than 35% of all the websites are powered by WordPress.
Many well-known entities use WordPress. Here are some examples:
The White House
Microsoft News
BBC America
MTV News
Facebook Newsroom
Sony Music
TechCrunch
The Walt Disney Company
Toyota Motors
The Harvard Gazette
The Wall Street Journal Law
Sweden’s Official Website
PlayStation Blog
TED Blog
IBM Jobs Blog
Flickr Blog
New York Post
The Obama Foundation
Georgia State University
Source
2. Open-Source — Build Anything!
You can create any kind of website using WordPress. From design to features and dashboard, with no limitations at all. Over the past decade, we created huge systems like online schooling, and multi-vendor e-commerce sites, multi-restaurant websites, and many portfolios and magazines and complex systems for our clients using WordPress. We never faced any limitations issues when using WordPress. Which means that you can start your e-business using WordPress without worrying about future updates, you will enjoy each and every update in the website industry.
3. Lower Maintenance Costs
WordPress incurs fewer maintenance cost comparing to other open source CMS like Joomla and Drupal. Additionally, it’s a quick win for improving your customer experience. The reason behind it is that WordPress is based on plugins that can be updated with a click of a button from your dashboard. Which means you or your web developer can easily do it without spending a lot of time on it. Some website creation technologies require lots of time for maintenance, which can make you avoid it as it will also cost you much more for each update you make on your website.
Keep in mind that custom made plugins, features and designs require more effort to update than ready-made ones.
4. SEO Friendly
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a very important and sensitive element when creating your online business. It is what makes your website show up on Google when people are searching for your products and services, which means it can improve your sales and take your business to a higher level over time.
WordPress comes with high search engine optimization, and it also has many tools and plugins to help you (or your digital solution provider) improve your website’s SEO with ease, and without going deeply into the SEO world.
5. Very Safe and Secure
Needless to say, your website’s security is essential.
When creating your website, your web developers can make mistakes that make your website easy prey for hackers. Therefore, choosing the right web development company, and a secure CMS can make your website hack-free.
While no content management system is 100% secure, WordPress has quality security apparatus in place for the core software and most of the hacks are a direct result of webmasters not following basic security practices.
If you’re careful about choosing your admin username and password, keep your core software updated, and choose themes and plugins wisely from well known sources, use SSL security, and keep your computer safe, then you are on the safe side with WordPress CMS as it takes care of everything else.
6. WordPress has a Huge Community
When choosing the right technology for your website, you need to be very careful as it can affect your future updates. Let’s suppose you chose website creation technology that is not very popular, and after a few months — for any reason, you decided to find another developer (or web development company) to update your website and manage it.
This mission could turn into a nightmare if the technology you are using is not popular, as it can be very hard to find a company or freelancer to develop it for you. Therefore, it is very important to choose a popular CMS with a huge community like WordPress, as it’s very easy to find new web developers who are ready to update and manage your website at a very good price.
7. Ready-Made Customizable Control Panel
I really love the fact that WordPress comes with a ready-made dashboard to manage the website my team and I create. Okay, it doesn’t have all the features the website needs, but it has the basic features which makes our mission much easier, therefore our price is often much lower when using WordPress.
As I said, WordPress is an open-source CMS, which means it is customizable by coding and that includes its control panel. Adding new features to the control panel is very easy and flexible, and can be customized without spending a lot of time.
Believe me, this can be painful when using other CMS’ and technologies!
8. REST API (My Favorite One)
API is Application Program Interface. REST API is a WordPress tool that helps you to show data on your website or app, from another project.
For example, you have an e-commerce website full of products and categories, and you want to create a mobile application for your e-commerce without spending a lot of time and money creating it. Your web developers can use API to retrieve data (such as products, categories, posts) from your website and show it on your app, which means when you update your website (add/edit products and categories, add a new post, change a single word or replace an image), it automatically shows the update on your mobile app. You will be in control of your website and mobile app from one single control panel — WordPress Control Panel.
To me, that counts. It’s a huge feature that makes our lives easier as web developers, and it reduces the cost for our clients when they want to develop their business by launching a mobile app or any other projects that share the same data they already have on their website.
If you’re about to start your online business and you’re not sure which technology to use, or you have questions about WordPress, contact me, or simply leave your comment in the comment section below.
