When you step into the world of online business, you come across CMS like WordPress, Shopify, Joomla, and more.
But, as the current market of CMS is so saturated, finding the right fit for your business becomes a laborious task.
However, in today’s blog, we’ll be addressing one of the top contenders in the global CMS market that empowers almost 39.5% of all websites.
As you might have guessed, it’s WordPress.
If you’re willing to start an online eCommerce platform, blog, personal website, or almost any kind of website, WordPress is the way to go!
But, what’s the reason behind the popularity of WordPress?
The two things that set WordPress apart from any other CMS are: free of cost and ease of operation. Almost everyone can operate WordPress websites (yes, you don’t have to be a tech-savvy person!) with a basic understanding of the platform.
So, If you’re haunted by the daunting question of why use WordPress, you’re on the right spot!
This blog will take you through the nitty-gritty of WordPress and also highlight all the advantages of WordPress.
What is WordPress?
Before starting, let’s break the myth. WordPress is not only for blogging. It emerged as a blogging platform but soon evolved to a full-fledged content management system.
In simple terms, WordPress is a tool that lets you operate your website. You can add posts, pages, edit content, and ensure that your website appears on a SERP through WordPress.
Moreover, it lets you give a unique identity to your website and helps you achieve your long-term business goals. With the right set of plugins, you can turn your WordPress website into an online store, a social networking site, and anything else that you want!
WordPress.org V/S WordPress.com
Many people mistake WordPress.org with WordPress.com but they’re NOT the same.
The primary difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com lies in the hosting of the websites.
While WordPress.org is a self-hosted platform, it lets you manage and modify your website. On the other hand, WordPress.com is a “hosted” platform that restricts you to change only certain aspects of your website.
Let’s see the other differences between these two software.
WordPress.org is also referred to as “the real WordPress” by a majority of users. It is free and open-source software that lets everyone use and sometimes request changes to its source code. All you need to access WordPress is web hosting and a distinctive domain name.
Who should use WordPress.org?
Almost everyone, corporate sector, individuals, bloggers, eCommerce business owners, governments, and more can use WordPress.
On the contrary, WordPress.com is a paid platform. There is a free version too which gives you a limited disk space of 3GB. It neither allows you to install any plugins nor you can monetize your website. Furthermore, your site name will appear in the subdomain of your website’s URL.
So, who should use WordPress.com?
WordPress.com is primarily used by bloggers, freelancers, or simply people who do not want to manage the atrocities of owning a website.
(Please note: From now on we’ll be learning about “the real WordPress”.)
How to Install WordPress?
As we know, Web Hosting and domain name are the prerequisites of operating WordPress.
But what exactly are they?
The web host is your website’s shelter. It’s where all your storage files get stored and accessed. There are numerous hosting providers such as GoDaddy, Bluehost, Kinsta, and more. You can pick any one web host as per your preference.
Once you’ve chosen your hosting provider, it’s time to give a domain name to your website. A domain name gives a unique identity to your website and helps to stand apart from the crowd.
For instance: www.pqr.com. The “pqr” in the example is your domain name.
Also, always choose a relevant, novel, and simple domain name for your website!
After getting a web host and domain name, let’s go ahead and install WordPress. To install WordPress, simply login to your web hosting account, locate WordPress, and click on the installing tab.
Once you install WordPress, you’ll have to fill a questionnaire with your website’s details. In a matter of a few minutes, WordPress will be installed on your hosting account.
Now, you can choose the themes for your website, design it by adding a new flavor, and experiment with different structures, fonts, and styles.
Also, you can even convert your website into a social media platform, a blog, a business website, an eCommerce store, and many more!
Top 11 Benefits of WordPress Website
1. Open Source CMS
Being an open-source CMS, WordPress allows everyone to modify and enhance its source code. In simple terms, WordPress is updated regularly by developers across the globe to ensure the smooth functioning of the software.
Whenever a new version of WordPress is available, it appears in the dashboard section of the backend admin panel. Users can download the latest version with just one click.
2. Easy to Set Up
Installing WordPress is just a one-click process. Almost all the major web hosts provide the option of installing WordPress within a few clicks.
Even if you’re not a web designer, programmer, or experienced CMS user, you can still build a professional website through WordPress.
WordPress has the most intuitive interface. You can simply log in to your dashboard and get started to create your website. It gives you full freedom to try out different templates, themes, designs, change panels and attempt to bring more vitality to your website.
You can browse through the massive gallery of themes and designs on WordPress and customize it as per your needs. Within minimum efforts, your professional-looking website will be all set to go live!
3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
WordPress rules the heart of search engines with its simple and clean coding. It helps the bots to easily crawl and index your website on the search engine.
If you’re an online business or a blog, SEO can get your website huge organic traffic (if all the strategies are implemented properly). Also, with sound SEO techniques your website can acquire good domain authority, earn credibility in your field, and generate quality leads.
To enhance the SEO appeal of your website, you can install plugins such as Yoast, RankMath, and many more on WordPress.
SEO-optimized blog posts are one of the best ways to generate organic leads. In fact, websites with blogs have a 97% chance of generating inbound leads!
Also, with WordPress, you can even optimize each page of your website specifically for getting higher rankings on a SERP. If you are looking to boost your visibility on search engines, you must check out our SEO services. We have helped several clients achieve page 1 rankings on google.
4. Freedom to Install Plenty of Plugins
In a nutshell, plugins are chunks of software that can extend or expand your WordPress website’s functionality. There are more than 60000 official plugins available for WordPress. Imagine plugins to be apps available on Google Play Store or Apple App Store.
Suppose you want to take surveys from people for your product. You can do this easily by searching for a relevant plugin on WordPress and simply installing it in on your site in one click.
Similarly, if you want to expand your email list, you can integrate tools like Constant Contact or SendinBlue into your WordPress website for building your email list.
In this way, WordPress gives you the complete freedom to install an array of plugins to modify your website.
With the right set of plugins, you can create a professional-looking website and improve your SEO ranking further. You can even integrate social media links, send push notifications to your users, gather metrics of your website, and do many more things.
5. Responsive Designs
The number of smartphone users overshadows laptop, computer, or tablet users.
If you own an eCommerce store, chances are most of your customers are mobile users. But, if your website fails to work efficiently on mobile and other similar devices, you can lose a huge chunk of your audience and your online store can deteriorate in the long run.
Thus, ensuring a smooth operation of your website on different devices is essential for winning the online business game!
Here’s some good news for you!
WordPress saves you from putting extra effort (and capital) to create different websites for different devices. On WordPress, you can simply create responsive websites and ensure that it works smoothly on a wide range of devices.
Furthermore, to enhance the responsiveness of your website you can also take the help of plugins like WPTouch, Smush, JetPack, HummingBird, and more!
6. Speed and Efficiency
The websites which load faster have lesser chances of getting high bounce rates. Even Google advises the websites to load at least in half a second and at the most in two seconds.
Though WordPress is not necessarily the best software in terms of speed, it is still head and shoulders above the others. With WordPress, you can dramatically increase your site loading speeds by implementing a few excellent strategies.
By installing cache plugins such as WP Fastest Cache and WP Rocket you can change your website’s loading speed. You can even use CDNs for the same purpose.
Moreover, you can implement best SEO practices, optimize images, improve server response time and reduce redirects to increase your website’s loading speed.
7. Easier to Scale
WordPress makes scaling your business a subtle process!
One of the most amazing benefits of using WordPress websites is, it grows as your business expands. The wonderful capacity of WordPress websites lets you add countless pages, blogs, and catalogs without compromising a bit on your site’s performance!
WordPress’s plugin WooCommerce lets you turn your website into a full-fledged online store.
By integrating WooCommerce, you can create a professional eCommerce store, display catalogs of your products, set payment systems, and take full control of your business!
Moreover, you can even set up SMS and Email marketing systems to further enhance your business’s reach.
8. Top-Notch Social Media Integration
If your business’s target audience hangs out on social media sites, integrating social channels on your website can be a traffic driving and time-saving strategy!
WordPress lets you integrate social channels on your website. By doing this, your customers can easily view the content published on social media by the company without having to log into each one of them.
9. High Level of Security
Though no software is completely free from security issues, WordPress creates fewer security problems than any other CMS.
To ensure the security of your website, you can implement certain strategies such as regular website backups. Moreover, you can even install plugins like Wordfence, Sucuri Scanner, and more to keep a check on your website.
10. Affordable
WordPress is the most cost-effective CMS in the market. Installing and using WordPress is completely free. However, there are some additional optional costs if you opt for paid themes or certain plugins.
Overall, even after using paid WordPress themes and plugins, you can keep your expenditure within $100.
11. Highly Customizable
Customizing a WordPress website as per your business’s needs is simple and effective.
As WordPress offers a plethora of themes, users can easily purchase and modify them as per their choice. Also, most of the premium themes on WordPress come with detailed documentation and pre-set layout to fit in numerous cases.
With a bit of technical knowledge, you’ll be well on your way to creating a unique and customized website for your business. However, if you need professional help, you can always hire web designers to design your website.
Top Companies Using WordPress
WordPress is one of the reputable CMS present in the market. Many businesses, individuals, startups, etc use it to operate their websites. Let’s check some of the renowned companies using WordPress websites.
1) New York Post (https://nypost.com/)
The popular American newspaper, NY Post’s website is operated by WordPress. The platform has an archive of more than 323, 374 articles available for readers. It holds a domain authority of 93 and attracts at least 3.2 million visitors every month.
The news pieces on the NY Post range from a wide variety of topics such as politics, sports, entertainment, business, fashion, and many more!
2) Indian Express ( https://indianexpress.com/ )
One of India’s top newspapers, Indian Express operates its digital news website through WordPress. It has a comprehensive catalog of more than 706,204 articles on various topics ranging from business, sports, entertainment, lifestyle, tech, and news from across the country!
The Indian Express portal holds a strong domain authority of 92 and estimated monthly visits of 48,364.
3) TechCrunch ( https://techcrunch.com/ )
TechCrunch, an online news platform, focusing on technology and startup news, uses WordPress. It has a sound domain authority of 93 and a monthly visit of 63,818. The platform enlists almost 112,191 articles on its websites. You can get tech, startups, and funding-related news pieces from across the globe on TechCrunch!
4) BYJU’S ( https://byjus.com/ )
India’s popular digital learning platform, BYJU’S, uses WordPress. The platform offers numerous educational courses and study materials for students preparing for competitive exams. It has a domain authority of 68 and estimated monthly visits of 2,504.
5) Usain Bolt ( http://usainbolt.com/ )
Usain Bolt, often regarded as the world’s fastest sprinter, uses WordPress for his website. On Bolt’s website, you can find his biography, media news, details about his foundation, and more! The website has a domain authority of 59 and estimated monthly visits of 11,347.
In short, with the help of WordPress, you can hold a strong digital presence and get an opportunity to make big in the online business sphere!
Bottom Line
Are you finding out the most suitable platform for your website? Check out our WordPress website development service or get on a consultation call with our technical experts. Eiosys is a leading website designing company in Mumbai. Our services include custom software development, e-commerce website development, and website maintenance.
