We hear so often about the struggles our clients face with their websites. Having a professional website is so important for any business, since it can showcase your products or services 24/7 and attract potential customers. However, when it comes to building your own, you might not know where to begin with so many options available.
A company’s website is often the first point of contact with potential clients. Businesses must have a website that not only functions seamlessly but can also evolve as quickly as market conditions change. This is where WordPress comes in, offering a level of flexibility that many custom-coded websites simply can’t match.
Talking from experience, here’s why we recommend using WordPress:
Ease of Use and Turnaround Time
One of the biggest reasons we recommend WordPress is its ease of use. Unlike full HTML websites, which often require a developer to make any simple changes, WordPress allows non-technical users to manage and update their websites with minimal effort. This is crucial in a fast-paced marketing environment, where campaigns need to be built, and content needs to be updated regularly.
The speed at which a WordPress website can be built and updated is also a huge advantage. Marketing campaigns often need to go live quickly to take advantage of trends, and WordPress allows for quick adjustments.
Flexibility
With the right plugins and themes, WordPress websites can easily incorporate new features, products, or services without requiring a complete redesign. This flexibility is something that HTML websites may struggle with, as adding new features often requires development time and new code to be written.
WordPress also provides the ability to manage multiple websites from a single dashboard. This is really valuable for businesses that have multiple sectors or complex product lines.
Cost-Effectiveness
Developing and maintaining a custom-coded website can be expensive, especially for small to medium-sized businesses. A HTML website often requires a dedicated development team for both the initial build and ongoing monitoring. This makes WordPress a more cost-effective solution, particularly for businesses looking to get the most out of their marketing budget.
SEO-Friendly
In today’s digital world, SEO is one of the most important factors in driving traffic to your website. WordPress is built with SEO in mind, offering numerous plugins to help optimise your content and improve search rankings. From easy to edit meta tags to integration with Google Analytics, WordPress simplifies SEO. This can allow businesses to respond quickly to changes in algorithms or market trends.
Custom-coded websites may require ongoing technical tweaks to stay competitive in search rankings, which can be time-consuming and expensive. With WordPress, many of these updates are automatic or can be managed through plugins, ensuring that your website stays optimised without requiring a complete redesign.
Security and Updates
Security is a major concern for any website, and WordPress provides robust security features, including regular updates and patches. The community around WordPress is highly active, meaning that any potential vulnerabilities are quickly identified and addressed. This is especially important in a marketing environment where downtime or data breaches can have a significant impact on a business’s reputation and customer database.
With a custom-coded website, security often relies on the developer. They have to have the ability to identify and fix vulnerabilities, which can lead to delays or gaps in protection. WordPress, on the other hand, ensures that updates are consistently pushed out to address security issues, keeping websites safe and secure.
Being Proactive, Not Reactive
We thrive on being agile and proactive, and quick to respond to market changes. WordPress supports this need by making it easy to launch and modify content, run A/B tests, or tweak design elements extremely quickly. Whether it’s updating a product page, adding a blog post, or tweaking a call-to-action button, marketing teams can make changes immediately without relying on a developer to manually update code.
With a custom-coded website, making changes can often take longer, especially if it involves changing the site’s architecture. This delay can hinder a company’s ability to respond quickly to market shifts or take advantage of emerging trends. By using WordPress, businesses are able to be more proactive in their marketing strategies. This is key to staying ahead of the competition.
Easier Integration with Marketing Tools
A modern marketing strategy relies heavily on a variety of third-party tools for email marketing, customer relationship management (CRM), social media integration, and analytics. WordPress makes it easy to integrate these tools into your website through plugins and API connections. This ability to streamline various platforms into one cohesive system can greatly enhance the efficiency of your marketing efforts.
Future-Proofing
As technology evolves, so must your website. WordPress is constantly updated with new features, security patches, and enhancements, which means it’s designed to stay relevant for the long term. With a robust community of developers and contributors, WordPress consistently adapts to changes in the digital landscape, including updates for new technologies.
Custom-coded websites, on the other hand, may require significant redevelopment over time to incorporate new technologies or meet changing industry standards. This can be a costly and time-consuming process, making future-proofing more challenging.
Here are 3 companies that use WordPress:
Marks & Spencer
Marks & Spencer uses WordPress for various aspects of their online presence. WordPress powers part of their content and blog sections, helping the company engage with customers through product stories, recipes, and updates.
The University of Westminster
The University of Westminster uses WordPress for its various departmental websites. The platform enables them to manage and update their content across multiple websites efficiently and securely.
General Electric (GE)
A global leader in industrial products and services. GE uses WordPress for some of its B2B content and marketing websites. WordPress helps them create and manage engaging content, case studies, and other business-related materials for their clients and stakeholders in various sectors.
WordPress vs Custom-Coded Websites
When comparing WordPress to custom-coded websites, the differences are clear. Custom-coded sites are built from the ground up, offering full control over every element of the design and functionality. This can be beneficial for businesses with very specific needs or those requiring complex, bespoke features. However, this level of customisation comes at a price and a longer development timeline. Additionally, custom websites require ongoing development and maintenance to keep up with technological advances and security updates.
On the other hand, WordPress provides a highly flexible platform that can be customised to meet a wide range of business needs without the high upfront costs or long development periods associated with custom coding. WordPress is a robust solution that offers an extensive library of plugins, and integrations. This makes it easier and quicker to implement new features. For businesses looking for a balance between customisation and cost-effectiveness, WordPress gives you a future-proof platform. In short, WordPress allows businesses to achieve much of the same functionality as a custom-coded site without the significant investment of time, money, and resources.
In Conclusion
Ultimately, choosing WordPress allows businesses to be proactive, responsive, and agile in their marketing efforts. For most businesses, this is not only an advantage but a necessity in today’s fast-paced digital world.
We can help you start building your new WordPress website. Contact Us Today!
