You might be asking, “Why use WordPress?” Great question! These are the 3 key reasons to use WordPress as the platform for your website:
1- Edit Your Own Website
2- SEO Competitive (Search Engine Optimization)
3- Flexible Platform & Legacy
First things first, in case you’re unfamiliar with WordPress. It’s the major platform originally created for blogging and grew in popularity over the years, partly as a result of the ability to create a full fledged website with programming (that’s essentially what a Content Management System does, also known as CMS). Another popular platform is Blogger, which started around the same time as WordPress and was bought by Google a few years ago.
Blogger is a very simple blog platform that’s easy to ramp up, however does not have the full bodied capabilities that a WordPress site contains, kind of like a merlot in comparison to a cabernet.
As Creative Director of Jagmedia, I’ve been urging clients to use the WordPress platform for over 5 years. This is our brand new website (as of 2014) that is created using the WordPress Platform (finally… sometimes us designers take too long to update our own sites).
The ability to edit your own website is one of the biggest advantages to using WordPress. It’s something that many people wanted in past years – and while there were some CMS platforms that allowed for this, some were just plain clunky and limited. Our clients utilizing WordPress have the ability to edit any exiting pages and their content, whether it’s text, photos, graphics and/or videos, in addition to adding new pages and blog posts. This article is an example of a blog post. An example of a page is Jagmedia’s About Us page.
Other pluses are the ability to create various levels of users with different levels of administrative access. For example, you may have a freelance writer that you only want to have access to create a new page, but not any of the administrative functions. That level of access is created by a person designated with overall administrative access to the site.
When it comes to Search Engine Optimization, it is a crucial part of any website and can not be stressed enough! WordPress is very competitive for SEO, namely with it’s ease of use with adding text just about anywhere to the site, along with page and photo titles and alt tags (more on this in a future post). There are various plugins (think extra features) that can help to automate some of the SEO process, however, you still have to work it, so make sure to keep that in mind.
If you’re wondering, “what the heck is a flexible platform and why does it matter? Another great question. WordPress is an open source platform, meaning that many developers have the ability to add useful features and update the programming code structure. It can be a caveat too, as there are some plugins (additional functionality for a specific purpose) that cause conflicts, however, that is minor in comparison to the pluses. WordPress has been around since 2003 and developed for free by a group of developers and is free to use. The legacy of WordPress is that it’s been around for a long time and will continue to be around for even longer.
In addition, WordPress has amazing e-commerce capabilities. Jagmedia used the Woo Commerce plugin for developing an online boutique for a brick and mortar store in the Silver Lake neighborhood in Los Angeles.
A WordPress Website is a scaleable solution that can be ramped up without much customization and updated in the future with a new theme for a more custom look, plus a responsive theme that works with mobile devices, plus more features such as e-commerce.
If you want a customized website that reflects your company’s brand, that’s where a design studio such as Jagmedia comes in to create your WordPress website. The photo at top has some examples of our clients websites, created using, you guessed it, WordPress! Email Jagmedia for a Complimentary 30 Minute WordPress Consultation.
Article Updated on: January 3, 2016