Why Use WordPress?

Working with WordPress daily, the platform has become second nature to you and your team. Therefore, the reasons why you propose WordPress to your clients for their website is only completely self-evident to you.

Don’t forget, clients usually don’t have the same knowledge and can need reassuring that WordPress is the right platform to invest their time, effort and money into. Many ask, “Why use WordPress?” and if this question is not addressed correctly, projects and business opportunities can fall through.

To aid you with this, Ghost has put together a list of benefits and reasons to show why WordPress should be your CMS of choice for your client websites.

Mature

WordPress began as a blogging platform, and to this day many people still think of it as one. Many users don’t realise the open source platform has grown into a full-fledged content management system (CMS) with 10 plus years of development behind it, and has been tested on over tens of millions of websites.

Established

WordPress has become the most popular CMS in existence, with over 25 percent of the Internet. Users include Canadian Olympic Committee, Facebook, Coca-Cola and other well-known brands and popular websites.

Scalable

WordPress is capable of running on anything from cheap shared hosting to high-end servers, and can be used to create projects of all sizes. From single blogs to entire website networks with more than three million sites, there is almost nothing the platform can’t handle.

Versatile

Anything is possible, no matter what kind of website the client wants. Corporate websites, eCommerce, parallax, responsive, membership required websites and much more. Even mobile apps can be run with WordPress.

Free

What makes WordPress especially attractive is its price tag (it can’t get better than free!). As an open-source project, anyone is free to download, use and modify WordPress for any purpose.

Safe

With more than 10 years out in the field, WordPress has weathered many onslaughts and come out the other side stronger. WordPress security protocols are tough and only getting more robust.

Virtually all safety issues in recent years have been caused by old versions of plugins that should have been updated. Most hacked websites can be traced back to weak passwords, out-of-date WordPress versions and other problems on the user side.

In other words, the most insecure element of WordPress is its users. If you adapt simple security processes, you’ll be golden. (See our “Tips and Tricks to Secure Your WordPress Website” for more information)

Search engine friendly

Being visible in Google is often one of the main concerns for clients. Thus, they will be happy to know that WordPress is extremely search engine friendly out of the box. In fact, Matt Cutts, head of the webspam team at Google, said WordPress takes care of 80 percent to 90 percent of search engine optimization and he even uses the platform himself.

Mobile ready

In many countries, including Canada, mobile online traffic has surpassed that of desktop computers. Thankfully, with thousands of responsive themes available in the WordPress directory, the CMS is perfectly equipped for this changing environment.

Well-supported

WordPress is constantly being developed, with issues addressed quickly and new features added regularly. Last year alone had three major updates and eight maintenance releases. That’s almost one new release per month!

Besides that, the WordPress community is full of volunteers who are happy to lend a hand with problems.

Easy to manage

More and more people choose WordPress for its ease of use. The user interface is extremely beginner-friendly and content creation as easy as using a text editor. Automatic updates and other helpful features enable users to create and maintain websites without any coding knowledge.

Customizable

At the time of writing, the WordPress directory contains more than 40,000 plugins and thousands of themes — all free of charge to download and use. Then there are the high-quality commercial products such as WP Rocket, Restrict Content Pro and Akismet.

Furthermore, the CMS works extremely well with popular web services like PayPal and others.

Multimedia capable

Images, videos, audio and other multimedia are cornerstones of great web content. For that reason, WordPress has built-in media file management and auto-embed functionality for dozens of providers to make using third-party content like the tutorial below super easy:

Collaborative

Running a website is seldom a one-person show. WordPress user roles with clearly defined capabilities enable users to build a solid editorial team. If it’s enough for The New York Times blog network, it should be enough for your client.

Only getting started

Although WordPress is already quite impressive, we are likely just at the beginning of its journey. Matt Mullenweg has explicitly stated the goal to bring WordPress to 50-percent market share.

Recent developments like the WP REST API and the shift towards JavaScript are just the latest steps in that direction. Therefore, clients opting for WordPress can rest assured that they invest in future-proof technology.

Ghost’s final words

When clients are unfamiliar with WordPress they are hesitant to trust that the platform is right for them. By not knowing how to address these doubts early on can lead to missing out on projects and income. By having a strategy in place to deal with skeptical customers asking, “Why use WordPress?,” is a good investment in future job prospects and your bottom line.

Armed with the information above, you should be able to assure clients that the WordPress CMS can effectively cover all their needs.


Ghost Dev Studio is a white label web development company based in Toronto, Canada. We work with design firms and agencies with amazing creative, but limited development capabilities.
Contact us today and see why we are a development team of choice for many design firms and agencies.