The Future of WordPress Is Bright – Faster Sites, Better UX
The New York Post, VentureBeat, News Corp. Australia, USA Today Sports Media Group. All different companies but with one thing in common: their online presence is made possible by the same tool.
The tool is WordPress, and it powers 40% of all websites. That means that for every five websites you visit, two of them are built with WordPress.
Since its 2003 release, WordPress has continued to grow, leading many businesses to adopt it.
But is the future of WordPress bright?
Absolutely! Using WordPress for your business means a better UX, faster sites, and better future translations. Here’s how.
What Is WordPress?
First, we need to clear up a common misconception. WordPress is not only a “blogging” tool. While it did operate as a blog publishing tool, it has expanded its functionality over the years. Now it is so much more.
WordPress is a CMS, or content management system. It’s an open-source tool that makes it easy to manage website content without needing programming knowledge.
WordPress is popular. It’s free, it’s scalable, it’s easy to use, and it’s very customisable. That’s why so many businesses use it, and why it’s perfect for your business.
WordPress Means a Better UX
WordPress has a better UX than its competitors. UX stands for user experience. It’s how a user feels about and interacts with a product.
UX includes ease of use and accessibility. It can also include UI or user interface design. Good UX design considers the users’ needs and how they will use a product or site.
The success of a website is determined by its UX. You must focus on providing a good user experience for your customers. A bad experience can prevent sales or discourage repeated visits.
Your site should be easy to navigate. This applies across devices. A visitor using their laptop and a visitor using their smartphone should both have a good experience when they visit.
Is your site mobile-friendly? If you are not sure, an easy way to check is with Google’s mobile-friendly test. Enter your URL and the tool will analyse your site and tell you if it’s mobile-friendly or not.
Previously, many used plugins to make their site mobile-friendly. But newer WordPress designs are mobile-friendly by default. They’re capable of responsive design, which means they adapt to each user’s device and screen.
WordPress is mobile-ready out of the box, requiring no additional plugins. That is less work for you.
Using WordPress Can Lead to Faster Sites
One aspect of a good UX is having a fast site load speed. But how can you ensure your pages load fast? There are a few ways of ensuring a better experience.
Make sure that only the essential plugins are being used. While plugins can expand the functionality of WordPress, too many can bog down your site. Fortunately, many WordPress plugins have diverse functionality, so you shouldn’t have to install too many.
Sites with a lot of images can be slow to load. You could always compress the images yourself, but that takes time. However, there are image plugins for WordPress that will compress images down to a reasonable size without degrading their quality.
Themes, Themes, and More Themes
One of WordPress’s strengths has been its use of themes. Themes are customisable templates for website design. The official directory alone has thousands of them.
Themes can change the colour, layout, and typography of your site. The themes available on the official directory are all completely free. However, if you want something more unique, premium themes are available from third-parties.
A custom theme can also help your site stand out. Depending on our business, your needs for your site may be different from others. That is where a custom theme that incorporates your logo, corporate colours, and specific layout and pages comes in.
Themes mean that no two WordPress sites are exactly the same.
WordPress Makes Selling Subscription Content Simple
If you’re looking to sell your created content online, WordPress offers the ability to restrict certain content to paid subscribers only.
Let us look at a few examples of the kind of content you can make subscriber-only. Maybe you have premium blogging content or financial reports and speculation. You could put that content behind a paywall for paid subscribers and make money.
It is not just for blogging. Podcasts, photography, instructional videos, creative writing-all of these could be posted as paid content.
This is easy to do with the MemberPress plugin. It allows you to create, manage, and track subscription membership to your site. It works with any WordPress theme and integrates with PayPal, Stripe, and other payment gateways.
It Is the Best Choice for eCommerce
You might be looking to sell other digital content or even physical goods. That’s where eCommerce functionality would be needed.
WordPress does not have native support for traditional eCommerce, but there are many plugins that add storefront and shopping cart functionality.
We recommend WooCommerce, an open-source eCommerce platform. It’s flexible and secure, allowing you to accept credit cards, bank transfers, cash on delivery, checks, Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Play, and more.
It also allows you to easily set up a store and product pages. Their dashboard makes tracking orders easy.
If you think you don’t need an easy way to incorporate eCommerce into your website, think again. The COVID pandemic has shown everyone how important an online shop presence is. Unfortunately, not everyone was ready for it and able to adapt in time.
WordPress Is SEO Friendly
It does not matter how great your business is if customers cannot find you. That is where SEO-search engine optimisation-comes in. SEO is the process of improving search engine results and driving traffic to your site in an organic way.
WordPress is very SEO friendly. You can easily modify image alt, meta, and title tags. These tags provide information about a webpage to a search engine.
WordPress allows SEO modification for each site page right out of the box. There are no plugins to install.
Future Translations
Their Polyglots team is constantly translating WordPress versions and plugins into dozens of global languages. This includes all varieties of English, French, Chinese, Arabic, Spanish and other major languages. But it also includes less spoken but equally important languages such as Polish, Welsh, Finnish, and Afrikaans.
Maybe you don’t think you will need a translated version of WordPress, but your customers might. By having an accessible version of WordPress, you can meet your customers where they are at.
The days of many businesses being local only are long over. The COVID pandemic and intense competition are proving that your business needs to be online and accessible to as many customers as possible.
WordPress Security
Some people still think that WordPress is not secure, but that’s not the case. The core software is safe. WordPress’ open-source nature means that there are thousands of contributors to it all over the world. Security issues are prioritised and quickly fixed.
The biggest security issue for WordPress is plugins. However, most of these are safe. If there’s a particular plugin you are interested in, do some research and read some reviews.
Much like you should not install unfamiliar software from strange sites, you should not install unknown WordPress plugins from dodgy sites. A little common sense will go a long way in protecting your site.
Growing Your Business With WordPress
WordPress is a great way to grow your business. With a website, your business does not have to rely only on a physical store.
An optimised online presence will help generate leads and produce revenue, even during a global pandemic. That’s why it is important to have a well-designed website that serves your business. It is not just a landing page, it is an extension of your business.
WordPress is not just for existing businesses though. Its ease of use and scalability makes it a great choice for startups, small businesses, and NGOs. WordPress can allow you to start a business from home with little capital investment.
The Future of WordPress
So what does the future of WordPress look like? It is faster sites, a better UX, and more future translations. It is continued support and added functionality. These WordPress upgrades will continue to make it the best choice for your business.
That is why Cosmik Carrot uses WordPress. We can help you get your WordPress site up and running. We offer expert website design services.
Already have a WordPress site? We can help out with our WordPress maintenance service. We can monitor your site and keep it running safely and securely.
Tell us about your goals and let us help you.
