Growing Your Business: Why WordPress Should Power Your Next Website

Starting with the right website platform can make all the difference between success or failure.

There is something genius about creating your own WordPress website for your business and then being able to edit it, add new photos, and make all the changes yourself — until your business takes off and you can employ someone to do that for you.

Because that’s why you began a business in the first place… to get to the point where you can hire others to do the jobs that are not directly focused on your business goals. I would say, though, that a website isn’t tangential to any business – it’s essential.

I once walked into a bookstore years ago and explained that I tried to research what types of books they had online but couldn’t because they didn’t have a website. The woman told me they didn’t need one. I gave her the examples of why it’s important, even for local businesses, and she heard me out but didn’t want to hire me to develop a website.

Sadly, this locally-owned bookstore went out of business.

My website is a few years old… or… I don’t have a website.

Upgrade to WordPress and make your life simple.

It’s not just having a website that’s important: having a well-designed, SEO-optimized, and responsive site is also important. Over 56% of website visitors are viewing websites on their phones in the US. This means every site has to load quickly, look great on a mobile phone, and be found in the search results.

However, optimizing for desktop viewing is also necessary. This in-depth blog post at Semrush provides the statistics for how desktop viewers spend more time on your website, visiting more pages.

They’ll only do that, though, if they feel like your site is worth navigating.

A modern-looking website lets your visitors know that you care about your business and are willing to put the effort into your services and products. That translates to happy customers! They’ll know that you have kept up with developments within your field. Maybe this is only me as a web developer, but whenever I visit a website and the copyright is 2022, I know the site hasn’t been updated in that amount of time and I generally go to the next one. Does the business still offer what’s shown on the website? At that point, I keep searching, naturally gravitating toward a competitor with an updated site.

To see the comparison between older websites and newer themes, here are some fun, yet nostalgic, examples of early websites from 1991 to 1995 at the Web Design Museum.

Maybe you decide you’d like to monetize your website itself, in addition to providing your services. You can see that beginning with WordPress is much more cost-effective and sets the groundwork for being able to add new functionality:

• memberships
• courses
• digital downloads
• a full-fledged online store

… at any time in the future.

Let’s say you’re an entrepreneur. Maybe you want to have events in the future and provide in-person presentations. For that, you’ll need to add an event calendar or sign up, but you created with a what-seemed-easy-at-the-time builder instead of getting hosting and developing a WordPress website yourself.

Now you have to decide: do you redesign the site in WordPress anyway or do you miss out on holding events, and gaining potential investors or customers, because of that initial decision?

If you start out with WordPress you’re creating a solid foundation for your online digital strategy. When you want to expand, WordPress is ready for integrating new plugins and functionality to inspire and achieve your business success!