If you choose WordPress, a free and open-source content management system, you only pay for a domain name and a hosting service. You don't need a professional to create your business website. There are some risks, which this guide will get into shortly.
Business owners can choose from countless plugins and free themes that the WordPress community has developed. While free themes and plugins tend to come with certain limitations, it's possible to launch a professional small business website with them.
Here are some advantages of using WordPress for a business site in 2023 – and some drawbacks.
You have full ownership of your website
If you are operating an online business, you'll find having full ownership of a website critical. Some solutions will limit your access to the source code and even take over your site. This can never happen with WordPress.
The platform is self-hosted, so you can choose any provider of hosting for your WordPress website and scale it up as needed. This makes it a smart choice for entrepreneurs who want to launch their businesses with affordable options.
Users can post, manage, and moderate any content on the site freely. They face no limitations in terms of services or algorithms.
You will own each product listing, video, or blog post on the site, even if you switch hosting providers or website platforms. However, making this change is far easier said than done.
There are numerous plugins and themes for businesses
Third-party firms and individual developers have created a wide variety of WordPress themes and plugins for different purposes, including businesses in various sectors. These include more advanced plugins and premium themes, which might be worth investing in.
Depending on your niche, you can use different sets of plugins and themes. You'll find WPForms a very suitable option for creating a contact page. WooCommerce is one WordPress plugin that works wonders for online stores.
Highly recommended plugins include Yoast for SEO and Sucuri for security. You should also get a plugin for Google Analytics to analyze the traffic to your site.
It's very intuitive
WordPress's user-friendly interface makes building and managing a business site a breeze. It's user-friendlier, albeit with a slight learning curve compared to other free content management systems. You can use the WordPress dashboard to access the features and functions required to manage your website. You'll find the menus on the sidebar, where you can manage or install plugins or create new blog posts with a few simple clicks.
You can use the Gutenberg block editor to publish a customized blog post and change page elements. Plugins like Divi and Elementor can customize the site's appearance via simple drag-and-drop functionality.
It helps with online marketing
SEO is undeniably one of the best-known ways to draw organic traffic. It's practically free to implement, making it a suitable marketing approach for business websites. It will cost you your time, though. The fact that WordPress comes with default settings for SEO will save you some resources in every event. Features like custom post types will make your company's site easier to find when someone searches for a business in your sector.
As long as you use the right SEO plugins and tools, your chance of ranking higher in SERPs will improve.
Be warned that SEO takes time to achieve, and consistent effort is required.
And one disadvantage of WordPress!
Trying to set up WordPress without any technical skills can be a risky venture—people with limited development knowledge swear by it, which is due to ignorance in some cases. If you have some time on your hands, you can hack your way through WordPress.
It's crucial not to omit certain processes, such as separating the development, staging, and production. The site is first developed locally (on your computer), then staged on a test server, and finally taken live. You also need to consider backups, security, server configuration, etc. Managed WordPress hosting will take care of those for you.