By Jim Lundy
(Aragon Research) – A lot of people have been complaining about WordPress lately and today, it is one of the dominant platforms for building a website. However, building a website on Wordpress isn’t as easy as one might think. Today, the world is a different place and users are demanding more. It is all about user experience, particularly on mobile.
Before I say more about WordPress, I want you to know that I’ll be discussing all of these issues at our webinar—Why a Modern Intranet and Extranet Will Help You Win Over Your Workforce, Partners and Customers on April 20th—so sign up today.
WordPress Is Fading: Security Can Be Overwhelming
The issue for WordPress is twofold: security and mobility. For security, most web hosting companies only provide the standard WordPress install. They don’t tell the business person that there are tools that will help them with security. The reality is that today, security is a massive issue for a WordPress hosted site. While there are hosting providers like WPEngine that solve this, there are also some excellent plugins that will stop the bad guys cold.
If you want to know the one that is proven and even uses AI to stop the hackers, I’m saving that for my upcoming webinar next week.
WordPress and Mobility
Mobility is what users want and while WordPress does provide a standard responsive theme, that theme is not good enough for a business website. The challenge then becomes finding a theme—or building one—that is mobile-ready. But even after you take these steps, automatic updates from WordPress can break your theme. I haven’t even mentioned a native mobile app for a website, which newer startups, such as CentricMinds, offer.
WordPress and eCommerce
The killer feature for a modern website is being able to sell online—by having built-in ecommerce capabilities. WordPress doesn’t offer that, but they have partners that do. The issue is that making those plugins, such as WooCommerce work, it is very time consuming. It means tons of set-up and if you have built a store using WordPress, you know what I mean.
Plan Now for the Future
The bottom line is that newer website platforms are going way beyond what the original promise of WordPress was. Our take is that it is time to start evaluating other options and the new emerging startups offer answers to the problems mentioned above.
You need a plan and next week, I will share one with you—on April 20th, where we will discuss the requirements of a modern website and much more. Note that even if you can’t make it, if you sign up, you will get the webinar recording sent to you.