You Don’t Need a WordPress Site.
There. I said it.
Don’t get me wrong, WordPress is an incredible platform and it suits a huge variety of businesses. But, I’m over “WordPress Guru’s” telling every single start-up business that they should DIY build their site on WordPress.
If you’re a technological wizard and you know what a cPanel is and how to change DNS servers over. Awesome, build your WordPress site – you’ll love it! (I know what these are, and I still struggle with WordPress though)
Or, if you’re paying someone to build your site for you – it is an incredible platform.
However, for the start-up entrepreneur who has never built a website before, please don’t think that WordPress is the only DIY solution!
There are so many better platforms that you can use, that are infinitely easier to set up, will cause you less stress, and you’re less likely to screw it all up.
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If you’re going to DIY a simple ‘Home, About Us, Services, Blog, Contact Us’ site – Squarespace is the one for you. It’s relatively simple to use, the templates are stunning and easy to navigate and they manage all the hosting for you.
They even do a lot of the SEO ranking work for you, provided that you fill in enough details.
I built my website on Squarespace, and I also build low-cost websites on Squarespace for clients. They are relatively easy to create, but more importantly, they are easy to manage, maintain and update.
The reason I use Squarespace instead of WordPress is so I can offer cheap, but effective websites for those starting out who don’t want to do the build themselves.
If you want to DIY an eCommerce site, Shopify is where you want to be. Incredibly easy to set up, and very difficult to make it look bad.
There is a reason templated websites work – you have to work really hard to make it look bad.
So, why do I have such a vendetta against WordPress? To be honest, I don’t. I’ve seen some amazing work done on WordPress, it’s an incredibly versatile platform and with the addition of plugins it’s probably the most powerful website system out there.
My issue stems from people telling start-up businesses that it’s the ONLY way to build a new website. I’ve had clients come to me after spending weeks trying to set up their WordPress site – facing major technological issues.
I’ve had dozens of people almost giving up their dream of starting their own business because “if I can’t even set up my website, how do I expect to make it in business!”
The easy answer is, of course, to have someone else set up the website for you. In the early phases – that isn’t always possible – budgets can be tight after all.
So the next time someone asks the question, “I need to DIY my website, where should I start” – can we please ask a few more questions and offer more than just WordPress as a response?
