So, you’re a marketer in the technology industry trying to defend the use of WordPress for your company’s web CMS? I feel you.
WordPress is the free, open-source content management system (CMS) many people (ie. software developers) love to hate. But it’s also the most used CMS on the internet, by a long-shot. It’s estimated that over 74 million sites on the internet use WordPress; that’s over 50% of all websites (WordPress’s stellar SEO plugin Yoast has a great infographic on this).
Let me walk you through some of the top reasons I’ve come to love WordPress as a solution to my content marketing woes:
PHP in the house
WordPress is built in PHP. And PHP kinda sucks. Mainly because it began in the 90’s as a template language for HTML, but is now being stretched to support a larger range of web apps.
This is a known-issue, and WordPress is creating a CMS designed in JavaScript. This means that future development in WordPress will be more robust. Until then, WordPress is still the best option because of its ease of use, independent of what is happening under the hood.
Buying a template is an easy solution. Places like Theme Forest have templates that are customizable enough to look like your brand, and supported-enough to offer drag and drop page builders right inside of WordPress. No one has to even look at the PHP underbelly.
How to handle a snob
I love software developers as much as the next tech junkie, but most of them are pretty snobby about the technologies they use. That is why we pay them the big bucks, afterall. They like to be on the cutting-edge and are less than impressed with (what they perceive as) the awkwardly outdated aspects of the web.
But, unless you have been tasked with designing Banksy’s new website, or would like to create an interactive model of Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, what you need most is to communicate a clear message of brand. First and foremost, your site should should be a tool to effectively and efficiently convert leads into customers.
A traditional website structure, composed of a static homepage, a few web pages, landing pages, forms, pop-ups, etc. more than satisfies that requirement. That is what wordpress provides, as an out of the box solution.
Plug & play
By virtue of having a huge market share and being the preferred CMS of most websites on the internet, many companies have developed integrations and plugins that play nicely with WordPress.
From the time you purchase your fancy, new domain, you can integrate to WordPress with a couple clicks. Domain.com even offers to add WordPress hosting in the same checkout process.
An additional benefit of the open-source platform WordPress is built on, is the robust plugin architecture. There are 43,897 plugins actively available now with more being built all the time. Among my favorites are Yoast, a search engine optimization guide; LeadIn, a lead generation and conversion web app; and Optimizely, an AB testing and personalization tool. No other CMS offers something similar, at scale.
Own it
For any company today, having a functional website is a no-brainer as it is a super high-performing source of low ROI leads. In most organizations, the website content and functionality rest on the Marketing department. And that makes sense – a website is ground zero for most content marketing efforts.
This means full control of the site should be in the Marketing department as well. Unless you are one of the lucky, and very few, marketing teams that has a developer at their beck and call, you are likely forced to go through your company’s support ticket process. This is a waste of your company’s resources. Marketers are cheaper than developers, they know how they want things to look, and they own the KPIs attached to the website.
WordPress is easy to use and, beyond some initial help for technical set up, Marketing should be able to fully own it.
You don’t need to know how to code to use WordPress. A basic knowledge of HTML and CSS is helpful, but not necessary.
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In this post, I have addressed the objections to WordPress from the point of view of a Marketing Manager in the software industry. There are, of course, other objections such as server availability, security, and backups. I have found getting into these issues, especially with a highly technical audience, leads to muddied discussion.
What most businesses need is an efficient way to display information about their brand and provide opportunities for educating, engaging, converting and delighting customers. WordPress provides the most direct pathway to that goal.
In practical terms, I have overcome objections by acknowledging WordPress’s shortcomings, and showing how marketing ownership builds better pathways for customer conversion.
Andrea Kelly 