Traditionally a blogging platform, WordPress is now highly popular for all types of sites, from portfolio showcases to B2B lead capture to ecommerce sales.
It’s easy to see the attraction – after all, it’s easy to get started on WordPress. The platform is highly customizable and flexible, it integrates with pretty much everything, and it’s built for content marketing.
But just because WordPress is good for many business websites, doesn’t mean it’s the ideal solution for every website. Sometimes websites need a platform that is faster, has more features ready out of the box, or includes dedicated site and hosting support.
Here are three specific scenarios where you’d probably be better off not using WordPress to build a website.
1. You’re With an Agency Seeking to Rapidly Scale Up
WordPress is designed for individuals running a single site – not for agencies developing and managing multiple sites all day long. Web design agencies can potentially end up building, designing, deploying, and managing ongoing maintenance for dozens of websites, and if your business is growing, then all the more reason to consolidate into one dashboard that’s made for streamlining processes across projects.
In that situation, you need a specialized platform like Duda that’s designed to make life more efficient for web design agencies. You want to speed up site creation by creating and saving customized templates and page design elements. Collaboration tools like in-platform chat and task assignment, user permission controls to manage employee access, and assistance in importing client content are all key to maximizing efficiency as a web design agency. Duda brings you all of these capabilities.
What’s more, when you’re a professional building and maintaining numerous websites, you don’t want to have to start from scratch every time. WordPress provides you with a platform for your website, but you have to bring in everything else: business apps, firewalls, themes, marketing tools – it all needs to be created and configured through plugins and integrations, and in different environments every time. Duda brings everything but the kitchen sink.
You get a full web development package that includes hosting, SSL certificates, personalization features, PWAs, and more. And when you create and store your own custom web elements, you can save even more time and effort.
2. You’re Looking to Sell Digital Products from a Personal Website
WordPress can handle just about everything – but that doesn’t always mean it’s simple to do so. If you intend to sell digital products from your personal brand’s web presence, WordPress could demand too much work to be a worthwhile choice.
To build and sell your digital products, you’ll have to find the right plugins. They are probably out there somewhere, but you have to hunt them down. And we’re talking quite a lot of plugins: payment gateways, membership management, marketing automation, lead generation, different kinds of gated and non-gated content, analytics, business tools, etc.
If you want to sell online courses, which are very lucrative digital products, you’ll need even more plugins to structure your lessons and to manage different payment schedules. Instead of WordPress, turn to Kajabi as an all-in-one solution designed specifically for building and managing sites that sell digital products. Kajabi has tools built in for marketing, payment collection, building and selling online courses, analytics, and all the rest, so you can get started straight away without searching for plugins and integrations.
Bear in mind that every plugin has to integrate smoothly not just with WordPress and your chosen theme, but with every other plugin you’re using too. The more plugins you need, the higher the likelihood that one of them will disagree with another and your site will crash, demanding more time to fix it and then even more time to find a different plugin that does the same job. You’ll have to divert more time to managing your site, instead of developing content and running marketing campaigns. Kajabi makes it easy to set up your website with all the tools you need, so you won’t have to invest time troubleshooting.
3. You’re Starting a Dropshipping eCommerce Business
When you run a dropshipping business, you need a platform that is fast and reliable. Your customers want to make their purchases and move on, and with so many alternatives they’re not willing to tolerate slow-loading pages. Unfortunately, WordPress websites have a bad tendency to develop bloated code, which makes them run slow.
Your dropshipping site needs specific plugins for sourcing products, along with powerful apps for delivery and logistics, accounting, marketing, and more. It all adds up to a lot of plugins, not to mention WordPress updates, that could clash with each other to bring down your site, and a down site means a lot of lost sales. You’ll need to hire your own tech support to respond quickly to site issues because WordPress doesn’t offer dedicated support.
It’s better to build your site on Shopify and connect it with Oberlo to source products, rather than using WordPress and a patchwork of plugins. What’s more, dropshipping businesses benefit greatly from a platform that enables you to build test sites fast.
This way you can run agile proof-of-concept experiments before you invest heavily in a new product line. The Shopify-Oberlo combo is built for dropshipping, so you’ll get a fast, optimized platform that’s fully equipped with all the dropshipping tools you need, as well as dedicated site support.
Choose the Right Platform for Your Business Website
While WordPress is great for many business sites, it’s not ideal for every site. If you’re a web design agency, building a site for digital products, or starting a dropshipping business, using WordPress will hold you back from growing your business and cause you unnecessary extra work.
Make the smart choice for your business website from the start by using the right platform for your needs and save yourself a lot of time and aggravation.
About The Author:
Sheza Gary has been a Project Strategist since 2009 and also involved in the launching of startups and tech companies in New York for over 5 years. She has keen interest in writing her own experiences about business plans and upcoming business supporting technologies. She loves public speaking.
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