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Should I Use WordPress For My Business Website in 2023?

December 1, 2021

Frank Rodriguez

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Web Design

This article has been updated on May 2nd, 2023.

WordPress is an excellent CMS for most types of businesses.

Should I use WordPress? What is WordPress?

There are many choices for building a website and what content management system or CMS you should use. It can be confusing because there are many options, such as Joomla, Drupal, Webflow, and do-it-yourself sites like Squarespace. Each one of these tools is developed to make building a website easier and more accessible, but you need to choose one that fits your needs. 

First, you should know that WordPress was developed in 2003. The WordPress market share powers 455 million websites, or 42.7% of all websites, on the world wide web.

WordPress is used by many large corporations, including Sony Music, Time Magazine, Wired Magazine, Disney, and many more.

The WordPress stats for 2023 are impressive:

  • 65.1% of all websites use WordPress as their content management system. This proportion represents 42.7% of all websites. (Origin: w3Techs)
  • There are currently over 455 million WordPress domains worldwide. (Source: TechJury)
  • Approximately 59,208 free WordPress plugins can be found in the WordPress Plugin Directory. (Source: WordPress)
  • Over 500 new sites are created daily using the free version of WordPress.org.
  • Seventy million new blog posts pop up every month. (Source: TechJury)

This chart represents CMS market share

WordPress commands the largest market share of all content management systems being used worldwide.

Fact, or fiction? 

You might ask yourself, which CMS should I use? There are a lot of competing articles and some information that bends the truth a little, depending on the author. Each author touts the CMS they use, as I’m doing here — spoiler alert, we are fans of WordPress.

It’s always a good idea to see where the source comes from to make an educated decision when choosing the right CMS. Some authors will tell you that the CMS they use is the “end all, be all” because they want you to use their CMS, or they are writing content for a company that wants you to use their CMS product.

You might read that PHP, which runs WordPress, is dying. It’s not dying now or at any time in the foreseeable future. You may also read that coders love a particular CMS because they are better for SEO or because they load faster. That topic can get a bit subjective. Let’s dig into why.

How it’s built matters  

How a site is built will determine these factors regardless of the content management system you use. Your most significant limitation is not knowing what you are doing to mitigate any issues that could make a site slower or have inadequate searchability. That’s why contacting a web design agency or having an internal resource with experience is essential. One that can optimize a website to load fast and ensure it’s searchable based on your product or service.  

Design is King

Our creative agency uses WordPress because it allows us to do what we do best — design. Our builder of choice is Divi by Elegant Themes.

Think of a Builder as the steering wheel and WordPress as the car’s engine. But please don’t confuse builders for templates. They are two approaches to achieving the same outcome — building a website.

We use what’s called a visual builder so that we can design websites from scratch. The visual builder is a sophisticated design tool that allows us to make uniquely branded websites.

It lets us construct webpages in real-time and view the results immediately. You can modify your pages with the help of intuitive visual controls.

You can use a template to build your site if you are just starting out. A template is more plug-and-play but does require some basic WordPress knowledge.

There’s no incentive to get a Squarespace or Wix Site if you’re using a template. Both have a learning curve, but WordPress will provide you with more possibilities, particularly if you want to make your site more advanced in the future.

The visual builder gives our senior designers everything we need to make a nuanced website that’s 100% unique to our client’s brand. Imagination is the only roadblock, so the sky’s the limit.

Should I use WordPress? What is WordPress?

Scaling WordPress 

WordPress Plugins should be used judiciously. Too many plugins can indeed slow a site down. However, plugins can also open up a world of possibilities. They can accomplish what would take a coder hundreds of hours with just a click of a button.

WordPress is, essentially, in a class by itself. WP is like a Swiss army knife for site designers, able to do it all, while other solutions tend to specialize. Because it is open source and built with plugins, a simple installation can be transformed into a fully functional online store, a photo gallery, a news website, or anything else the developer can dream up.

Of course, there is a learning curb to setting up any plugin because everyone has different needs, but you won’t have to pay a coder for hundreds of hours to make something from scratch. Almost certainly, any website functionality you can imagine already exists.

We haven’t encountered any situation we couldn’t find a solution for. We only use plugins that are vetted and updated regularly. Some plugins are free, but for the most part, the best ones are usually paid for. 

Should I use WordPress? What is WordPress?

Responsive on all devices 

Most content management systems have cross-platform capability due to the responsive architecture that they are built with —  it’s pretty much a given these days. Designing for each device is a lot easier now because many of the themes that WordPress supports do a lot of the heavy lifting while you are developing. The platform carries over elements to each screen size while creating. However, you will need to tweak the design for each device because the landscape is different between desktops and phones. While they will not always be exactly the same, you can create the same brand experience for each device. Consistency is key! 

Hosting and optimization

Hosting can be one of the biggest issues when it comes to performance. The two biggest choices are shared hosting and cloud hosting. There are a lot of attractive offers out there for shared hosting plans that might sound too good to be true and probably are. Don’t sacrifice performance for the price. Bad hosting can be a huge contributor to poor performance. With shared hosting, you’ll be taking a portion of a server populated with many other websites, thus sharing resources of that server.

Cloud hosting is a network of connected virtual and physical cloud servers. The cloud ensures greater flexibility and scalability for your WordPress business website. It also means your site will not be bottlenecked as you might be with a cheap shared hosting plan.

Cloud hosting will deliver better performance, making your site load faster. We use Siteground’s Google Cloud Hosting service with built-in caching capabilities and auto-scale features. The autoscale feature allows you to avoid downtime or delays during traffic surges.

Optimizing your website’s speed is crucial for good UX and conversion. Seconds matter because a slow website will be less likely to convert.

Updates 

You will need to update WordPress regularly to keep everything running smoothly. Many web hosting companies now offer the ability to make automatic updates as they become available through your C-Panel. Or you can work with a WordPress developer that will handle all your hosting and maintenance needs. Professional agencies ensure everything is optimized and will continually tweak settings to improve the performance and health of your website. Maintaining a WordPress website is easy if you just set some time to do it.

Word of caution on automatic updates. Sometimes it’s a good idea to wait a few days before updating a plugin so the developer can fix any bugs that might come with the update.

Keep it secure

First, I would start by choosing a reputable hosting company that offers some sort of two-step authentication. We host several sites for our clients and have never been hacked — knock on wood. For the most part, WordPress is secure on its own. 

Plugins can create vulnerabilities if they are poorly coded or not updated regularly. As mentioned, we generally only use paid plugins from known and reputable entities.

There are many security solutions for WordPress. One that’s commonly used is WordFence. They have been in the industry for a long time and have a proven track record. The other option is a CDN-based security tool like Securi. You not only get security, but you’ll also get a speed boost because it’s operated on a CDN network

Search Engine Optimization

Implementing SEO on a new WordPress website couldn’t be easier with the right plugin. You will need to know some basics, like how to navigate the WordPress dashboard, but from there, most plugins will walk you through the process.

Rank Math provides us with the necessary tools for on-site SEO implementation, including title description, keyword placement, tagging, metadata, and more, so your website may be displayed in search engine results pages (SERPs) as you intend.

Rank Math has included content AI. This generative AI tool will help you find relevant keywords for your posts.

Good SEO plugins come with internal linking suggestions, which help Google contextualize what you do. SEO plugins will set the foundation, and you can have desirable results with some time.

Conclusion

WordPress is an excellent CMS to build your website on. It allows for a level of creativity that’s only limited by one’s own imagination. You can scale your website as your business grows. You’ll never have an issue finding someone that can help you with your WordPress site because it power’s over 30% of websites globally. There’s no shortage of third-party developers that are creating new technologies specifically for WordPress — it has its own ecosystem. We’ve been using WordPress in conjunction with the Divi Visual Builder for the last eight years. We are impressed every year by the upgrades that enable us to do more sophisticated designs with an expanding list of capabilities. 

If you need a professional WordPress website design agency to start your new website, please feel free to reach out.

Author

Frank Rodriguez
Frank Rodriguez is the owner and Creative Director at Mighty Fine. He graduated with a degree in Fine Arts from the University of South Florida. When he's not at work he enjoys going to art shows, mountain biking, and hanging with his pup, Tuck.

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