Having a website is an essential element of your strategy, whether to gain visibility or to deploy your brand identity. The Internet has become essential to reach your target and make yourself visible. This is why we decided to talk to you today about WordPress.
Created in 2003, WordPress is what we call an open source CMS (Content Management System). For those who are not familiar with web language, a CMS is a platform allowing the design and management of a site or an application in a simplified manner. Thus, for the creation of a website, WordPress appears to be the most popular and complete CMS on the market. It is renowned for its simplicity, allowing for easier development and management compared to other web solutions on the market.
Today we invite you to discover 11 reasons to choose the WordPress solution. Before getting to the heart of the matter, let’s remember why it is essential to be present on the internet!
Having a website, what is the importance?
Nowadays, the internet has become the first reflex of a person looking for information. So, having a website is first of all showing that you exist! Indeed, every company (or almost) is present on the internet, the fact that you are not there can then be a real obstacle to your development. By not being present online, you leave room for competitors and take the risk that potential prospects will head towards them.
Your presence on the internet is therefore decisive in adapting to consumer habits, and even more so since the health crisis we have been experiencing since 2020.
Having a website also reinforces your credibility. The fact that you have an online presence will strengthen the trust of users and future prospects in your business. It is an element that demonstrates your seriousness, but also your desire to support and respond to the needs and desires of your customers and prospects.
However, to ensure this credibility, the online presence of your business alone is not enough; setting up an ergonomic, attractive and efficient site is essential!
11 good reasons to choose WordPress
1. A popular platform
WordPress is the most popular CMS, with a market share of 60.8% in 2021 and more than 30% of sites created on this interface. This CMS is in fact a real reference in terms of website design.
This is an experienced CMS validated by millions of users! There is also a large community of developers around this solution.
In addition, large companies have chosen WordPress for their site. We can cite among these: Walt Disney Company, the Renault group, or even numerous higher education establishments such as the University of Washington.
2. A CMS allowing total customization
WordPress offers many ways to personalize your site: appearance, number of pages, functionalities or even choice of hosting, you can choose between a multitude of possibilities.
The famous CMS offers more than 4,000 themes, most of which are fully customizable. However, to maximize the performance of your site and gain creativity, using a “Page Builder” utility will allow you to create a tailor-made design! This is the option we recommend. Indeed, the themes offered generally include a lot of plugins, some of which are not necessary for your project, and unnecessarily increase page loading time...
Whether free or paid, there are also many plugins that will allow you to add different functionalities to your website (forms, Google maps, appointment booking, chatbot, members area, etc.) according to your desires and needs.
Among the best-known plugins, we can cite:
- Elementor which allows you to build personalized pages
- WP rocket which allows you to reduce and optimize page loading time
- WooCommerce: which allows you to develop your site into e-commerce
- Yoast SEO which allows you to optimize page referencing
Beyond these possibilities, the open source format of the CMS allows access to the source code, offering total customization of the interface (provided you have knowledge of web development!).
3. Un responsive design
Responsive design means that your interface automatically adapts to the size of the user's screen. With WordPress, it is easy to adapt your site to all types of screens, in particular thanks to the numerous themes optimized for responsive web design.
In a context where Internet users have and use different screens (computer, tablet, mobile, etc.), adapting the design is an essential element to offer a good browsing experience on your site.
The development of mobile first sites is also possible, and even strongly recommended! In addition to being an important UX element, Google now favors the mobile version of websites for SEO. Therefore, complying with this requirement will allow you to optimize both your UX and your SEO!
4. WordPress is an SEO friendly solution
Natural referencing or SEO (Search Engine Optimization) brings together all the techniques aimed at optimizing your pages for their indexing on search engines, in order to improve their ranking in user search results.
WordPress is a CMS that makes it easy to optimize your pages for natural referencing. It is also recognized as being one of the most practical!
The Yoast plugin, as mentioned previously, helps optimize the content of your web pages. This plugin, which is among the most downloaded on the platform, is made up of several parts: the SEO part and the readability part.
In the SEO part, we find a first section including the target query, the meta title as well as the meta description, the slug and the Google preview. We then find an SEO analysis: length of the text, presence of the keyword in the titles, presence of links, images, etc.
As for the readability part, it gives indications on the quality of the writing: hierarchy of titles, length of sentences, transition words, passive voice, etc.
There is also a varied offering of paid SEO help plugins such as All in One SEO pack, SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant, or Rank Math.
5. Un module de blog complet
Initially WordPress was only a blog manager. Although it has evolved into site design, there are still the powerful features for running a blog. The content editor, which is presented in the form of blocks, has been designed for intuitive use. This will allow you to easily add the different components of your article: paragraphs, titles, images, buttons, links, etc.
On the blog editor, you can schedule your publications: all you need to do is prepare your articles in advance and select the publication date, so that the article automatically comes out at the desired time.
It is also possible to define several categories in order to separate your different types or subjects of articles.
Although the editor already offers features to make managing your blog as easy as possible, there are plugins that you can add to go further. We can cite for example Envira Gallery to create a photo gallery, KK Star Rating to allow readers to rate the article or even YARPP to display the articles associated with your publications.
6. Optimized media management
WordPress also offers the possibility of managing your different media within its personalized library. Indeed, the CMS will allow you to host many types of media such as: images, audio files, videos, PDF format files or even Microsoft Office documents.
That's not all, this same library will also allow you to modify your image files. Although these functions are limited to rotating, cropping or resizing, this little extra will allow you to adjust your images from your personal media library in order to publish them directly on your website.
7. An inexpensive platform
WordPress is known as an inexpensive solution. In fact, downloading and using the CMS is free. In addition, there are many themes and plugins available to users free of charge, or whose cost remains relatively low.
Although WordPress offers these features free of charge, you will be charged for putting your website online. Indeed, hosting as well as the domain name of your site are paid elements. Added to this is also the price of certain plugins essential for creating a high-performance site.
However, using a specialized agency for the design of your site seems necessary, in order to guarantee the development of an optimized and efficient site. Despite its simplified handling, development knowledge will be essential to the success of your project!
8. A secure platform
WordPress represents around a third of the websites on the web and has a team of qualified engineers who work daily to ensure a pleasant and secure experience for its users.
Indeed, updates are regularly available in order to respond to the various issues present on the web. These updates will allow correction of bugs and other security vulnerabilities in order to guarantee constant evolution of the platform. It is therefore important to install updates developed by WordPress in order to avoid threats present on the web as much as possible. Beyond security issues, they will also allow you to improve your visibility and thus improve the experience of your customers and prospects.
However, being connected to the Internet network, no software or site can be completely secure. This requires caution and compliance with certain rules including:
- choisir un mot de passe complexe
- reduce the number of identification attempts,
- make backups regularly
- secure your files
- switch your site to https
- choose a reliable host
There are also many plugins that will allow you to strengthen the security of your website such as WordFence. Using these plugins will protect you against possible hacks or even spam which can be common for so-called open source sites.
9. WordPress is suitable for any type of business
WordPress is a CMS compatible with any type of business, and with a large number of different projects. From the smallest businesses to large groups, there is a wide diversity of companies working with WordPress. Indeed, the very comprehensive solution can meet many needs whatever they may be. In addition, the CMS has a range of diverse and varied themes and plugins which allows each site to be adapted to its own project.
On WordPress, you can create a simple blog, a corporate showcase site, a news site, a forum, or even an e-commerce site.
The advantage of this solution thus lies in its diversity and its capacity for evolution: you have the possibility of adding functionalities over time to improve your interface and adapt to your new needs.
10. A large community around the WordPress CMS
WordPress has one of the largest and most active communities on the web. The latter is present as well on blogs, forums, or even social networks. This presence through various social media will provide assistance to users in the design of the site, by offering tutorials or by answering their questions.
Some community members are also looking to evolve the solution. Indeed, independent developers imagine, create and develop plugins themselves with the aim of overcoming the limitations of the CMS and thus adding specific functionalities.
Although WordPress does not have its own customer support (email, chat or telephone), the responsiveness of the community on forums and social networks (in particular thanks to Twitter hashtags or Facebook groups) fully fulfills this assistance role.
11. A powerful API
An API or “Application Programming Interface” is a set of codes that will allow different systems or applications to communicate with each other. Thus, external websites or mobile applications will be able to interact with your WordPress database in order to retrieve certain information or add it. In summary, an API plays the role of a translator. It will allow the different operating systems to exchange with each other and above all to understand each other.
The WordPress CMS uses the structure and data of the so-called REST or RESTful API. It is a programming interface which is made up of a set of architectural style constraints which will define the means of communication of different data between your website and the web in general.
Thus, the use of the REST API allows WordPress to expand the set of applications for which the CMS can be used. This API will allow, for example, the creation of themes entirely coded via JavaScript.
Thanks to this API, it is possible to interface WordPress with other web solutions. For example, you can develop a WordPress front office, and couple it with the BigCommerce back office.
Our choice for WordPress
Thus, the many advantages of this CMS make it one of the most popular and appreciated solutions on the market. Its ease of use, its great customization possibilities, its ability to optimize SEO and its very responsive community are all elements that push such a large number of people to opt for this CMS.
It is for all these reasons that our agency has been working with WordPress for 7 years!
Do you have a project in mind or questions? Do not hesitate to contact us for more information!