Asking yourself the question, ‘Why use WordPress?’
There are lots of website builders out there, but WordPress.org is by far the most popular. In fact, it powers 40% of the entire internet!
We’ve put together a list of the most important reasons why you should use WordPress (and how it can help your website grow).
What Is WordPress Used For?
WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that lets you use templates and plugins to create a business website, blog, professional portfolio, or any other site you’d like. WordPress is the world’s most-used website builder and powers websites for some of the biggest brands in the world.
Why Use WordPress?
First, it’s important to know the differences between WordPress.org vs WordPress.com.
In this article, we’ll refer to WordPress.org, the widely used open-source software.
Why use it? Let’s jump into our list and see what WordPress offers.
In This Article
1. WordPress Is Free
WordPress is open-source software that doesn’t cost anything to download, install, and use.
You can learn more about why WordPress is free here.
Now, WordPress itself is free. However, you’ll need to pay for web hosting. If your website was a house, your web hosting is the lot of land where your house takes up space on.
You’ll also need a domain address (think of it as the address people use to get to your house!). Because it comes with a free domain name and SSL certificate, we strongly recommend the most popular web hosting platform out there: Bluehost.
We aren’t alone in this recommendation. WordPress officially recommends Bluehost as well.
And through our special link below, you can get a huge discount on hosting + claim that free domain name offer. This is going to save you tons of money because even though you’re paying for hosting, WordPress.
Althought WordPress and many plugins made for it are essentially free, you might want to make some purchases later on to support the growth of your site. This is why it is a good idea to learn what it might cost you to build a fully functional website, when you’re ready to take the next step for your website’s growth.
Click here to get started with Bluehost today.
2. WordPress Is SEO-Friendly
For all websites, WordPress SEO is super important. And one of the biggest reasons you should use WordPress is because of SEO-friendly it is. It’s easy to connect with powerful SEO plugins like AIOSEO.
This makes the blogging potential incredible. You can create your own marketing opportunities through writing blog posts if you know a few basic things about SEO.
WordPress websites tend to rank higher than others in Google search engines. Google loves WordPress because of the way it works technically.
Behind the scenes, it uses compliant high-quality code to produce semantic markup. (In basic terms, WordPress gives Google what it wants when it comes to SEO!)
The cool thing is that WordPress is SEO-friendly as soon as you start using it. Plus, you can use WordPress SEO plugins to really get ahead of the competition by upping your content marketing game.
3. Flexible Functionality
A major reason people use WordPress is because you can extend the functionality to make it an extremely advanced site that does all sorts of cool things. Or, you can add just a few things to make it exactly what you want it to.
And, you can do this by installing WordPress plugins. These tools let even beginners build the website of their dreams!
Some popular types of plugins to consider include:
- Contact Form Builder Plugins
- Discount Wheel Popups
- Giveaway Plugins
- Survey and Poll Plugins
- Stripe Payment Plugins
- Landing Page Plugins
- Instagram Plugins
- Membership Plugins
- eCommerce Plugin
- Lead Generation Plugins
- Podcast Plugins
…and so many more (honestly, so many!). There are plugins out there to do almost anything you want to do with your
4. WooCommerce Integration
If you’re building an eCommerce website to sell things online, you can easily convert your website into a store with a simple WooCommerce plugin.
A popular choice for many online store owners is WooCommerce. Which explains why WordPress is so popular for eCommerce websites: WordPress integrations perfectly with WooCommerce.
WooCommerce was literally built to work on WordPress.
5. Endless Design Options
Another reason to consider using WordPress for your small business website is the number of different WordPress themes out there.
A WordPress theme will help change what your website looks like. Picking and tweaking a theme to your liking is one of the most exciting parts of building a website.
It’s great because you get to really put your brand and personality into the design and make it your own. And of course, many WordPress themes make it easy for even non-technical people to change the look of their websites.
You can even find themes that help you run your business. For example, a good restaurant theme will already have a pre-made page for your menu.
We’ve done our research on WordPress themes. Here are just a few of the posts we’ve made that showcase the best WordPress themes out there:
- Best Free WordPress Themes
- Fastest WordPress Themes
- Small Business WordPress Themes
- Best Minimalist WordPress Themes
- Best Real Estate WordPress Themes
- WordPress Freelance Writer Themes
You might be a more advanced web designer and don’t need a website theme that’s as easy to customize as the ones listed in the posts above.
In that case, you can find all kinds of fun and different themes all over the web.
6. WordPress Is Secure
The WordPress platform was made with security in mind, and it is considered to be a very safe and secure platform to run a website. But just like many things in life, the internet can be an uncertain place.
Many people make a career out of trying to hack into websites, and they continue to get smarter about things.
Luckily, WordPress makes it easy to stay safe. There are some simple yet powerful ways to secure your WordPress website.
Also, WordPress has some great security plugins to keep your site nice and safe.
7. The WordPress Community
The WordPress community is a huge perk to using WordPress. It’s a passionate and friendly place.
Because so many people use WordPress, the community surrounding it has built a ton of helpful resources.
With WordPress, you can find a huge amount of help online. It’s as easy as googling the issue and surely a forum or thread will show up where someone went through the same experience and have an answer for you.
8. No Coding Needed
Why use WordPress? Anyone can do it. You can adjust your website without being a web developer or designer, especially using a plugin like SeedProd.
Some business owners pay people to create a website for them and then they’re left lost when they want to change something.
But with WordPress, it’s very simple to use. You can build and manage an entire website without needing to know a line of code. WordPress offers access to drag and drop website builders that can do nearly everything for you.
9. Use Google Analytics
People love adding Google Analytics with WordPress. Google Analytics gives you tools to better understand your customers and website visitors.
For WordPress users, the MonsterInsights plugin takes complicated analytic reports and automatically turns them into easy-to-understand reports, right on your WordPress dashboard.
You can do things like:
- See How Many People Are Coming to Your Site
- Track Forms
- See Where Visitors Come From
- Track eCommerce
- See Common Search Terms
….and a lot more.
This ability to bring data about website visits to business owners is why MonsterInsights is one of the best WordPress plugins available for WordPress.
10. It’s Scalable
Depending on if you end up using managed WordPress hosting, you can grow your site to unlimited heights with WordPress.
WordPress is an awesome platform for enterprise businesses of literally any size. It can handle tons of visits at the same time.
11. Universal Dashboard
The WordPress dashboard helps make it easy to learn and gets rid of extra confusion.
That’s because the WordPress dashboard is universal and looks the same to everyone. Even when you add other plugins and change the available menu options (where you go to access a lot of your plugins).
And it’s great because it’s flexible.
You can customize your dashboard to prioritize the details you want to see when you sign in to the backend of your website. For example, you can see daily stats, new posts, recent comments, and more.
This dashboard really lets you keep track of what’s happening with your WordPress website.
And that’s it! We hope this helped show you how amazing the WordPress website builder is for small business owners. You can build an online store, collect payments via Stripe, Square, PayPal, and Authorize.net. And do so much more!
Need More Ideas for How to Use WordPress?
You can use a WordPress website in tons of different ways. Here are some ideas.
- Build the Perfect Website for Your Small Business
- Start an Online Store to Sell Digital or Physical Goods
- Start a Blog
- Create a Membership Website
- Sell Courses Online
Next, Get the Best Web Hosting Solutions
When you’re ready to launch your amazing new site, you might want to check out our post best WordPress hosting to help you learn more about the best choices for a web host.
Create Your WordPress Form Now
So, what are you waiting for? Get started with the most powerful WordPress forms plugin today and start using it on your WordPress site.
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This is a really informative article with lots of great ideas. Could you please tell me what software you use to run your incredibly fast website? I also want to create a simple website for my business, but I need help with the domain and hosting. Asphostportal reportedly has a good reputation. Are there any other choices available, and if so, what would you suggest?
Hey Anna – Along with WordPress we have optimized the load time using caching plugin, and developing our own custom solutions to speed up the performance. Having said that, I’d suggest you to take a look at this blog post on tips to speed up the website. Further, you can take a look at this blog post to create a WordPress website, and this post on steps that can be followed to select a good hosting.