If you’re like many small business owners you have already embraced the internet and have a presence on the web. However, what was good enough just a couple of years ago may not be good enough now, as mobile devices have become the norm and customers can access your website from anywhere.
Read the 7 points below to help you decide if your website meets the demands of visitors using the latest devices today.
1. Manage content the easy way
WordPress (which I’ve been using since 2007) means you don’t need to upload pages individually any more.
Simply log in to the dashboard and write or edit new content, upload photos, PDF documents or other media. If you can use Microsoft Word then you can use WordPress.
It’s that simple.
And there are different access levels, allowing you to limit what your employees can change. Your website configuration can only be changed by someone with full Admin rights, meaning there is no danger of someone clicking the wrong button by mistake!
Not only is WordPress widely adopted on many thousands of websites, but frequent updates mean added functionality as it evolves.
And it is easy to upgrade your website to the latest version of WordPress at the click of a button to ensure you get the latest functionality and your website remains secure.
What To Do If You Need Custom
Functionality on Your Website
There are a huge number of “plugins” that add specific functionality such as automatically backing up your site, showing the most popular posts in the sidebar, improving security, adding an audio player, or simply adding a custom contact form to your website.
2. Mobile friendly websites
Your site may already be using WordPress. If so you’ve made a great start. But have you checked to see what your website looks like on an iPhone or Android device?
If it doesn’t look good on a smartphone then you need to start planning your upgrade path, ideally with a “responsive” design that adapts to look equally as good on a smartphone or tablet as it does on your computer.
What Is Responsive Design?
The best modern websites use responsive design to adapt to whatever screen resolution they are being viewed on. This is the ideal solution if you are setting up a new website, or upgrading the design of an existing website.
However, if you’re already running your site on WordPress there is a quick and dirty solution that will adapt your site when viewed on a mobile phone. It’s not ideal, but it does the job!
3. What good web design really is
It may sound crazy, but good web design isn’t really about how your website looks.
The trouble is, most web designers don’t realise this.
Good website design is really about how people react on your site. If they do what you want them to do, then the design is good. If they don’t, then your site isn’t doing its job and needs to be improved.
The only way to find that our is to set up your website and see if people take the right action on it (you need to start somewhere).
But there are a number of good practices (such as including contact details top right with a strong call to action when viewed on a computer). These will help get you started the on the right foot.
4. Ready made themes
Because of the widespread adoption of WordPress, there are thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of designs to choose from.
You don’t need to have a new template specially designed for your website and there are hundreds of good ones available for free, while premium templates don’t cost the Earth.
Don’t I Have To Have A
Unique Theme For My Website?
Not really. Once you’ve uploaded your logo and customised the colour scheme your website will look very different, even if based on the same theme. If you look around you’ll see many websites share common elements event when based on completely different themes and so this is unlikely to be a problem.
5. Easy customisation
Depending on the template you pick, you may find you have all you want. But if you do need customisations, they can be done quickly, easily and cheaply thanks to the ubiquity and ease of use of WordPress.
6. Change the design in an instant
Because WordPress is a CMS, the site’s layout and design is managed separately from the individual pages.
That means you can change the design simply by downloading a new theme. Click a button and your website will have a completely different look almost instantly, but the content remains. It really is that easy.
7. Site-wide changes are easy
Back in the old days of uploading individual web pages to your web server, if you needed to make a global change you’d have to:
a) edit every page on your website.
b) upload them all to your server.
Just imagine if you had a new logo, moved to a new office, or needed to change the phone number displayed in the header or footer of your website. If your website had a few pages it wasn’t a problem, but one with tens (or hundreds) of pages… a nightmare.
Do I Have To Edit Every Single Page On My
Website To Change My Phone Number?
With WordPress there is no need to edit each page individually to change global elements, like your phone number. You make the change to your theme just once and it will be displayed on all pages of your website instantly. It doesn’t get easier than that!
Conclusion
WordPress is a great solution for all kinds of websites. Although it is often thought of as blogging software, WordPress has CMS capabilities that make it suitable for sites with a handful of pages up into many thousands. It is free, but constantly updated and new functionality added.
It is extremely flexible and extendible but also easy to use and, when used with a responsive template you’ll have a website that looks every bit as good on a mobile phone as a computer screen and everything in between. Wordpress really is the ideal platform for launching your small business website.
If you like this report you might also like “How to strategically plan a small business website in 8 simple steps “.
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