Switching to WordPress

In a move that went completely unnoticed by practically every one of our users - just as we had hoped - FilesDIRECT switched the front end of our site to the WordPress content platform. If you’ve spent any time as a blogger or webmaster, you’ve heard of WordPress, and even though it’s well known, we didn’t make the switch because of it’s popularity.

We like to think of ourselves as trend-setters, after all.  ;)

We actually had 3 major reasons for the change: marketing/SEO, versatility and time management. We’ll delve into each of these reasons below:

Marketing / SEO

This was my main reason for pushing for the switch to WordPress.

The easy WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) visual editor allows me to write, edit and post content directly to the site. I no longer need to write content and then wait for one of the technical staff to have a free moment before it can be posted online: I just log in, do my work, and voila!

Additionally, WordPress itself is very well-designed in terms of SEO: you can easily edit tags, titles, etc. The ease of use (especially for someone who isn’t technically adept) means it’s easy to post content - either on this blog or on the site itself - and search engines love frequent updates and unique content! You can even pick your own URLs, which makes it much easier to keyword-optimize the site.

WordPress also has plugins - many of which are designed for use in SEO or social media - which give us additional functionality like social sharing, keyword optimization, etc.

Versatility

As I mentioned in the last section, WordPress has thousands of plugins to choose from, all of which give you additional functionality for your site with just a few mouse clicks. It’s easy to create pages or blog posts, move them to different parts of the site (for whatever reason), upload or change images (including changing their alt tags), and much more. If we ever feel like totally changing the look of the site, for instance, all we need to do is change the template. While some of it needs the deft touch of a professional web designer (I’m not allowed anywhere near the home page, for instance), most of it is simple enough for me to handle.

Time Management

This was probably the main selling point for our developers when we discussed the switch to WordPress, as it meant that I wouldn’t need to constantly pester them to make even the smallest change to the site. Not only that, but they can concentrate their efforts on the “back end” of the site - focus on bug fixes, upgrades to the service and generally improving our users’ experience, without needing to worry about affecting the public-facing half of the site. Having the “front end” of the site on WordPress means the Marketing team and the Development team can each focus on their core competencies and reduce back-and-forth by a large degree.

Nobody likes unnecessary meetings!

So THAT’S why WordPress

As you can see, we’ve found the switch to WordPress to have been a very beneficial business decision, and it has helped us save time, money and effort. We’d love to hear about your experiences with WordPress (good and not so good) in the comments below - did you switch to WordPress from a different CMS? Did you create your site on it from the get-go? What’s worked? What hasn’t? Let us know!
 
 
 
 
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