How to Change Your Website on WordPress

It’s official — WordPress is now one of the most popular content management systems (CMSs). In fact, according to HubSpot Blogs research, 68% of businesses use WordPress. Why? It’s because of the various features and functionalities the platform offers.

What features specifically? Let’s take a look.

Custom Post Types

WordPress offers out-of-the-box support for custom post types. That is, you don’t have to build your own post types to use the platform. You can simply use the included “standard” posts and start customizing them to create various content types. For example, you can create an “event” post type that will allow you to post about upcoming events. Or, you could create a “person” post type that will allow you to post about famous people.

The thing is, you don’t have to be limited to creating custom post types for events and people. You can use the built-in support for custom post types to create anything you can think of. For example, you could create a “product” post type that will allow you to post about physical products (like jewelry or clothing) as well as digital products (like apps or e-books).

Bold And Beautiful

One of the things that first attracted me to WordPress was the design philosophy behind it. WordPress strives for maximum visual appeal, so the layout is extremely intuitive and easy to use. As you might imagine, 68% of businesses that use WordPress also use a CMS from the famous American company, Adobe.

But the thing to know about WordPress’ design philosophy is that it doesn’t just relate to the layout. As you’ll soon discover, the design of the platform as a whole is intended to be aesthetically appealing. For example, WordPress gives you the option to automatically generate “fancy” quotes and headings for any piece of content you add. So, if you’re wondering why 68% of businesses choose WordPress, it’s because the platform makes adding content easy and fun.

Fully Engaged

Another interesting thing about WordPress is that it makes content posting and editing a highly interactive process. On any given page, you’ll notice that the sidebar is completely integrated with the content area. More importantly, the entire editing experience is designed to be as engaging as possible. So, even when you’re viewing the website as a potential customer, you’ll want to become fully engaged in the process of creating content — especially if your goal is to create an efficient and effective digital marketing strategy.

E-Commerce Ready

WordPress also offers out-of-the-box e-commerce functionality that can be easily integrated into the website. This e-commerce capability makes WordPress ideal for online stores, especially those that sell physical products.

What’s more is that due to the nature of the CMS, you don’t necessarily need a web designer to build an e-commerce store. Anyone with some HTML5, CSS3, and a bit of knowledge about online stores can achieve this. So if you’re looking for an e-commerce solution without needing a designer, consider WordPress.

As you might imagine, these features make WordPress a popular choice amongst businesses. However, that popularity might not be as apparent as you’d think. According to HubSpot Blogs research, WordPress is the favored CMS amongst digital marketing managers mainly due to the wide availability of quality WordPress themes that can be easily integrated into a website. Additionally, with the various drag & drop page builder plugins available for WordPress, the platform offers enough flexibility to create pretty much any page a business might need — without needing to write a single line of code.

Secure & Stable

One of the reasons why businesses might prefer WordPress over other platforms is due to the security features the platform offers. For one, WordPress offers the trusted WPDB schema database, which makes inserting new content a secure process. What’s more, WordPress also offers enough security through its various plugins that can be used to further increase the security of the website.

On the other hand, HubSpot Blogs’ research found that 37% of website owners experience some level of “site anxiety.” That is, they fear that their site will be compromised by hackers or data thieves. To address this, WordPress offers enough security through its built-in measures as well as the various plugins available for it. As a result, 37% of respondents experienced less anxiety when developing their website using WordPress.

Extensive Documentation

WordPress also happens to come with very detailed documentation. This documentation covers a wide range of topics, including the various functions and features of the platform. What’s more, the documentation is very accessible and easy to understand. This documentation comes in extremely handy when you’re developing an application or plugin on top of WordPress.

Furthermore, because documentation is so important in this field, WordPress releases a new version of the platform almost every month. This allows users to more easily discover all the bugs and glitches as well as provides a much-needed avenue for documentation seekers.

Customization

So far, we’ve touched on a variety of features that make WordPress extremely attractive to businesses. But perhaps the most important feature of the platform is its degree of customizability. More importantly, the amount of time you’ll spend customizing your site will be a direct reflection of how much you’ll enjoy using the platform.

To give you an example, let’s say you’re a fashion brand. One of your major goals for your website is to allow customers to browse your entire fashion collection. To achieve this, you’ll need to integrate a variety of shopping carts, create different landing pages for each collection, and customize the design of your website to fit your brand’s aesthetic.

As you can probably guess, all of these tasks require a lot of effort. However, if you’re looking to create a website that you can customize and enjoy using, WordPress is the clear choice.

Additional Reasons To Use WordPress

There are a variety of other reasons why WordPress is ideal for use as a content management system, not just digital marketing managers. Here are some examples.

• The wide array of free themes and plugins make it very easy to create a functional and attractive website.
• WordPress easily integrates with other apps and services, like MailChimps, Stripe, and Shopify.
• It’s very easy to update, which makes keeping your website up-to-date a snap.
• Developers have a variety of tools and libraries at their fingertips, which makes it much easier to integrate new apps and features into their websites.
• WordPress comes with a fully equipped documentation team, which means you’ll always have someone to help you when you have questions about the platform.

Takeaway

So, what does all this mean? Simply put, if you’re looking for a content management system, you can’t go wrong with WordPress. And, as a digital marketer, you’re going to want to pay special attention to all the features and functionalities the platform offers.

Thanks for reading! I hope this article has helped you understand how much effort and attention to detail you need to put in to create a high-quality and successful website.