Disclaimer: No slices of bread were harmed in the making of this article.

WHY WORDPRESS SITES ARE THE BEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD

Marketing your small business can be tough. But without an attractive website with built-in marketing features, it could be a waste of your time.  As you know, most consumers today go online to find local products and services. And if your website is outdated, slow-loading, or simply just hard on the eyes, you may notice that it’s not doing anything at all to help you increase leads and sales.

Or maybe you have no a website at all -you have no “virtual home”-which could be an instant turnoff for potential customers.

In the realm of web design there are many different options of choosing how to create your website.  Wix is an awesome platform that allows for you to create your own site. If a simple online business card is all that you want then Weebly can also get the job done. Both of these platforms are built to be user friendly yet they do not provide a fraction of the power and benefit of a functional WordPress website. Keep reading and discover why I’m so bold.

WordPress Sites Can Save You Money

Most entrepreneurs think that owning a professional website is very expensive, but there are a lot of added options that make the maintenance of a WordPress website cost-efficient.

WordPress makes it easy for a learner to control top-notch business websites and at the same time get more leads. Below are some excellent ways WordPress can help you control your web design costs.

WordPress Themes

One of the most important features of WordPress is its endless variety of professional themes that are affordable for designers. Because of this, they are generally able to charge businesses less than they would for a fully-coded custom-designed HTML website. This makes designers able to charge small business owners less than they would charge for a fully coded custom-designed HTML website.

Regardless of what industry you are in, there are several WordPress themes to that will accurately and professionally represent your brand. These themes can also be customized to meet your business budget and needs by professional WordPress designers.

Quick and Easy Updates

Quite often, businesses need to make updates such as adding new content, changing business hours, or introducing new staff. In most cases, business owners contact their web designers to help them update their websites. Simple updates such as adding new images or blog content for fully-coded developer sites results in fees which can accrue a tremendous amount in some cases. On the other hand, with a WordPress format small business owners are able to have these updates at a much more affordable rate.

Plugins and Widgets

Plugins and widgets are software you can add to your site to enhance it, such as web advertising, social media integration, Google Analytics, and much more. Instead of requiring extensive HTML coding to include these features, WordPress contains ways to make these enhancements with a few clicks of a mouse.

SEO-Friendly

WordPress is created to be SEO-friendly. It has several ways of making your site a perfect search engine favorite so that your customers can easily find your business online. There are WordPress plugins to assist with Onsite SEO and make it easy to add quality content and appropriate keywords.

Furthermore, WordPress permits you to classify your contents into important topics thereby making it simple to interlink your pages. Adding images and video to WordPress sites is an easy task and makes your site an SEO hub.

WordPress Sites Look Great On Mobile Users

There are many who claim the future of marketing lies in the internet. However, the future of the internet is mobile, which is why all local businesses need to have a mobile website.

Smartphones and tables have become one of the most popular ways to use the internet. This, in turn is why savvy local business owners not only need to have an online presence, but a mobile online presence. The latest WordPress themes have mobile integrations built within them so they can accommodate different mobile devices.

WordPress sites are intuitively designed to recognize whether the browsing medium is a phone, tablet, or desktop. WordPress site themes are flexible and can be formatted for use on mobile devices. An exact copy of an existing desktop website will not always appear as smooth on mobile devices.

The primary goal of any mobile website should be to keep top of mind awareness, while making your small business more visible to those who aren’t already familiar with your services. Approximately 95% of people who own smartphones look for local information on their devices.

More than half of these people will then contact a company after they have searched for information. If potential customers are not able to find your company’s information on their mobile devices; you may be losing potential business.

If you are looking to stay in contact with “the Mobile World”, WordPress sites ensure content is easy to read and is smartphone-friendly. Content on WordPress sites are more succinct than on regular websites as it can difficult to read lengthy information while on the go.

WordPress Sites Help BOOST Brand Awareness

Creating a distinctive brand is an essential aspect of being an entrepreneur. This helps with content marketing and also with promoting your goods and services. If you don’t have a unique label, no matter how authentic your products are, they might not get the necessary publicity.

WordPress helps create awareness for your brand in various ways and also ensures your customers are satisfied with your goods and services.

WordPress Blogs

Blogs are online journals. They are an effective means of demonstrating your brand’s voice, expressing your abilities, and showcasing your expertise. WordPress originated as a personal website. It has now become the most effective means of producing an impressive brand or label.

Online journals are an essential and permanent part of the WordPress platform. This works wonders for building your small business’ brand through advertising, refining and publishing content. You can including RSS feeds, subscriber options and comment sections to your WordPress blog.

Social Media Integration

WordPress is basically a search engine-friendly site. It is very effective, and it can get your brand recorded in the dominant search engine sites, creating more awareness, which is an added advantage of social media integration.

With special WordPress plugins, your business’ brand is armed with essential tools to connect on social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. It also provides a formidable allotment of free social media links and widgets that are easy to set up and can be used for social media platforms like Pinterest, Youtube and Instagram.

You Are in Control

WordPress ensures you are in charge of your site, themes, colors, fonts, contents, widgets, plugins etc. You have the capacity to boost and create awareness for your brand in any way you deem fit. The most outstanding aspect is that your content is always yours because you are the owner of the website. Social media platforms are effective for promoting your brands, but sadly, your content is under the discretion of the owner’s of those websites. With WordPress, you are in control of your brand and it’s assets; there’s no need to bother yourself about losing your contents or your material being restricted.

SEO and WordPress

As mentioned earlier, WordPress has a significant influence on the major search engines. Many entrepreneurs regularly update their websites with basic information and these search engines obtain this information and boost these sites.

Your site can simply make its way to the topmost search engine results using the appropriate combination of keywords and SEO optimization.

WordPress Sites Make Building Your Sales Funnel Easy

Small Business owners and any business owner should have an understanding of sales funnel. As you my recall from my article, “Okay So What the Heck IS a Sales Funnel?”, a sales funnel is a marketing term that describes the process a business sends potential customers through, beginning from a stranger and ending up as an actual customer. Businesses should design their websites to help facilitate their sales funnel.

WordPress sites provides many helpful tools that can change your website from a motionless online leaflet to a powerful producer of leads. You could use your business website to achieve numerous goals, some of which are listed below;

• You could grow your subscriber’s list

• You could become aware of what your users needs.

• You could acquire new leads

• You could also learn how to turn the leads into paying customers.

• You would be able to send out beneficial information to your leads.

WordPress sites provide your business with powerful landing pages and integration of tools such as autoresponders and push notifications required to achieve these goals conveniently. Capturing leads pages would exponentially optimize your sales funnel and increase your bottom line.

Capturing Information

Whenever someone visits your site, endeavor to capture certain information such as the person’s name and email address. This helps you follow-up on them rather than allowing them to leave.

WordPress makes it simple for you to build your sales funnel by allowing the use of email opt-in forms in your website. You shouldn’t bombard your subscriber with offers but instead nurture your list and build your brand’s relationship by providing value from content marketing, shared engagement, and regular community updates.

Plugins

Apart from the included WordPress database, different types of plugins and tools are also available. They assist you in organizing your contacts for your sales funnel. Your WordPress database, plugins and autoresponder system automatically starts working immediately a user subscribes to your list. This makes it simple for you to maintain your leads and contacts in your sales funnel.

Break Bread

In today’s internet driven world, there is no question of the value in having a website for your business. Your website can serve as your sales machine, lead generation device, your businesses “brand”, and much more. With many free and low cost online options to choose from, WordPress sites fits in the low cost category and provides a wonderful array of features to broadcast your business to the eyes of your customers.

If you would like help in building a robust web site with the latest features to reach your customers, let us know how we can help you!!

Author: Big Teddy Cain

Big Teddy Cain is the President of Local Joker Media, a small business marketing agency located in Little Rock, Arkansas. Teddy Cain is a lead generation and business growth development strategist, specializing in the use of paid and free lead generation methods to increase business sales.