Whether you are a new restaurant owner, a budding author, or an innovative fashion designer, the health of your business will likely rise or fall based on many factors; but in 2015, the strength of one’s online web presence is, without a doubt, a primary determinant of overall business success.
You can be an overzealous salesperson, or a poor financial planner, but by the end of this article, you ought to have the basic knowledge to begin building your small business web presence, without the need for micro-level tech skills or a huge budget.
Prior to the mid-2000s, this might not have been the case. Most individuals still misperceive website creation as a near-impossible task, filled with hours of studying how-to manuals, learning internet coding languages such as HTML and CSS–while these skills are still highly valuable for IT professionals, the development of CMSs, or Content Management Systems, have evened the playing field considerably, allowing non-techy business owners to quickly and easily create beautiful websites that enable business success.
There are a few choices when it comes to selecting a development platform, but when it comes to ease-of-use, low costs, customization, and expandability, there is no equal to WordPress.com.
If you’re not convinced that WordPress is the right option, a cursory search of recent statistics explains why you should be.
WordPress and CMS Dominance in 2014 & 2015
- WordPress powers 23% of websites throughout the world
- WordPress adds an average of 50,000 new websites every day
- In 2014, 18 million new sites were created
- 555 million posts were added to WordPress sites in 2014
- 24.5 trillion bytes of data were transferred every hour of 2014 (I’ll leave the annual total up to you–I don’t want to do the math, but you get the idea…WordPress directs an enormous amount of data traffic)
- WordPress is now provided in 120 languages (71% of sites are written in English)
- In the first quarter of 2015, WordPress held the lion’s share of social media crossover, with 45 million Twitter and 14 million YouTube embeds
What Sets WordPress Apart from the Competition
1. Simplicity:
WordPress streamlines the technical process of building the infrastructure of a website; by simplifying hosting and coding, the platform allows business owners to focus on the creative process of making a beautiful website that helps their businesses grow.
2. Low-costs:
There are two main versions available: WordPress.com and WordPress.org. The former allows free download and hosting, 3GB of data, and a wide of array of free design templates. The latter comes at a cost and includes 13GB of data, but retains the same ease-of-use and customization, making the relative cost of outsourcing web development look like a waste of money. There is also a mid-level Premium version available, but we believe that an upgrade to the .org version provides the greatest bang for your buck.
3. An Expandable platform:
Continuing right off that last point, WordPress is highly expandable. If you want to just get your feet wet and go with the free version, there is always the opportunity to build your site for free, and then when you’re ready, add more data and options by upgrading to WordPress.org.
Realizing WordPress Success
There are many reasons why WordPress is the number one CMS solution. Perhaps the greatest is that small business owners who were once limited by high-entry costs and advanced technical requirements, can now establish an effective web presence and drive greater competition to create better products and services for the world to enjoy.