Written by Ever since WordPress was introduced to the market in 2003, it has taken the content management system (CMS) world by storm – there’s no denying that. Even the statistics back that up, with WordPress powering more than 41% of the web.
While those are the givens we have, many still wonder about the why behind its popularity. Why do both web-savvy and web-novice users equally favor WordPress over other content management systems? If you’re here, you’re probably considering creating a website for your local business website using it and have the same questions.
Today, I’m going to make you go from sitting on the fence to calling the shots on using WordPress as your CMS by showcasing the top 16 benefits it has to offer.
1. WordPress is Open Source
Even if you think you don’t really care about WordPress being open source or that it’s irrelevant to you, believe me, you do – you just don’t know it.
Put simply, being open source means that the software’s code is freely available and can be modified or enhanced by anyone. What does that mean for you, though? It means you (or your developer) can either use the code as is or improve and customize it to suit your website’s purpose. And, of course, that includes both functionality and looks.
Not just that, but it also guarantees that your website will never be outdated, thanks to the vast network of users and developers continuously working to keep WordPress abiding by the latest trends and practices. That brings me to the upcoming two benefits that closely relate to WordPress being open source.
2. It’s Always Following the Trends and Best Practices
Being an open-source software puts WordPress at the forefront of being up to date with the latest trends and features. While as a user, you may not necessarily be a developer, a thousand others around the world are.
Every day, these innovative developers work day and night to improve WordPress and its functionalities, contributing with new features, a stream of plugins, themes, and more.
No other platform is as responsive when it comes to incorporating the latest releases, and that’s all because of the open-source philosophy and the community of people working around this movement. And who reaps the benefits of that? You!
Day by day, WordPress is becoming more convenient than ever, and you’re guaranteed to find just the suitable functionalities you need for your local business website.
3. You Can Find Support in Numerous Places
We all get stuck at one point, don’t we? Especially when technical glitches are so common or when you just can’t wrap your head around how a particular step works.
Luckily, with WordPress being an open-source software (and the fact that it’s the most popular CMS in the world), you’ll get access to a massive support community that helps new users, like you, whenever they’re stuck at something while trying to build their business website on their own.
How may you wonder? Well, from the official WordPress support forums to independent forums, video tutorials, and Facebook groups, someone has tons of places to ask for help.
So, anything and everything WordPress-related is out there waiting for you just to ask!
4. Access to a Huge Market of Professional WordPress Developers for Every Pocket
Because it’s easy for anyone to access the core files and learn how to build on WordPress, many people have done that and keep doing it: learning and developing on WordPress. With that being so, the number of professional developers is on the rise.
So, even if you’ve started building your local business website on your own or you plan to, it’s perfectly fine for a time to come when you feel like you need help from a professional WordPress developer. The best part? It won’t be a hectic process to find one.
From beginner developers or implementers for small tasks to expert coders for custom development work and specialized developers in certain fields or even WordPress consultants, you’ll find a professional that fits your budget – and every budget, for that matter.
If you’re wondering where to look, I’d recommend starting with platforms like Upwork and Codeable – they’re essentially marketplaces where you’ll certainly find the right professional for your work.
5. A Variety of WordPress Themes to Choose From
WordPress offers an extensive collection of themes to help build a professional website, giving you full control over how your site looks, even if you don’t have any coding background. From blogs to e-commerce stores, there’s a theme for every website.
You just have to pick a theme you like as a base and then customize it using a visual page builder like Elementor, or the native Gutenberg editor that comes with WordPress itself.
Along with those available on the WordPress website, you can find dozens more online by developers and third-party marketplaces, like Themeforest. And the best part is that not all themes are paid premium ones; you’ll actually find plenty of free ones to pick from. Plus, they come with icon packs and more assets that come in handy for your site.
And before I move on from this point, I just want to highlight a major plus that comes with modern WordPress themes and that’s they all support what’s called a responsive design.
In a nutshell, a responsive design empowers your site to automatically scale and fit the device your users are using to surf your website, be that PC or mobile device. Google is penalizing websites that aren’t mobile-friendly, so that’s one thing you don’t have to worry about with WordPress.
Not just that, but premium themes are also professionally designed, making them exceptionally user-friendly and easy to navigate, ultimately empowering you to leave the right impression on your target users.
6. Plugins for Almost Every Feature You’d Like to Add
Now, to go a bit into more detail with the plugins, let me just say that WordPress is all about plugins. From a live chat box, contact form, or a complex calculator all the way to a full social media feeds, there’s nothing you won’t find – you just dream it. That’s how adaptable WordPress is.
As I said, we have thousands of innovative developers putting their minds to work daily to make that happen. After all, that’s how the free WordPress plugin directory with 58,000+ plugins came about. How cool is that? You get to add impressively advanced functionalities to your site without even knowing a single line of code!
So, what’s the catch? As you’d expect, all these plugins and features require serious development work to build from scratch, which means a higher cost for a lot of them, like those on Codecanyon. Yet, it’s a cost that’s certainly worth it.
7. WordPress is Search Engine Optimized
As I previously mentioned, by default, WordPress themes come with a search-engine friendly structure, given their responsive design that immediately earns you points with Google.
But that’s not all. On top of that, with WordPress plugins like Yoast SEO and Rank Math SEO, you can easily add meta tags, sitemaps and have friendly permalinks and other technical features that Google and other search engines like to see. Then, by just configuring some basic settings and letting the plugins handle the rest, you’ll be all set to go for the on-page part.
Let’s take Google’s Core Web Vitals, for example. The latest update tremendously focuses on speed and UX, so how do you keep up? It’s easier than you think. Plugins like WP Rocket are there to serve that exact purpose by helping business owners speed up their websites and stay ahead of the game.
And those are just two of many ways that WordPress makes the never-ending SEO process easier than any other platform would – not just because of these plugins but because of the people behind it; the huge developer community that builds upon Google’s latest practices “the day” something is announced, before any other platform.
Local Business SEO
For local businesses, in particular, a web presence is essential. More than any other business type, local ones need their customers to find them, right? Well, WordPress makes it all that easier with the support of plugins.
For instance, using Yoast SEO’s features, like page analysis, XML sitemaps, meta description boxes, and meta titles, Google will better understand your services and offerings, enabling you to rank higher for the correct searches.
Yoast even has a Local SEO plugin, with features like a store locator, opening hours, pickup option, optimized address details, and more. All you need to do is put your business information in a particular format –Schema.org– and the plugin will handle all the technical stuff on your behalf.
Another example would be the Schema plugin itself, which enables you to add its markup in recommended JSON-LD format automatically to all your content, from articles and blog posts to events, products, and services. What’s more, using the “Organizations” and “Local Businesses” schemas, you’ll be able to classify your content to encourage more users to visit certain pages.
As you see, WordPress plugins are more than capable of generating interest in your local business from search engines, so test plenty of them and make the most out of them. But don’t forget that SEO is a game that never ends and on-page optimization is only one part of it.
8. Integration With Popular Third-Party Platforms
Building a website is the first and most crucial step to a big journey, a digital marketing journey. The chances are that any growing business will inevitably have to go through with the digital marketing journey, which has several elements.
Let’s say you want to capture leads – you’d probably like to send out an email marketing campaign, for instance, correct? Even for regular customers, you may want to send out a newsletter. Well, WordPress just happens to be compatible with all email marketing software and can easily integrate with it.
What if you’re past that stage and want to sell your goods or digital products? There’s nothing WordPress can’t do – it simply integrates with payment gateways, too.
Okay, what about after-sales service? Live chat, support desks, CRMs, and more, are all at your disposal with a click of a button.
So, regardless of where your target customers are in the sales funnel, WordPress will be there to support their journey every step of the way.
In fact, all third-party tools are built with WordPress in mind because it powers 40%+ of the web. Who would miss out on that and release any digital service while leaving out more than 40% of their customers?
Everyone supports WordPress from day one, and you should too.
9. Numerous eCommerce Solutions
We’ve already established that WordPress is among the most flexible content management systems thanks to its massive plugin system. With that being said, it’s also worth noting that you can even use WordPress to create an eCommerce store.
So, if you’re using WordPress to manage a commercial site, which is probably the case with your local business, you’ll be in good hands with the countless available eCommerce solutions. It’s a piece of cake to convert your site to an online store using plugins.
On that note, the most popular in this area is WooCommerce – it’s sort of the “default” one, in fact. It’s super easy to set up and enables you to sell both digital and physical products, manage your inventory, collect secure payments, calculate taxes, take appointments, and more.
But there are also even more plugins for the purpose of eCommerce, like Easy Digital Downloads, but it’s especially ideal for selling digital products, from software to ebooks and videos.
10. The Perfect Content Management System
The fact that WordPress started as a blogging platform means that it’s way ahead when it comes to content management.
That means the platform picked up on the importance of consistently crafting high-quality content early on. Over and above that, the platform continues to update its content features to make it more convenient and motivating than ever. No complicated code whatsoever!
That’s evident in the latest update, Gutenberg, the newest WordPress content editor that promised to change the way content is both created and published/displayed on WordPress sites, and it delivered. In fact, it set the roadmap for the years to come.
Check it out to see for yourself how user-friendly it is and the array of tools it offers to empower you to fine-tune your content and its appearance. You even get to see how the final version of your page will look while it’s being edited, which certainly wasn’t available in the classic, text-based editor.
11. Affordable Compared to Other Solutions
What more do you need other than a free CMS? WordPress itself is free and doesn’t charge a penny. And if budget is a problem, you only have to pay for hosting a very simple website.
Of course, a decent WordPress website will cost money for developing and purchasing the right premium services and products around it. Still, you certainly can avoid high costs because of the variety of products. Remember, you always have thousands of choices for everything, never just one!
You can always get started with free themes and plugins to get your site up and running, leaving you with only two unavoidable fixed costs: WordPress hosting and a domain name. Compare that with other content management systems, and you’ll come to the conclusion that WordPress is a no-brainer.
12. With WordPress, You Can Start Small and Expand
If there’s no budget to enable you to start big, or if your local business doesn’t need to start big in the first place, then launching your site will be as simple as building a very basic website with the standard pages you need and a simple design to match that.
Then, as your business successfully grows, you can grow your site as you go or even rebuild it on WordPress once you’re ready to do so. In other words, you’ll never have to start from scratch or go back to square one to cater to your site’s growing needs – you can simply start small and expand.
13. Great Foundation and Scalability to Go Custom
What many people appreciate the most about WordPress (myself included) is that when you go custom on WordPress, the sky’s the limit. And what’s the good in that, you ask? Simply, a tailored design, built with coding standards in mind, can lead to a very lightweight result, built to last for years.
This is especially true for big companies, services, or projects, which will definitely require scalability at one point or another. So, when it’s time, all you’ll need to do is choose a professional developer to work on your website. There are also quite a lot of hosting providers that offer great solutions for large websites.
The more your business grows, the more you’ll want to add more features and functionalities that go hand-in-hand with your operations, and that’s where you’ll need to go custom. Basically, going custom with WordPress means that you build whatever you need and still keep the excellent foundation, which is the content management system that’s second to none.
Could it get better?
14. It’s Optimized for Speed
Who doesn’t hate slow sites? Everyone wholeheartedly does. The speed of your site affects everything – from how long users spend on your site to how likely they are even to consider purchasing a product or service from you. With WordPress, that’s an issue of the past that you can wave goodbye to.
While website speed depends on factors like the quality of code that a developer wrote, or the hosting provider, it’s still worth noting that WordPress itself is top-notch when it comes to speed, utilizing the latest technologies, and adapting them to give your users a better experience. So, what can you do to keep up to speed? Implement the following:
- Latest and fastest PHP version support
- Speed optimization using plugins like WP Rocket
- Image compression using plugins
- Choosing a lightweight WordPress theme
A WordPress website is a rocket if configured the right way and hosted on a reliable provider.
15. WordPress Powers ~40% of the Whole Web!
I know I said this already, but it’s just too impressive not to be repeated. The fact that WordPress powers more than 41% of the web already speaks volumes about its capabilities – it’s astounding! That’s more than one in every four websites you surf daily.
But I also thought of sharing a couple of more statistics with you to show you just how far-reaching WordPress really is:
- 409 million unique visitors visit the WordPress website each month
- The website has 20 billion page views each month
- 70 million new posts are published on WordPress each month
- WordPress receives 77 million new comments every month
- As of 2021, 64.1% of all CMS-built sites are WordPress-built
- WordPress offers over 50,000+ plugins and 3,500+ GPL-licensed themes
Sold yet?
16. Easy to Get In, Easy to Get Out
You know how many content management systems just “lock you in” their platforms and make it harder for you to leave with your content? It’s a strategy to keep you using the platform, and it’s a strategy WordPress doesn’t need to use to keep you hooked, and so it doesn’t.
Unlike other platforms, it’s super easy to migrate to and from WordPress – period. So there isn’t even much to say except that literally, all kinds of migrations are fairly easy to implement on WordPress, from switching from or to other platforms all the way to switching hosting providers.
Convenience is what it’s all about!
Time to Use WordPress for Your Local Business Website!
That’s probably what you’re thinking to yourself right now. At this point, it should be clear to you why WordPress isn’t just “a” content management system; it’s “the” content management system to ultimately rely on.
Speak your mind