Picking the right website platform is vital to a sustainable online presence. The CMS you use determines how easy it is to add and manage content – and as your business grows, there’ll be a lot of that involved.
At Squarebird, WordPress is our CMS of choice. As a WordPress-only agency, we’re keyed up on the benefits of using this platform for your website. In this article, we’ll discuss what a CMS is, what other examples you might have heard of, and explain why WordPress is so effective – along with how you can make the switch.
Interested in the next stage of your web evolution? Get in touch today!
“WordPress is an excellent choice for CMS, as nearly half the world’s websites are built on it. If you’re thinking of a website refresh, it’s a great opportunity to move over to WordPress, where we can create a new, optimised site that’s easy to update, edit, and maintain by all skill levels.” – Tim Steel, Lead Developer
What is a CMS?
A CMS is a Content Management System, also known as a website platform. It is essentially a user-friendly user interface (UI) that allows a non-technical user – such as a copywriter or a CEO – to be able to edit and update a website with little to no knowledge or experience in coding. A CMS acts as a low-code platform, enabling collaboration across departments to tailor your site to your vision.
There are also CMS that act as a bolt-on to full CMS, such as WooCommerce which can give WordPress websites additional functionalities specific to ecommerce.
What are common examples of CMS?
As well as WordPress, some of the top examples of CMS you may have heard of include:
- Squarespace
- Magento
- Wix
- HubSpot CMS
While each of these other CMS have their own benefits and use cases, we truly believe that WordPress has the greatest advantages and flexibility to meet your requirements. And we’re not alone, either, with 43% of websites globally using WordPress to make it the most dominant CMS in the world.
What are the benefits of using WordPress over other options?
The platform of the popular
As we’ve indicated, a large number of websites (over 810 million!) use WordPress. This means you can benefit from extended functionality due to the ecosystem of plugins and themes that are readily available. It also receives regular updates, which is good for security and features, and is relatively lightweight, meaning you don’t get more than you need – improving your site speed and the user experience.
Easy to use
From your end, WordPress is also quite easy to use. It tailors to all levels of experience, from complete beginners with no coding knowledge to experts making custom builds, meaning anyone can produce outputs in line with your brand, site, and image.
Functional to a tee
You can add ecommerce integrations, usually through WooCommerce (a popular choice, and often our go-to). Other integrations include forms like with Gravity Forms, Mailchimp, and other mailing lists. Finally, the plugin system enables adding and bolting on things to increase functionality, tailoring your site to your needs without being left with loads of bloatware.
Pick and choose your theme
The ability with WordPress to pick and choose what theme you want is great for being able to design and nail down the layout of your website. Themes are also customisable, meaning you can add different elements as you require. Most of the time, this is more based around content than functionality, but being able to style the site the way you want – with content blocks and templates – enables you to build pages and update your site with ease.
You can also choose from custom and existing themes, depending on your needs:
Existing themes. These are a quick-fire off-the-shelf solution, making them generally quicker to implement. However, existing themes often come with functionality you don’t want, which can make the pages heavy and impact load speed. Premade themes can also be quite restrictive if they don’t have certain functions you want to achieve. In these cases coding these functions in can either be difficult or impossible, as conflicts with the theme code may lead to errors and instability.
Custom themes. Our preferred choice is creating a theme custom to you. This allows us to tailor it more, create the exact functionality you require, and ensure there’s no excess. We make it more streamlined, optimised, and faster, making both the front and back ends look and feel the way that works best for you.
Explore the complete website development process to find out how these benefits are applied >
Why do we only work with WordPress?
Working on a single CMS means we’re an expert in it – and as you’ve seen, we think WordPress is the right one to choose. All of our knowledge and experience has been built up around WordPress and associated sites, meaning we know its limits, how to achieve complex goals, and how to efficiently build with the platform.
Our clients know that because we’re experts on WordPress, the sites we build for them will be constructed efficiently, according to the best industry standards, and using the full capabilities of the platform. On the flipside, if we were to work with other CMS and be a ‘jack of all trades’, it would result in being a true master of none with low knowledge spread across a number of systems rather than expertise in a single one.
A website only has one platform, so work with someone that can make full use of it! And, as WordPress is safe, used, updated, and improved constantly, it offers a futureproofed solution for your business to choose.
How long does it take to switch CMS?
Switching your CMS to WordPress is very dependent on the size and complexity of your existing website, alongside any changes you want to make during the conversion. For example, a 2/3-page brochure website likely won’t take long to change to WordPress, but a massive ecommerce shop with lots of integrations could take a lot longer.
There’s no real way of just migrating from one CMS to another – instead, we have to build it from the ground up. Starting from scratch may seem daunting, but this is an excellent opportunity to give your website a fresh overview in terms of looks, SEO, and optimisation.
If your site is already quite old, refreshing it is likely to be highly beneficial. Development standards change surprisingly often, and we’d recommend a website refresh at least every 5-7 years even for established sites, due to the rate at which coding improves. We always build to the best standards for every site, but these standards change over time – so make sure you change with them.
We can also create an exact copy of your existing site, which can help you save on both design and content costs for changing your website platform to WordPress. However, it is important to highlight this as an opportunity to revamp your site and grow your brand and business while the development is underway.
Website redesign, rebuild, or reskin – which is right for you? Find out here >
Are there any implications for making the change?
Not really! If all the content on the site and its URL are the same, there won’t be any implications on SEO. In fact, you could see an improvement in engagement and a reduction in bounce rate – especially for mobile users – due to the speed increases from the refinement of your site’s functionality.
You’ll also like see an increase in the ease of editing and uploading content on your site. We’ve had clients come over to us with no experience in WordPress and little experience with website backends in general, but after giving them access and walking them through it, they’ve been able to modify their site without issue.
Migrating your website to WordPress doesn’t come with negative implications – just opportunities for you to change and improve the way your site works, and the way you engage with it on the backend.
Switch Your CMS to WordPress with Squarebird
Convinced to make the change? We’re here to help. With so many benefits to using WordPress as your website platform, and our singular expertise in creating bespoke solutions for this CMS, we’ll help you achieve a functional, customisable, and responsive site to boost your business and user experience.
Get in touch today and start the process of bringing your site in line with the global website marketplace.
Explore the best security practices for your WordPress website >