You decided to start a business! Congratulations; it’s celebration time!
But before the last piece of confetti hits the floor and the last of your celebration cups gets put away, it hits you. As the cabinet door shuts, your party-vibes go, “Thud,” right along with the cupboard door.
You need a website…and you don’t know how to make one.
A lot of people have told you about WordPress, & it sounds like everyone who’s anyone uses it, but there’s a tingle of anxiety creeping around in your stomach still that maybe just maybe it’s not the right platform for your website.
Then you heard So-and-So and Such-and-Such tell you that Squarespace or Shopify are better options for your business. You’ve heard so many different opinions on either side that you’re ready to pull your hair out because you just don’t know how to choose.
Your business planning was so exciting and full of promise, a minute ago. Now it feels like you’re going to make the wrong choice no matter what you do.
When you’re just starting out, the options seem endless. Every little detail of your business offers you another choice, and unless you’ve tried them all, you’re afraid to make any choice at all.
That’s just how it goes when you’ve never run an online business and you’re building your first. I want to take the guesswork out of things for you and make it clear whether or not wordpress.org is right for you.
Since it’s going to be your online home (and you’re hopefully staying in the neighborhood for a while), I really want you to feel comfy and cozy and not at all scary.
Which is why I’m going to tell you why WordPress is my #1 recommendation to anyone who’s setting up a website for their business.
I’m not saying that this is absolutely the best option for you no matter what, but I’ll tell you why I love WordPress and why I only use wordpress.org for my clients’ websites.
So, without further ado, here are four reasons why WordPress.org is the bomb (dot com):
1) The possibilities are endless!
Whatever you can imagine, you can create with WordPress.org.
I’m not going to fib to you and say it’s totally easy. There is a bit of a learning curve that I had to trudge through when I was starting out on WordPress too. But once you get the hang of it, the sky’s the limit!
You can start off with something basic and the more you learn about WordPress the more you will be able to do with your site.
Want a video background for the top of your Home Page? You can totally do that! Want to have PDF downloads hosted directly on your website? That’s doable too!
Click to Tweet – “Your site can grow as your business grows.” bit.ly/why-wordpress-acc
I would much rather see you build a solid foundation than switching back and forth from one platform to another and having to learn and relearn each one as you go.
With any platform, there are limitations. WordPress.com for instance, only allows you to use the themes available within the WordPress.com theme library (to learn the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, check out this post).
With a WP.org site, you can use one of zillions of themes created by designers all over the world.
Some are very simple, while some are complex and flexible enough for you (with some techie elbow grease) to have virtually any option on your site.
The plugins for the free or cheaper options are more limited than the ones you can get for your WordPress.org site.
Plugins (WordPress slang for a small software file that has been created to do lots of fun things on your website) increase the functionality of your site, so I love the fact that I can add things later and easily upgrade my own site, according to my changing needs.
2) You can have a website, blog, shop, and membership site all rolled into one if you want.
Like I said, you can pretty much do whatever your heart desires with your WordPress.org site. There’s no need to have multiple sites to do multiple things because the upkeep of that is a huge headache. If you want everything all working from your WP site, it’s possible.
You can create a website that has a blog for marketing, an e-commerce site to sell your products, a course or membership site to educate your clients, and you can make it look however you want (or your designer can do it for you).
With plugins like Woo-Commerce for a shop or Wishlist Member for membership options, you can build your business from one place.
This might be overwhelming at first, but you can either hire someone to help or you can just build your site one step at a time. As Marie Forleo says, “Everything is figureoutable.” That’s the approach I took when I first started on WordPress back in 2011, and I’ve built up my own knowledge and website along the way. It’s totally possible, even if you can’t see it from the very beginning.
3) You can be easily found on Google and other search engines.
Every platform uses some kind of analytics tracking software, so you can see how many people are coming to your site, but WordPress allows you to track a lot more, using plugins or code.
When it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization), WordPress makes it easy to be found in search engines.
By installing an SEO plugin, you can get guidance, tips & functions to help you set up SEO on each and every page of your website.
The Yoast SEO plugin, designed strictly for WordPress, is the leading SEO plugin around. The reason why Yoast is my personal SEO favorite is that the developers of this plugin are experts who stay on top of the changes that happen within the world of SEO.
They build things straight into the plugin that keeps up with what’s going on in Google-land so that you don’t have to…because really. Who could?
Even if you don’t use this particular plugin, WordPress.org has other SEO plugins that will do a great job if SEO is important to you and your biz. *Spoiler* It should be!
4) It’s affordable. Seriously!
All you need to get started is to purchase your domain name ($10-15/year), hosting package ($3-30/month), as well as a theme (free-$100 or more depending on what you like).
For most new business owners, it typically costs under $100 to get a website up and running, along the DIY route. That’s pretty low for start-up costs! Squarespace is $18-$26/month, depending on if you decide to pay for the year all at once or if you pay month-to-month. It’s still fairly low to start your online business, but the choices are overall more limited in terms of how far you can take the design. If you want something quick and easy, then it may be a good option for you.
You’ll just have to weigh both sides and see which one matches up with the vision you have for your online business.
WordPress is my #1 recommendation to anyone wanting to start their own business online, and it’s what I use for my sites, and the sites of my clients too.
What’s your favorite thing about WordPress? Tell me in the comments.
P.S. Want to start your WordPress site right away, my WordPress Made Easy course found inside my monthly membership site is a great solution to get you started with your own customizable, flexible, SEO friendly and affordable website started right away.
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