Thinking of building a website for your business? There are a lot of amazing content management systems out there, but none as popular as WordPress who are currently powering over 32% of the web – almost a third of all websites are WordPress. There are numerous reasons for the popularity of this CMS: the ease of use, the amazing plugin selection, the freebies; so, if you are thinking of building a website, WordPress should definitely be one of your first choices.
In this blog post, I’m going to share 3 useful tips and tricks to help you create an amazing WordPress website for your business.
Choose the right hosting provider for your WordPress website
One of the first things you need to do when building your website is to choose a hosting provider. This is incredibly important and something that you should definitely research thoroughly before making a decision: your hosting will impact your website’s overall performance and even your businesses’ results. Your website hosting will influence several important factors, such as the speed of your website (a slow speed can a huge negative influence over your website conversions and sales), your search engine ranking and the security of your website (and consequently, your business as well).
Take the time to really research and compare hosting providers for your website in order to make sure that you’re choosing the best WordPress hosting providers for your specific needs.
Picking a great WordPress theme
One of the best things about WordPress is the amount of themes you have available to customize your website completely to your liking. Ideally, you should take the time to research different themes and consider purchasing a premium theme as they tend to have extra features, as well as support.
Here are a few tips to help you pick the best WordPress theme for your needs:
- Take some time to think of what kinds of features you want and then head over to WordPress themes to filter out themes based on the features you need:
- Choose a theme that is responsive so that your website works well on other devices as well (smartphones, tablets etc.) – make sure to test the theme on multiple devices to see if it works as it should and shows the relevant information you want your visitors to see
- Don’t overcomplicate things: go for a simple theme that has the features and looks you need; if you go for a theme that is too complex, too crowded or with too many features, it could potentially affect your website’s performance
- Check which plugins work with the theme you choose: there are some must-have themes that you really need to get (for example SEO plugins like Yoast SEO and W3 Total Cache or anti-spam plugins like Akismet) so you should check that your chosen theme definitely works with the plugins you most need or want to get
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If you’re not very experienced with WordPress or with building websites, it’s worth investing in a premium theme. As I mentioned earlier, you don’t just get premium features with these themes but you also get support which can come in very handy when you’re building your website as well as later on, as you’re managing it.
How to choose the right WordPress plugins
There are so many different types of WordPress plugins that it’s very easy to become overwhelmed with your choices. The temptation to download and install dozens of plugins comes easily; but, in order to build a great website, you need to choose only a few select plugins as otherwise, it can slow down your website considerably which in turn can have a negative impact on your website traffic, time spent on site and your conversions and sales.
You can explore all the available plugins here or you can browse them directly on your WordPress website by clicking on Plugins and then on Add New:
As I mentioned earlier, there are several plugins that you simply must have in your arsenal; you can browse through the most popular WordPress plugins here to give you an idea of what types of plugins you should get for your specific needs as well as see what the most popular and downloaded plugins are (which is particularly useful because there are so many reviews that you can use to make your decisions).
As for how many plugins are too many plugins, that number depends on several factors so it’s quite different on a case by case basis; if you have powerful cloud hosting, you could potentially install and run dozens of plugins. If, on the other hand, you’re sharing hosting, for example, even just a few plugins can affect your website’s performance.
Conclusion
A great website can make a huge difference to your businesses’ success. For one, it’s one of the first places where people will come into contact with your business so it’s essential to make a great first impression. Plus, it’s how you get people to keep coming back to you, how you convince them to join your subscriber list, how you get them to convert and buy from you.
Fortunately, WordPress is a very easy to use platform, even for beginners. Follow these tips to help you get started and build a beautiful and high-converting website for your business.
