Ever the noble servant to bedroom bloggers all over the world, WordPress has now successfully transitioned to become a serious option for small businesses.
More than half (52%) of the UK businesses that took part in new research from domain name registrar 34SP revealed that they use WordPress to power their website.
Those placing their faith in WordPress could also be lumped into the small creative business category, with 94% that use WordPress hailing from firms of 1-50 employees in the web design, marketing, advertising, technology, IT and healthcare industries.
Simplicity
Daniel Forster, 34SP’s technical director, explained how it was WordPress’s attributes and functionality that made it stand out in the content management system market – an area with plenty of competition.
“Despite its origins as a blogging tool, WordPress has now evolved into a trusted CMS for businesses. The very fact it was designed as a blogging tool means that’s its simple to upload content and add pages, plus it can be managed from any computer.”
The research backed up Forster’s own opinion as the number one reason for selecting WordPress was its ease of use. Being able to manage a site from any computer and the CMS’s extended functionality were also important to users.
Expansion options
Although WordPress does come with some useful features out of the box, Forster feels that businesses also like the sheer number of options when it comes to expandability.
“The huge range of plugins available now means that business functions such as contact forms and PayPal integration mean that WordPress is really appealing for businesses and in particular smaller business owners who may have limited technical experience.
Developers were unanimous in singling out WordPress SEO by Yoast as their go-to add-on, with 21% of 34SP’s developer respondents stating that it was their favourite plugin.