Skip to main content

Blog

The Case for Switching Your Business to WordPress

Written by Erik J. Olson on . Posted in .
Home > Blog > The Case for Switching Your Business to WordPress

Whether you are a startup company or a Fortune 500, having a CMS that fits your business is important. Choosing a platform can be difficult when there are so many options, each with its own benefits. However, there is one platform that outshines the rest: WordPress. WordPress hosts the largest number of companies. Continue reading to see why WordPress is so popular. If your company is ready to make the switch, the web designers at Array Digital are ready to assist.

Is a Content Management System Necessary for Your Business?

A content management system, or CMS, is a common, web-based tool that enables you to build a website in a streamlined, efficient way. It’s designed to make managing content easier for you to do. Using this software tool, you can create a website that enables your customers or clients to find you without having to worry about hard-to-understand code.

You can use a CMS to help create content, manage each page and type of content on your website, make modifications over time, and publish it. The CMS is user-friendly, meaning it’s easy to customize your website content to fit just about any need.

A CMS isn’t the only option. However, it does make it easier for you to manage your website. Some people may prefer to build their website with raw code, but that is expensive and time-consuming. Utilizing a quality CMS, like WordPress, doesn’t limit creativity or functionality, but it certainly streamlines the process.

Why Is WordPress So Widely Used?

Why do so many companies use WordPress? There are many benefits to creating a WordPress website. From the plugins that enable you to specialize it to the ability to use it as an e-commerce or blogging platform, it’s just one of the most effective and efficient options available today.

This powerful CMS targets bloggers and large companies that use blogging, too. Companies such as eBay, The New York Times, Sony, Disney, Forbes, and GM all use WordPress.

A wide range of reasons exists for this, including the powerful web application plugins it offers, many of which are completely free to use, and its well-designed capabilities.

Picking a software platform is a big decision. Do you want to go with a highly supported platform with a growing market share or risk hitching your wagon to a smaller platform with a shrinking market share? If your chosen platform’s market share drops below a critical level and stops being supported, your website could become outdated and, more importantly, vulnerable to security breaches, which can negatively impact your business. This unacceptable risk can be minimized by choosing a robust and well-supported CMS like WordPress.

How Much of the Web Uses WordPress?

A good way to see its value is to consider how many people and businesses have a WordPress site. HubSpot shares that 43.2% of all websites on the internet used WordPress in 2022. Since 2011, the use of WordPress has grown by about 12% each year.

More so, of all companies that use a content management system, 65.2% of them use WordPress to do so. When you think about all of the apps out there and the various tools available, it’s clear that the ease of use and scalable functionality of WordPress makes it one of the best options.

A lot of people use WordPress. That’s great, but do you want to know why? What really makes web developers turn to this option over all of the others out there? Let’s find out.

The Benefits of Using WordPress

Whether you are building a business website for your company’s launch or you have a small business that isn’t getting enough traffic online, WordPress offers some valuable tools. Take a look at the benefits of using this CMS over all others.

User Experience

The WordPress platform is comprehensive, offering all the features and functions you need to build a reliable website, whether you are considering a simple blog for your firm or a built-out portal to allow your clients to pay legal fees. The design of the back end is effortless to manage with a bit of skill or a few tutorials to help you master it. While some programs offer a drag and drop feature for designing and WordPress does not, it’s still effortless to move and configure the design to enhance user experience.

As for your customers and website visitors, their user experience is likely to be very positive, too. With all website development, the ultimate goal is to ensure your readers and visitors can easily navigate and understand it. The websites created using this software are professional, clean, and reliable.

Customizable

While there are some great templates available to help you build your site, don’t think that limits your creativity or functionality options. It’s possible to develop a website that’s unique and functions in a very specific way if you need to do so. You are creating your own website, not just replicating a template that’s been used thousands of times by other website owners.

WordPress themes are numerous, but they can be customized to fit your objectives and goals. For example, you can incorporate various integrations, like forums, online stores, photo-focused pages, interactive elements, graphics, and more. Some of these features may take a bit more refinement to create, but you’re not limited.

More so, you can use WordPress themes to streamline the function. Get your website up in no time, updating the colors to match your brand, incorporating your own photos, and updating the language to match your business objectives.

Consider this. Big brands use WordPress, but you probably don’t think about that when you visit their websites. They look like a highly designed, customized site. That’s exactly what you can expect from this CMS for your own website.

Free and Easy to Use

Free is a good thing, especially when the free software is also very intuitive. You do not pay to download, install, or use this software. You can use it to create any type of website you want without paying for it.

You will need to pay for your domain name and web hosting (which is something you have to do no matter what). WordPress hosting isn’t any more expensive than using other hosting services.

What’s more, the website builder and templates offered are often very easy to set up and begin using. You do not have to know any type of code. The back-end process of setting up and managing your website can be something you can learn to master if you want to do so (though the best WordPress sites are designed by professionals).

Keep in mind that there are costs associated some WordPress themes and custom designs through the site’s website builder tools, though there are free options that are quite versatile.

Supports a Wide Variety of Media

Another important component of WordPress is that it supports most types of media. You can use WordPress for:

  • Images
  • Videos
  • Documents
  • Audio files

All types of file types are accepted, which means you do not have to worry about transferring or updating files to fit the platform, which can happen with some other platforms. If there is some type of unsupported media you want to add, there are likely plugins that can enable you to do so.

SEO Value

Search engines have no problem scaling your WordPress site to rank it in the search engines. The CMS is built with search engine traffic as a focus. That is, it uses high-quality code with semantic markup. In short, you can create an SEO friendly website using WordPress.

When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), you still have to do your part and incorporate solid SEO practices into the content and pages you create. However, it’s simple to make changes or updates. Plugins, again, are a good way to enhance the success of your website’s search engine ranking, too, because they can give you insight into how well your site could rank.

Plugins

As noted, WordPress offers plugins. WordPress plugins are added components of software that can help your website to operate in the way that you want it to. Using them, you don’t need to know HTML to make specific adjustments to your site.

Plugins are a way to add more functionality to your website in a simple way. Consider a few of the ways plugins can work:

  • Choose a contact form plugin so people can reach out to you.
  • Choose an SEO plugin like Yoast.
  • Use Google Analytics plugins to track your success.

There are some premium plugins that do cost a bit more, but if they work to improve the functionality of your site, they could be worthwhile.

WordPress is versatile to fit most needs. Whether you want to build a simple personal site or a comprehensive, large-scale business website, that’s possible. It also does not have to be hard to do either.

WordPress is open-source software. That means that people can customize, update, and create with it, designing plugins of all types that could fit a very specific need. Because it is open-source like this, you have the ability to customize your site in any way you want. Plugins just make it easier for you to do that.

Making a Unique Website for Your Law Firm

All of this insight could make you wonder about creating a law firm website using WordPress. Can you really create something that’s unique and fitting to your brand? The answer here is yes!

Use The Themes Available

woman using a laptop to blog

The first step is to understand how WordPress works. Once you download and set up an account (remember, that’s free to do), you have some options. When choosing to create a simple website, it is easy enough to do this on your own. You can set up your basic site using one of the many WordPress templates available.

The templates are guidelines. Once you choose one from a huge gallery of options, you can then upload it to the website and customize it. You can often change the layout, choose from different colors, and add your own photos to it.

You have ample functionality to do this within the back end of the system. For example, many WordPress templates allow you to drag and drop blocks of text or formatting to create the layout you like.

You can then use plugins to help add to it, like adding social media icons to your pages or positioning a contact form so that your customers can send you information or request a quote.

You also can set up control for your website, such as adding more than one contributor so that your design team or partner can also help to update and modernize your site. Keep in mind that WordPress has a wide range of security features. You can trust that your information and sensitive data are all kept protected.

Design something brand new

What if you want something that is brand new and fresh? You may have a very specific theming or design you need for your site. That’s not a problem either. User experience is often better with a unique website.

We encourage website design that creates a functional, beautiful site that’s perfectly suited to your business and brand. Array Digital can help you with creating this site.

In other words, you do not have to settle for the themes available. Your agency’s development team can use a wide range of software on the site to create your own. You still benefit from having all of the other features that WordPress offers.

Why Page Speed Is Important for Your Business

Another important benefit of WordPress is that it moves quickly. Page speed is the length of time it takes for your website to open up when someone clicks a link. This speed matters for two big reasons:

  • If your website takes too long to load and open, those customers will simply go somewhere else. They will not stick around and wait.
  • Slow page speed also impacts SEO rankings (yes, even Google wants to make sure your website moves quickly).

There are a lot of other CMS options out there. You may have heard of options like Joomla, Drupal, Squarespace, Woocommerce, and even customer-focused options like Wix. These tools, whether they require HTML knowledge or work just as a simple website builder, need to be fast to keep up with today’s digital customer.

When you choose a CMS that’s built to be fast, you can trust that your website isn’t going to frustrate the people you’ve worked so hard to encourage to visit you.

Many factors go into how fast a website functions. That includes things like the hosting companies you use and the amount of graphics or features of the site. Yet, even custom designed WordPress sites move quickly, and that keeps the search engines happy and your traffic flowing.

Looking for More for Your Website? Consider Switching

Take a few minutes to consider your current website functionality.

  • Does your website move quickly?
  • Are you able to maintain all of your files (whether they are online or not) on your site?
  • Are you using other technology that’s just cumbersome or hard to navigate because you simply don’t have a lot of experience with it?
  • Are you paying a ton of money for your CMS and not getting anything better from it?

These are all indications that now may be a good opportunity to make a switch. That process itself doesn’t have to be challenging when you have the right help.

Array Digital works with attorneys all over the nation looking to create a reliable, beautiful website that meets their needs and draws in clients. Let us streamline your site for you. Take a look at some before and after photos of the work we’ve done.

Then, contact our team to learn more about the services we offer, including full website development. Set up a consultation by calling us at 757-333-3021 or fill out the contact form on our site to start the process. Let’s see what we can do for you.

Written By Erik J. Olson
Founder & CEO
Erik J. Olson is the Founder & CEO of Array Digital—a marketing agency that enables its clients to achieve their dreams, fulfill their missions, and impact more lives with their services.

Everything you need to know about hiring a digital marketing agency:

This 30-page guide covers:
  • The four pillars of digital marketing
  • Digital marketing options and costs
  • The pitfalls to avoid
  • What to expect when working with an agency
  • The qualities to look for in a digital marketing agency

Related Articles

Extraordinary Results

  • “Erik and the Array Digital team are top notch in the digital marketing spaces, particularly for SEO. Their understanding of Google, the algorithms, and the work involved to get websites ranking on the first page is unparalleled. Thank you Erik!!”

    Andrew Zihmer
    Zihmer Law Firm
  • “I had a chance to consult with Kevin Daisey for my law firm’s marketing needs. He is knowledgeable, kind, and helpful. He provided me with a great marketing analysis. He also invited me to their podcast as a guest speaker. Thank you Array Digital!”

    Merve Kati
    ZMK Law
  • “The legal profession needs more architects and designers…folks who are thinking about the future of the profession and who are assembling a tribe of like minded lawyer leaders. Erik and his team are certainly ‘that’.”

    Ben Glass
    Ben Glass Law & Great Legal Marketing
    Stop wasting your money on agencies that can’t get it done.
    HawkLaw Google Search Results on Phone