June 6, 2010

When it comes to websites, small business owners tend to fall into one of two camps:

• The first are those whose website is vital, and they integrate it into their overall business. They look for the latest and greatest trick, they understand SEO, they blog and post and all the rest.

• The other group are those folk who know they need to have a website, pay it lip service, and either have a site (albeit an unexceptional one) or, horrors, no site at all.

If I were to tell you that the majority of small businesses fall into the second camp, you wouldn’t be surprised, would you? We have all seen what too many small business websites look like: With the look and feel of something out of 2002 or so, they have few, if any, Web 2.0 tools and act essentially as an e-Yellow Page ad.

Given that, it is not surprising that many small business people find their website to be a pain in the rear, a necessary evil, a chore to be handled, rather than what it should be – their MAIN window to the world, a profit center, an e-billboard, a marketing brochure, and a sales tool all rolled into one. But for too many small business owners, it is not that. Instead, their site is not only boring, it is difficult to update, and although they may want a nicer or more robust site, the imagined costs and effort make it seemingly prohibitive.

But it need not be, redoing your site with Wordpress can change all that.

As you may know, Wordpress is a popular program that many people use to blog. It’s popular because it is easy. But what you may not know is that Wordpress can also be a very powerful and affordable website creation tool.

(Confession: Two years ago, wanting to redo my own site, I received bids as high as $75,000. Sticker shock led me to rethink the project, and my assistant extraordinaire, Vivian, convinced me that we should use Wordpress. It turned out to be a very smart business decision. I love Wordpress.)

Creating a website with Wordpress is surprisingly easy. There are literally hundreds of themes to choose from, and most are free. These themes can be completely customized and installed quickly. You can see some of the best themes here.

The advantages of using Wordpress for your business website are many:

The look: As indicated, there are tons of Wordpress themes out there, so finding one that fits your business is easy. That it will be Web 2.0 enabled, and have the look and feel of something very now makes it all the more attractive. Slideshows, flash movies, blogs, video, advertising spots – all are a part of various Wordpress themes, or easily integrated.

No longer need you be stuck with a site that is bland, blah, or mediocre.

The cost: Most Wordpress themes are free, and those that are not cost less than $100, generally. Customizing your theme, if desired, is easy.

CMS: A CMS, or Content Management System, is what most small business people need but don’t have; that is why they need to go to their webmaster whenever their site needs updating. Not so with Wordpress. The Wordpress CMS is simple and intuitive. It is designed to make adding or changing content to a site a breeze.

SEO: SEO is built into the Wordpress dashboard. Below the spot where you post a new article is an “All in One SEO Pack.” It asks you to give your keywords, tags, excerpts, and so on. Wordpress does the rest. The result is that you get URLs that are indexed right, full of keywords, and are friendly to search engine spiders.

Suddenly, SEO is a snap.

Participation: Adding visitor comments to your site is always great, and with Wordpress, visitor participation is integrated through comments and trackbacks.

Support: Because Wordpress is open source software, there is a very large community of people out there who can help you.

Ease: Installing a standard Wordpress site is quick and easy. Even a custom one can be done in short order. 1 and 1, GoDaddy, and other web hosts know how to add Wordpress sites easily.

Join the conversation ( 9 )

• Cheryl Smithem 1 year 7 months and 10 days ago

  

  As the founder of a web development company who primarily uses WordPress as a CMS, agree with most of your points Steve. However, I would suggest that rather than use an "off the shelf" theme, a small business would do well to seek a design firm to help them develop a theme that completely represents the company's brand. Trying to fit into someone else's theme doesn't always happen easily and not all themes are planned to allow ease of customization. In a world where competition is keen, a company must consistently maintain their brand standards. And as you stated so well, the website is the most critical point where your brand must be established.
  
  The other point I would support is that to gain full advantage of a WordPress website, one must have a hosted site. Many people confuse WordPress.com where you can establish a free blog with the Open Source WordPress.org code.

• Cheri Falkner 1 year 7 months and 24 days ago

  

  Even more important than the coding side of a website, is the content. Sadly, what many business owners overlook is the need for a website editor. They think that they (or their staff) can write the content because they are the subject matter experts when, in reality, they have very few communication skills. In the end, they tend to do more damage than if they didn't have a site at all.

• MARY MOTZ 1 year 7 months and 25 days ago

  

  WordPress has definitely changed the face of web design - I used to build custom sites, but now my business is about 95% WordPress - and with good reason - you cannot beat its SEO, visibility and overall utility.
  
  Also - with minimal training, a client can maintain and update a WP site without a webmaster - making the cost of ownership is much lower than with a traditional website. It can also be easily integrated with other marketing initiatives such as social media and email.
  
  I would also agree with the other commenters that for a business presence, using a premium theme is best - and worth working with a pro to get the theme customized for your business branding.

• ALEJANDRO GIL 1 year 7 months and 28 days ago

  

  Wordpress is a good entry level content management application and a excellent start for most small businesses. As experienced web developers we made it our corporate mission focus on customizing open source applications.
  
  Open source applications allow you the opportunity to use highly developed core code and add additional functionality via add in modules.
  
  Wordpress started out as a simple blogging application and has now morphed into a full featured content management application with thousands of developers creating custom modules and themes. The average computer savvy professional should be able to add a theme, install wordpress on a hosting platform and be off and running.
  
  The key is keeping core functionality updated and ensure that the site is secure and backed up. Wordpress and many other content management applications run on MySQL or SQL databases. So having a full copy of your code ensures easy restoration. We have seen many sites fail and no backup was available to help recover for our clients.
  
  WebCanDo focuses on several open source content management applications that would be a good choice for a small business. Many of our customers use our services to custom design and help manage these complex applications.
  
  Consider these:
  
  http://Drupal.org - is a free and open source CMS written in PHP and distributed under the GNU. It is used as a back-end system for at least 1% of all websites worldwide, ranging from small personal blogs to large corporate and political sites, including whitehouse.gov. It is also used for knowledge management and business collaboration.
  
  http://joomla.org - Joomla is an open source CMS for publishing content on the Web and intranets. It is written in PHP, stores data in MySQL and includes features such as page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news, blogs, polls, search, and support for many languages. Joomla has been downloaded several million times. Over 5,000 free and commercial plug-ins are available.

• Michelle Gustafson 1 year 8 months and 0 days ago

  

  Great article Steve. As a website developer I made the decision 2 years ago to develop sites strictly using WordPress for a couple of reasons.
  
  1. Extensibility - with so many plugins that have been developed a WordPress site can be set up to do anything a site owner needs.
  
  2. As Paul pointed out, putting the site owner in control of their website content.
  
  I would say though, if you do not have technical skills, hire someone to set up your WordPress site for you. The investment will be well worth forgoing the frustration of trying to do it yourself.
  
  I would also caution against using free themes you find out on the web. There are a few places where you'll find free themes which have been tested to ensure there is no malicious code placed in the theme such as http://wordpress.org.
  
  Premium themes are definitely worth the investment.

• Bob Dunn 1 year 8 months and 1 days ago

  

  Hi Steve, this is a great article and points all the advantages of using WordPress. For someone who lives and breathes it, yes, small businesses need to be aware of options like that, especially the DYI's.
  
  The one thing I would like to point out, is that even though WordPress is pretty intuitive, with the people I work with on a day to day basis, as with any technology, there is a learning curve. But once a small biz owner has the tools and resources to help them along, it makes the process so much easier. Sure, some aspects of WordPress are easy to pick up, while others are hidden and not so obivous.
  
  Many of my clients who come to me have been told "how easy WordPress is" and have found out otherwise. They may be doing fine, but one single little *** can stop them completely and cause endless frustrations. What's easy to learn for one person can be a challenge for another.
  
  Even though I never discourage anyone from trying to build a blog or website, themselves, from the ground up, as what you said, and most comments have alluded to, is the ease of keeping your own site updated without having to call your webmaster everytime some content needs to be changed.
  
  WordPress and all the themes, plugins and widgets are constantly evolving, and making it even easier for someone to get their own site up. And yes, it's the one of the best Web 2.0 tools out there.

• Stephen Rahal 1 year 8 months and 1 days ago

  

  Hi Steve - great article. I think you've hit on a challenge that many small businesses face - updating and managing their web presence. Using a blog application like Wordpress is a nice option, and with the emergence of social software, entrepreneurs have never had more options at their disposal for an easy to use, cost effective web design platform...

• Shashi Bellamkonda 1 year 8 months and 1 days ago

  

  Hi Steve,
  
  You did a great job explaining WordPress in very simple terms. To the group of small business owners who you mention above paying lip service to their websites or not having websites my advice is that they should be conscious that others may be building their brand online.
  a) Social Networks
  b) Customer reviews
  c) Forums and bulletin boards.
  
  Having a website and specially one as flexible as WordPress with the shareable tools and plug-ins is a great choice.
  
  As i work for Network Solutions I wanted to add that in the "Ease" section folks could try out the Network Solutions' hosting too with our easy to use installer.
  
  Thanks,
  
  Shashi
  

• PAUL ROSENFELD 1 year 8 months and 1 days ago

  

  This is a very important article for the typical small business. And Steve makes excellent points as to the benefits of Wordpress. Ironically, I think Steve misses explaining the central and most important reason: Easy to update.
  
  You can see a wordpress website - our website - at www.fanmider.com. What you'll first note is that it doesn't look like a blog - Each typical "page" is inserted into the wordpress system, so I as a layperson, non-tech CEO can go in and make changes. The site looks very professional, but on the back-end, it's easy to see each page and edit them.
  
  Even better: Even if you don't make fancy pages like we did, when you use Wordpress, each page becomes an easily editable page. So the typical small biz can call up a page and edit it, add photos, delete the page, add new pages, etc - all without asking your web designer to do it, lay it out, design it, code it... etc. In other words, pay once for the site, then don't pay again.
  
  As Steve mentioned, it's one of our best investments too, that pays off each day for us. I highly recommend this approach. I do think it's important you find a wordpress expert in CraigsList though I can recommend ours 100%, just email me off our profile. Best, Paul@ www.fanminder.com