Why choose a WordPress website?

by Design for Digital

WordPress has been a popular website building platform for almost two decades now. Here at Design for Digital, we’re passionate about WordPress design and development and now focus solely on the platform to deliver business websites, e-commerce solutions and develop custom features for our WordPress clients. Today, WordPress powers over 35% of all websites on the internet. It’s an open-source content management system (CMS) that’s highly flexible, customisable, and easy to use. If you’re thinking of building a website, WordPress should be your go-to choice. In this post, we’ll explore why.

WordPress.org is free, open-source software. There’s no subscription costs or software costs to use it, meaning you can download WordPress and begin building your site straight away. The content you create remains your own and it is not stuck inside a ‘paid’ ecosystem unlike some other solutions. You can also customise a WordPress site to your heart’s content.

WordPress is search engine friendly. It’s designed to use clean code that search engines can read easily. It also has built-in features, such as permalinks, easy tagging, and categories that help search engines understand the structure of your site and the content it contains.

1. Easy to use content management system

One of the key decision factors leading businesses to choose a WordPress website is the platform’s user-friendly content management system. Recognised as a leading platform for web design, SEO, development, and e-commerce, WordPress provides an intuitive and streamlined content editing experience. With WordPress, even non-technical users can easily add pages, posts, images, and videos without requiring programming or coding expertise, through visual page builders or the built-in block-based editor Gutenberg. This is achieved through a back-end editor, which simplifies website content management, making it accessible to individuals without prior web development experience.

2. Mobile friendly and responsive design

Mobile friendly and responsive design is a crucial aspect of any website in today’s digital age. With the majority of internet users accessing websites on their mobile devices, having a mobile-friendly website is no longer optional. Fortunately, WordPress offers web design and development options that cater to mobile users, resulting in a seamless user experience across all devices. With a mobile responsive design, you can ensure that your website is accessible to all users, from the smallest mobile device to the largest desktop monitor. Additionally, a mobile-responsive WordPress website can improve your SEO rankings, as search engines now prioritise mobile-friendly websites in their search results. Having a mobile-friendly WordPress website is essential for eCommerce businesses, as it can help drive sales and attract more customers.

3. Highly secure and reliable

When it comes to web design, development, SEO, and eCommerce, security and reliability are two of the most critical factors to consider. Luckily, WordPress has both of these bases covered. WordPress is highly secure by design, and it is regularly updated to ensure its security protocols remain ahead of the curve. With frequent software patches and improvements, we can confidently say that WordPress is one of the most secure content management systems (CMS) out there. Additionally, the reliability of WordPress is unparalleled. With its vast and active developer community, any issues that arise are quickly resolved, and its intuitive interface ensures that even non-technical users can manage their website with ease. Choosing WordPress for your website development needs will give you an unrivalled level of security and reliability that will benefit your business in the long run.

A professional web development team can handle all your WordPress updates, ensuring your site remains secure and running smoothly. This includes updating your e-commerce platform, so that transactions remain secure and your customers can always enjoy a smooth checkout process. Beyond the technical aspects, regular updates can also help with SEO efforts by ensuring website content is fresh and relevant. Overall, choosing a WordPress website provides a powerful and flexible platform to build your online presence. However, it’s critical to have ongoing support from a web development team to ensure your site stays secure, functional, and optimised for success.

4. Extensibility with plugins and themes

One of the main reasons to choose a WordPress website is the unparalleled level of extensibility it provides through plugins and themes. WordPress is one of the most versatile web design platforms available, making it an excellent choice for businesses and individuals looking to create a website that meets their specific needs. With a diverse range of SEO, development, and ecommerce tools (such as WooCommerce) available as well, WordPress has made it possible for even the smallest businesses to take control of their online presence. The addition of plugins and themes allows businesses to modify and extend their existing websites. For many businesses, this flexibility can be instrumental in building and maintaining a successful online presence.

Will you choose a WordPress website?

In conclusion, WordPress offers an exceptional set of benefits that make it an attractive choice for businesses of all sizes. With its ease of use, customisability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, it’s no wonder that WordPress powers so much of the web’s content. Whether you’re a small business owner, content creator, or developer, WordPress has something to offer everyone. By choosing WordPress, you can create a professional website that is scalable, secure, and optimised for the search engines. So, why choose anything else?

Get in touch with us if you’re looking to create a new, WordPress website for your business, or redesign and refresh your current WordPress site. We’re Bath’s WordPress web design and development experts, who’ve worked with high profile clients from Corgi to Hachette. See for yourself what our clients think of our WordPress services below.

Florian Finot - Hachette“Very professional relation. We trust Design for Digital to run our projects in the best way and know we can count on them to deal with any situation and to always warn us of any issue.”

Florian Finot, Hachette

Google Ranking HTTPS Websites Higher in Search

by Design for Digital

You may have heard on the news over the last year plenty of articles about cyber security and keeping your details safe online. Well Google has been pushing for years that it wants all websites to become secure using encryption regardless of whether they take payment details or not, in a bid to keep web visitors safe. Google has also admitted that HTTPS (the secure version of HTTP) is now a ranking factor in it’s own search algorithm, so it’s not something you should ignore. This is a big change and one of the biggest since Google’s algorithm change to rank responsive websites higher in search for mobile visitors.

Aside from the search ranking effects for HTTPS, Google will soon display a ‘site not secure’ message or similar if it deems your website needs an SSL certificate (the service that encrypts this data) but doesn’t have one in place. This could put off potential visitors, affect your brand and harm sales.

So, how can you get ahead in Google’s new secure website search update? Well, first you need to consider costs. Dedicated SSL certificates are usually more expensive than domains, need renewing every year and without technical knowledge, can be difficult to setup with your domain and hosting if you’re not familiar with the process.

Let’s look at the benefits of a dedicated SSL certificate first. Having a secure website gives your users:

  • Peace of mind when browsing your website that they’re connection is safe.
  • Payments or personal details will be encrypted between their computer and your server using 2048-bit key encryption.
  • Browsers will display a ‘padlock’ symbol and sometimes a ‘Secure’ message with a green highlight in the address bar, giving extra peace of mind.
  • As the website owner, you will also get varying levels of insurance covering you for interception by the SSL certificate provider. Usually this starts with a minimum of $10,000 and of course the higher the payout the more you pay each year.

On the flip side, there are some important points to note about SSL certificates:

  • Having an SSL certificate on your website doesn’t necessarily secure it from hackers. Don’t forget to update your website frequently and adhere to all security protocols when handling sensitive data.
  • Your website will load ever so slightly slower. Encryption usually takes longer to process and therefore page speeds will be slightly longer. The added security will help improve peace of mind for users though.
  • You will need to change all URLs on your website to use the new HTTPS URL, otherwise you will get browser ‘mixed content’ warnings and your browser and possibly search engines won’t give an improved ranking.
  • Renew the SSL certificate every year or risk losing your secure website status. Forgetting to do so could also mean your website may not load correctly. Each certificate is uniquely generated and therefore needs to be reinstalled on renewal.

If setting up an SSL certificate on your website all sounds too complex, we can help you set it up and provide hosting as well as domain registration. We provide dedicated SSL security certificates and will ensure they’re fully configured with you website. We’ll even check for old URLs so you don’t get ‘mixed content’ errors in the browser. Contact us today if you need an SSL certificate or would like some general web design advice.