If you’re launching a startup, then you know you need a website. The question is…what route do you take? Do you hire a web developer? Try to learn to code on your own? Turn to website builders?
While these are all good options, your best bet as a startup is almost always going to be WordPress. WordPress is a content management system (CMS) powering almost a quarter of the web. Here are five reasons you should use WordPress to build your startup website.
Startups don’t have a ton of money to spend in the beginning. [pullquote]When you’re on a tight budget, the cost to set up a WordPress site is very reasonable.[/pullquote] A web developer can run you several thousand dollars while the investment in your WordPress site can be as little as a few hundred—if that.
The WordPress software itself is free. The costs come in when purchasing a domain name and web hosting. Both are cheap, with domain names costing around $10 per year and web hosting starting under $5 per month.
That’s really all you need to get started! However, you might consider investing extra into add-on services from your host, such as extra security features. It’s also a good idea to invest in a premium web theme, which typically gives you more features and looks better. Premium plugins can also deliver powerful features to your site to make it more user-friendly.
If you need help setting up your website, or building a complete membership website, you could also pay a WordPress consultant to assist you in navigating the software and customizing your site. However, the CMS is built for do-it-yourselfers, so it doesn’t take much time to learn. By managing your site on your own, you can cut down on the costs of hiring someone to do it for you.
When hiring a web developer, you must contact him for every tweak that you want to have implemented on the site. WordPress, on the other hand, allows you access to the backend of your site 24/7. That makes it easy to tweak the layout to your liking, and it also means complete control over your content. You can edit pages and posts on your own time and publish the changes instantly. No waiting around for a designer to tweak it for you!
Plus, WordPress is built to accommodate multiple users. You can assign each team member their own username and password, along with a role. Administrators have full rights to edit the site while other titles like Contributor limits the users’ capabilities.
Another bonus is that WordPress is entirely web-based, which means you can access and edit your site from any computer.
WordPress has the ease of a website builder and the power of a web developer. The options are practically endless. Use it to create a blog, membership website (using something like MembershipWorks) job board, social network, eCommerce store, and much, much more. Tens of thousands of WordPress plugins are available at your fingertips, giving you the power to create whatever you want.
WordPress is also SEO-friendly out of the box, and there are plenty of responsive web themes to give your site a mobile-friendly touch.
It’s incredibly easy to customize WordPress. Navigating the dashboard takes some learning, but once you understand where everything is, you can easily change your permalink structure, create new user accounts and more.
Each theme comes with its own built-in customization options. Some are easier to customize than others. Some premium themes even come with built-in drag-and-drop features that make customizing a breeze.
Plus, with access to your site files, you can edit the codes to give your site the exact look you want. However, there’s no real reason to touch the code if you don’t know what you’re doing. Thousands of free and premium plugins help you expand your site’s functionality to get the features you need.
One of the great things about WordPress is how versatile it is for businesses of any size. It works great for everyone from freelancers to huge corporations. Even huge sites like Tech Crunch and Best Buy are running on WordPress. With WordPress, you can create unlimited pages and blog posts.
The software itself is equipped to handle almost anything, and most web hosts offer scalable options. That is, cheap shared web hosting plans are great when you’re just getting started. However, as your traffic and your business grows, you’ll be able to upgrade your account to accommodate more traffic and activity. If you find that your host doesn’t deliver the resources you need, you can always switch web hosts without compromising what you’ve already built.
With these five advantages of WordPress in mind, it’s easy to see why startups will benefit from a WordPress website. Will your startup use WordPress?
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