Asking why a designer or firm prefers one CMS over another is a completely valid question. We prefer WordPress website development over any other option. There are many good reasons for this. We find that WordPress is superior to the other options we have tried based on cost, SEO performance, ease-of-use, and other factors. Before we get into why though, let’s go over WordPress and some basics about websites.
Building a website is not nearly as technically complicated as it once was. We have content management systems (CMS) to thank for that. Platforms like WordPress and Drupal make it easier than ever for people with little to no formal web development training to build and maintain professional looking websites. This means you can get your content out there quicker. Of course, a professionally done website still looks and works best, but it’s not a requirement to get a presence online!
What is WordPress?
WordPress is a CMS that originally began its life as a blogging platform. Its developers created the platform with a mind toward meeting the unique needs of bloggers known to update their sites with new content several times per week. It proved so successful that the decision was made to expand the platform.
WordPress website development these days is still based on the fundamental principles of blogging. But WordPress is highly expandable and customizable thanks to an exhaustive list of plug-ins and themes that make it suitable for any kind of website.
Why WordPress?
Now, for the answer to the question, why do we prefer WordPress? Well, WordPress website development is superior for many reasons, starting with the fact it’s a content management system, meaning we can develop it quicker than strait from scratch code. Below are our top reasons why we always recommend and strongly prefer WordPress.
Free and Open Source
Right off the top, WordPress is free and open source software. This makes it quite cost-effective when compared to paid platforms. For example, we could build a WordPress site complete with an e-commerce solution. We would pay only for the cost of hosting the site. There is no cost attached to the platform itself. The same is not true for most other e-commerce solutions, such as Shopify and BigCommerce.
There are costs that are attached to some plugins, and they often cost under $100/year, in fact we use quite a few that are under $50/year. That is a cup of coffee a month! The huge benefit of this, of course, is that you only pay for features you actually need, instead of bundles. Bundles, or tiers, is how most other platforms work, including the more popular e-commerce sites.
Built in SEO Tools
Search engine optimization (SEO) is as important today as it has ever been. A website that does not perform well in the SEO arena is going to suffer in everything from traffic to conversion optimization. It also determines where you land on search engines and therefore the amount of organic (free) traffic. Thus, SEO performance cannot be ignored.
WordPress offers a litany of built-in SEO tools that don’t require an extensive amount of knowledge to utilize. For instance, the platform automatically generates meta-descriptions and title tags for each page and post. Search engines use these two elements to better understand what pages and posts are about.
Those SEO tools that aren’t built in can generally be accessed through plug-ins. This means website owners can manage their own SEO without any outside help. Of course, we highly recommend professional SEO services for the best results.
Ease-Of-Use
We prefer WordPress website development for its ease-of-use as well. Anyone who can use a standard word processor can find their way around WordPress without much difficulty. Suffice to say, the learning curve is not steep at all.
For us, that means spending less time on hard coding and more time on design. We don’t see a need to reinvent the wheel by manually entering code. Instead, we let WordPress handle the code while we concentrate on more important issues.
Ease-of-use also benefits site owners. WordPress developers can turn a completed WordPress site over to a client and know that they can maintain it very easily. This allows developers to offer as little or as much help as the client wants. Some clients prefer that their developers handle maintenance. Others handle it on their own. They can because WordPress is so easy to use.
We are happy to say we are big fans of WordPress. We prefer it over every other content management system we have looked at, and we look at every new one to come to the block. It’s superior SEO, ease of use for us and more importantly our clients, and the average monthly maintenance costs have led us year over year to keep using it. While we can do development in other platforms, and have, we will always recommend using WordPress. We believe it creates the best experience for our clients, and our clients’ customers.
