Should I hire a WordPress web designer
Building a website is essential for every business, and any website should look professional. Otherwise, the company would lose its credibility of being a trustworthy organization with which to do business. The question arises, how does a small business owner build a website that is both affordable and professional. Our article will explore the benefits when you hire a WordPress web designer or use WordPress as a platform for building and managing your website.
WordPress is good for both large and small businesses
If you are using WordPress for building your site, you need to know its salient benefits carefully. Some people often say that open-source web development platforms are only suitable for small organizations. But, the truth is that both large and small companies can get an entirely professional and well-furnished website using WordPress as a web development platform. Our article explores the various benefits or advantages of using WordPress as a platform for creating a website for your businesses.
WordPress is a Cost-effective Choice
WordPress is free to use, and that is the most significant advantage of this platform. You would not get any other platform that comes for free and offer such a wide range of features and options. Furthermore, the WordPress platform continues to create new features and security upgrades regularly. These upgrades are done at no charge to the millions of users. Even paid platforms do not give such wide ranges of features or options. Thus, cost-effectiveness is one of the most significant aspects of using this open-source platform.
Apart from that, you shall get many other benefits of using this platform. But, primarily, WordPress is an excellent tool for setting up a website without investing a significant amount of money.
Is WordPress Free?
Although WordPress does not have a fee for using the code, it is not necessarily 100% free to build and maintain a professional website. Investing in a few things would help you to attain better results regarding building your website. For example, you can install WordPress with any of the thousands of free themes or plugins available. Once you have done this, you might recognize that the site does not suit your brand or give you a look you want to have for your business. You may want to reach out and hire a WordPress web designer or developer who can create a custom theme.
Should I use a free theme or hire a WordPress Web Designer to create a custom theme?
WordPress may be free, but it is a reasonably complex system, and there is no substitute for experience to create a website for your business.
A seasoned custom WordPress web designer will be able to take your company’s brand and your business requirements and put together a site that matches the goals of your company. The right web design firm is typically working with a toolbox of themes and plugins that are proven and updated regularly.
Hence for most small businesses, using WordPress to create a do-it-yourself website can be a hit or miss. Common problems include theme and plugin conflicts, security vulnerabilities, hosting resource issues, browser compatibility issues, and many more. The bottom line is there is no substitute for hiring an experienced WordPress web design team.
Should I consider WordPress Premium Themes
Premium themes can be a better choice than free ones since they are supported by a WordPress web developer and upgraded when security issues are present. You can then shop around for premium themes for WordPress. Choosing a premium theme is usually better, as you shall get a better web interface.
Nevertheless, free themes commonly used. Thus, your website will lose its uniqueness when you use a free WordPress theme because everyone else can use it too. Instead of using a free theme, you should consider a premium one to make your website more attractive to visitors.
Websites are no different than other purchases. You pay for what you get!
Paid WordPress themes typically include premium widgets and plugins that need to be updated and maintained. You will want to pay extra for ongoing theme support because your theme and plugins need to be kept up to date. Otherwise, your website will crash or lose functionality when you make WordPress or hosting updates.
Choice of Thousands of WordPress Plugins
Thousands of plugins and themes are there in the offering for the website developers or website owners. We must understand the essence of the usefulness of these plugins. WordPress plugins are most effective when they achieve core business functions for marketing and digital communications.
Different sites benefit from various WordPress plugins.
For example, if you run a financial consultancy and debt management business, you need to choose a plugin that is related to this industry. A suitable plugin might one for calculating rates or payment terms on loans.
This WordPress website offers debt consolidation consultation and other financial services to clients. It has been doing business successfully for a long time. Notably, it has a seamless website that is easy to navigate. Nevertheless, plugins enhance the site with tools that eventually help visitors seek financial advice.
WordPress Plugins, combined with third-party services, can Automate Marketing.
Plugins make your website more useful for visitors and your business. When you combine usefulness with advertising and marketing automation platforms like Facebook, Google, Twilio, Mailchimp, or Salesforce.com, you will see your business grow rapidly, and your customer loyalty will follow suit. Your website’s popularity will rise, and along with that, your business will gradually improve and flourish. Ultimately, these things will help your business become more successful.
WordPress has numerous unique SEO Friendly Tools
Successful websites need to follow guidelines for leading search engines like Google and Bing. When your business website creates SEO friendly content, it can easily rank on the first page of Google, the world’s #1 search engine. By doing so, your company will gain vast popularity, and fortunately, WordPress has some top tools for the job.
More than any other platform WordPress comes loaded with Free third party plugins that help a website optimize for performance and search engine ranking. We will mention a couple of tools in this article that we feel are effective, but there are many, many more.
Yoast SEO a leading WordPress plugin for SEO.
A popular free plugin is Yoast SEO. Not only does Yoast help you make sure you have all your Meta Data appropriately written, but it also identifies when content is easy to read, and if your website is using internal links effectively. Building an SEO friendly website is one of the most significant aspects of using WordPress as a web design platform, and it is also why we feel using any other platform will leave you disappointed.
Tracking Website Related Data Easily
As a business owner, you have to make your website more user-friendly, and this is a continuous process. The process involves the analysis of data from various sources. Data reports will help you to understand the behavior of your web visitors. Based on the collected data, you may go for specific alterations to your website so that visitors start liking it more than others.
Without the proper tools, it is not easy to collect data and properly analyze it. You need to have enough technical insight or knowledge of such things. The Google Kit plugin for WordPress makes data collection and analytics an easy process.
Google Kit is an excellent addition to WordPress!
Google published a plugin called Site Kit that made it easy to install all of Google’s SEO and webmaster tools into your website. The Site Kit integrates all Google’s tools including Search Console, Analytics, AdSense, page speed insights, Tag Manager, and optimize. Furthermore, you don’t have to leave WordPress to see valuable reports and information on website traffic and how the content of your website is performing at a granular level.
Therefore with the Google Kit WordPress plugin, you can quickly install all of Google’s analytics tools and start collecting website data and run and view reports in an organized way. Thus, decision making becomes easier for business owners.
Too many third party WordPress plugins can cause website bloating or toxic soup.
The strength of WordPress, with thousands of free plugins and themes, can also be the root cause of its weakness. Many plugins and themes are designed poorly and never maintained. Therefore you will want to be selective of what plugins you decide to install and run on your WordPress website.
How to evaluate a WordPress Plugin
Check out a plugin developer’s WordPress reviews and product details carefully. Visit the plugin developer’s site and make a judgment on their profitability and long term viability as a business. Numerous developers create free plugins and end up not making money on selling support or their paid versions. As a result, plugins get abandoned, and developers go out of business.
WordPress Manage Hosting is your best option to maintain a website’s health.
Unless you don’t mind having some downtime, you will want to maintain a staging website to make updates. Actively managing the upgrades of your WordPress website is critical for maintaining an excellent website. We recommend that you hire a WordPress Web Designer or an experienced web design team to manage your WordPress Updates.
Having the wrong web designer manage your website updates can be detrimental to your business.
Common mistakes for new website owners and novice WordPress web designers include:
- failing to remove unused plugins and themes,
- failing to upgrade your platform and plugins regularly,
- using abandoned plugins and
- taking a hands-off approach to maintaining your website.
WordPress is the best website platform for maintaining a successful website.
With thousands of plugins and themes and millions of WordPress web developers actively creating websites, WordPress is the best platform for a small business. In fact, studies show that WordPress is used for 30% of all websites and over 60% market share for content management systems on sites with a known CMS. This means that you won’t find a shortage of expertise and support services for WordPress anytime soon.
WordPress can help your business to grow. Just pick the right WordPress web design team and follow best practices for managing your WordPress website. By doing so, you will keep a secure and stable site. If you don’t have the time or money required to maintain your website, you should not own a website.
Our team has extensive experience in building and maintaining WordPress Websites. Contact us for a consultation.