Building websites on WordPress is not easy
A non-tech business owner starting out with WordPress DIY approach will realize the many different steps involved in setting up a WordPress website. Domain, hosting, pointing the domain to the hosting, installing WordPress (this is usually automated), installing and configuring the theme and choosing the right plugins can all add up to a significant amount of time.
The paradox of choice is a real problem in WordPress. There are 10’s of thousands of themes and more than 50,000 plugins on the official repository. How do you pick the right one for your specific needs?
When you get all of this figured out, you need to spend the time to actually build a website. If it’s a resume one-pager, then using a template with a few modifications will do the job. However, if you plan to build a fully functioning business website or an online store with customizations, you reach a point where your lack of coding language becomes too much of an obstacle to climb.
It is at this point that you reach out for professional help. We get a lot of such email on a weekly basis from entrepreneurs struggling to complete their half-built websites because the theme they purchased isn’t playing nice with the plugins they are using.
WordPress websites are not always cheap to build
WordPress software is free, but not the website building costs. There is a common misconception that because WordPress is open-source and that there are many free themes and plugins available, it must be cheap to build a website even if you hire someone to do it.
There is some truth to that. The barrier to entry in WordPress for freelancers and developers is low, and hence the large WordPress community. You will find a wide spectrum of pricing with WordPress service providers with freelancers on platforms like Fiverr promising to develop websites for as low as $100.
At the same time, you have WordPress VIP agencies charging $100,000 for WordPress based solutions.
At Pixelmattic, our average project ticket size starts at $10,000 and goes upwards of that. So why does it cost so much to build a WordPress website? This is a question we often get asked by new businesses who don’t have the budget.
You’re not just building a website. If a website is all you need, you would do-it-yourself or hire a freelancer and complete it. On the other hand, if you are looking to build a brand asset that generates leads for your business, then many aspects of planning needs to go into it.
For example, at Pixelmattic, we start with Brand Strategy, which involves Positioning exercises, creating Brand Stories and building a unique Brand Voice & Tone. This is followed by a Digital Marketing Strategy, in which the website plays a critical role.
A project of this scope involves digital strategists, designers, copywriters and a WordPress developer of course. As you can imagine, WordPress development is not the only work involved here, in fact, it probably adds up to no more than 30-35% of the project cost.
So what you are really paying for is guidance and advice on digital strategy, execution of the strategy. The website happens to be a part of this exercise.
It’s a one-time investment. It’s not!
Build and forget is the mantra most website owners follow. Treating the website project as a one-time investment is a recipe for disaster.
It could be argued that an incremental approach to building a website is far more effective for a website than a 3-4 month project or even longer in some cases.
A lot ends up changing by the end of a long project and you are left with a website which may not reflect your current business priorities. Rework and scrapping the entire website is not unheard off in such scenarios.
Buying a car or building a house doesn’t end with your investment. There are running and operational costs involved. The same applies to a website. Hosting and domain are the obvious ones that you pay monthly or annually.
A website once developed doesn’t operate in a vacuum. There is constant change – hosting server gets updated, newer versions of PHP are released. WordPress has a major update every quarter, themes and plugins are updated frequently. A website is like a living organism or a machine with many moving parts. If you don’t service it or do regular checkups, it can break down.
One update for any of the components can make it incompatible with the rest. This can have either a minor impact like a button or page not displaying as it should. But in the worst case scenario, which happens more often than you expect, the website crashes or does not load at all.
This worst case scenario is acceptable if yours is a personal blog or a resume website with not much traffic. But if you’re relying on the website for growing your business, it can be catastrophic.
WordPress websites are not SEO-friendly by default
The way content is structured and URLs are created by default in WordPress goes some distance in helping create a search engine friendly website. You add some excellent SEO plugins into the mix and set it up correctly, a lot can be done without ever having to dig into code to optimize your website.
However, to expect a WordPress website to automatically rank well because “WordPress is SEO friendly” is like buying a treadmill and expecting to automatically lose weight. You need to do the work. WordPress makes it easy though and better than most content platforms out there.
WordPress is slow
WordPress runs on PHP. PHP is no longer fancied by developers today. Devs always like to work on the latest programming languages and the many Javascript based options today are the flavour of the town. And they happen to be faster and better than PHP in many ways. That’s just the nature of technology and evolution.
However, PHP still powers 80% of the internet and remains a popular option. With the latest versions of PHP, the issues of performance have been addressed significantly. This has greatly benefited WordPress too.
WordPress still remains slow when compared to the newer javascript based frameworks because of how it is architected. But does this mean you should not use WordPress at all? While it is fashionable in some circles to diss on WordPress as an outdated, legacy platform that performs poorly when it comes to website speed, this is a lopsided view.
For a large set of use cases, WordPress still remains the goto option for the flexibility it offers.
A WordPress website can load fast, but it requires some effort to optimize it. And this is where an experienced professional or a WordPress service provider can help. It also helps if you’re on a reliable and fast hosting provider.
The ease of getting started with WordPress and adding plugins to build a website to your liking quickly also acts to the detriment of WordPress when it comes to performance. A bloated theme and a large number of plugins added to the website can quickly add up to high load times.
At Pixelmattic, we start lean and build or add only what is necessary for a clients’ websites. Striking a balance between quickly adding features via plugins and performance is something that needs WordPress experience and web expertise.
You will get hacked
A Windows PC from the early 2000’s or before had a higher chance of getting hacked than a Mac. It wasn’t necessarily because Windows had more flaws. It was the result of its popularity. From a hackers point of view, it made better sense to target Windows PCs because there were so many of them.
WordPress gets bad press for security issues for the same reason. WordPress core, the main CMS software very rarely has vulnerabilities that are exploited, and these are usually patched immediately. Poor user choices with plugins and hosting introduce vulnerabilities in the system that make them sitting ducks for hackers.
WordPress can and should do a better job of monitoring plugins and themes that have security vulnerabilities. It is a challenging problem since there are so many. WordPress’ biggest advantage is also its disadvantage.
As a website owner, you can save yourself the pain of cleaning up a hacked website by getting a reputed website host who specializes in WordPress. And then follow some best practices like adding only the best plugins or keeping your website always updated.
Should you use WordPress?
The answer is it depends.
If you want a website with just static content that acts as a resume or billboard for your business, go with Wix, Weebly or Squarespace.
If you want to build a large and complex website that gets millions of views in a day with as many transactions, go custom and build with the latest tech.
If the content is an important element of your digital strategy and business, WordPress CMS is still the king by a distance.
