The online sphere is becoming more and more crucial for small, medium and large businesses alike. If you want to increase your revenues and become more competitive in the market, you need your own business website – this is something years of business survey data has conclusively shown. Businesses with more online integration and websites simply do better than those without it.
Sadly, a lot of business owners don’t know a lot about the tech world. There are thousands of ways of creating your own business website, and if you’re unfamiliar with web development, the choices can be quite overwhelming. If you read about it on the web, call web development agencies, or even ask your tech-savvy friends about your conundrum, you’ve likely have heard WordPress brought up once or twice. This isn’t without reason – in this article, we’ll explore the advantages and disadvantages of using WordPress, and by the end, you’ll definitely learn whether it is the right choice for your business or not.
The Pros of Using WordPress for Your Business Website
WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world, and this isn’t without justification. There are many advantages you and your business can gain from using WordPress:
- It is really easy to get set up: WordPress is one of the easiest content management systems to learn and use. You can design a decent business website with a bit of content and a semi-unique theme in a matter of a day or two. This is one of the reasons why WordPress has such a huge market share of the Internet – around 50% of the websites on the Internet are using WordPress. If you don’t have a large budget or a dedicated tech employee, using WordPress isn’t a bad idea.
- You have a vast ecosystem you can take advantage of: unlike most other frameworks, WordPress is a mature content management system that has been on the market for a more than a decade and has proven it is time-resilient. Due to its popularity, there is a vast ecosystem created around WordPress by the WordPress development team, other developers, and hobbyists that you can take advantage of. You’ll find thousands of plugins you can use almost instantaneously on your WordPress installation, you’ll find high-quality themes you can appropriate for your business, and you’ll even be able to find Sketch to WordPress HTML services that help you convert your Sketch designs into functional HTML ready to be used in your business website.
- You can always get support: the large community that has surrounded WordPress also means it is relatively easy to get answers to your questions. Just simply post your questions on the appropriate forums, and you’ll see tens of experienced WordPress developers answering your questions and teaching you the ropes. This is extremely important, especially for businesses. You want to iron out the bugs in your website as fast as possible and deal with any issues so that potential customers visiting your site don’t get turned off and leave. WordPress has the community to make that possible.
The Cons of Using WordPress for Your Business Website
No content management system is without its downsides, and this is true for WordPress as well. You need to be aware of them to make an informed decision regarding your business.
- You’re quite limited by the content management system: as it is a mature content management system, WordPress has quite rigid expectations for the structure and content of your files. For example, it is impossible to use anything but PHP for the backend when using WordPress. These limitations make optimization impossible, especially on larger projects. That’s why most of the largest and most famous websites don’t use WordPress. This might be irrelevant early on for your small business website, but it might come back to roost later on. You need to keep it in mind.
- You need to be really careful with the 3rd party plugins and themes you use: although the plugins and themes are one of WordPress’s strengths, they are one of its weaknesses as well. There’s no way to know how secure or reliable 3rd party plugins and themes are – they might introduce bugs, security risks, or slow down your website. And as it is necessary to install plugins regularly on WordPress for even basic functionality, you’re exposed to some risk.
