Small business owners know a web presence can increase local business and possibly other regional or international business. Most business owners think a website is costly and difficult to keep up to date. What most don’t know is that WordPress can be very cost-effective and, in fact, better than some cheaper website options.
Top 6 Reasons Why WordPress is Great for Small Business?
1. Ease of use.
WordPress is probably one of the easiest CMS applications to use at this time. That’s right, I said Content Management System. That’s because WordPress is not just for blogging these days, it has an intuitive back-end to manage the content of your site. WordPress is no longer just used for blogs, in fact recent surveys show more than 80% of WordPress sites are websites that are not just blogs. Simple tools like categories, tags, pages and posts make it easier than ever to control your content.
2. Cost
WordPress is a free software developed by an open-source community. That means you don’t have to pay to use it and there are tons of plug-ins and people working to always improve it. Also the development costs of creating a custom WordPress theme or even a basic theme are significantly less than creating a full-CMS driven site using Joomla, Drupal or other CMS programs.
3. Search Engine Optimization with Ease
Every businessman wants their website to show up on page one on Google. There are several plug-ins for WordPress that help you optimize your site’s SEO without having to know any code. This is accomplished by allowing you to customize the SEO for every post or page. All in One SEO is one plug-in that is easy to use for small business. You don’t have to be an SEO expert anymore to do the basics.
4. Support
WordPress has a large development community supporting it. What does this mean for you? If you are having a problem or need some help with your theme, there are often many people who can help you work through it or fix it for a reasonable cost. There is also so much information published about WordPress, you can often google your question and find the answer.
5. RSS
RSS is a powerful feature of any site, and WordPress sets it up for you. Keeping your clients up-to-date with news, products, services is always an important part of business. Setting up an RSS feed in other web applications is a bit more complicated and time consuming, let WP do the work for you.
6. Connect with Clients
Why just sell products when you can actually communicate with your clients and see what they really think of your product. Many Fortune 500 companies understand the value of consumer feedback, this is your chance to promote your products and hear what people really think about them (just be careful what you wish for). The comment and post features of WordPress make it easy for you to post new & products and get feedback from your clients via comments.
The Final Word
There are many benefits to using WordPress other than these six that I mentioned above. WordPress is continually growing and evolving, with many people finding new and innovative ways to use it every day. The impact WordPress has had for small business is astounding. In many cases you can get a simple website for your businesses ready in a few hours. You can also hire qualified web professionals to not only develop a custom WordPress site for you, but help guide you through your WordPress experience and grow your business at a reasonable cost.
There are so many resources online that a small search will yield great results, however the following are a few links I recommend you check out if you are a beginner to WordPress:
- The WordPress Info Pages *Your starting point.
- http://wordpress.tv/ *Easy videos to get you in without much reading.
- 100 Killer WordPress Resources
- Smashing Magazine *Great for design and wordpress related topics.
So let your business ideas flow and don’t be afraid to take the WordPress plunge. Your business and your customers will be happy you did.
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I would add “7. Extensibility”. Being on a platform with thousands of plugins and room for growth is another large advantage of WP.
Matt thanks for the comment. I agree that the huge amount of plugins to solve different problems is a great bonus. I find myself hacking plugins all the time. In regards to a regular small business that is happy to just have an online presence, I think they are less important as the six above. Most simple small businesses care about one thing, getting their business found online for local search. I might say #6. RSS could be switched out for Extensibility.
Small Businesses shouldn’t settle for a Presence, they need a strategy.