WHY WE DON'T USE WORDPRESS
May 22, 2015
Wordpress is a bit like Ikea. If you want a low-cost bed, table or wardrobe for your home, Ikea is the answer. We love Ikea! However, if you own a luxury hotel, you will probably be looking for something more a little more bespoke. Ikea is fantastic for home use, but from a professional point of view, it may not be the way to go.
While we do not want to criticise WordPress, we often get asked why we don’t use it for our websites. WordPress is a fantastic tool that allows people to set up a website with ease, and accounts for 23% of all websites on the internet. But sometimes the “simplest” or the “easiest” option is not the right one, especially for a business website.
Here are just a few of the reasons why we don’t use WordPress:
SECURITY
The security of our clients’ websites is extremely important to us, and we do all we can to keep them safe online. There is no doubting that WordPress is popular – there are millions of websites under their name. But with millions of websites all using one system, this makes WordPress an obvious target for hackers.
For this reason, we think it is a bit risky to trust WordPress for our clients. That is not to say that our custom designed websites are not vulnerable to hackers, because all websites on the public domain are to some extent. However, the hacker would have to target your website specifically, which is less of an incentive than millions of websites at once! We also have much more control over fixing issues with security, whereas with a WordPress site you have to wait until they fix the security holes.
NOT FUTURE PROOF
When we started out here at The Creation Lab, we had a website that worked very well for us. It was simple, professional, and showed off our work very well. However, after a few years we felt that it was time for a change, largely because we had changed so much as a company! We also needed our new website to be responsive, so that it could be viewed easily across all devices.
We know as well as anyone that websites are not completely future proof, but unfortunately with WordPress, there are so many updates that the lovely website you first put together will not be as good in a year’s time. If a customised theme is used for the website, they have a risk of breaking if you install the latest WordPress updates. What’s more, the admin area is changing so often that once you have familiarised yourself with it, WordPress will have changed it!
CONFORMING TO THEMES
If you have a very tight budget, and you are looking for a website quickly, the WordPress route is very appealing. You can choose from a wide range of themes, and within a short space of time you can have a website up and running.
However, these themes are available for everyone to download and use for their websites, meaning that the best ones have been used thousands of times. Although these can be customised to an extent, starting from scratch with the design means that it is much easier to achieve exactly what you want.
LOSE OUT ON SEO
When our new websites are born and we release them into the jungle that is the internet, we want them to be a brave lion or a sleek leopard, not an uroplatus gecko. (Haven’t heard of it? Exactly.) We want our clients’ websites to be seen, admired and talked about, not blending in to the background like our gecko friend.
Unfortunately, WordPress does not give you a good start in the way of Search Engine Optimisation. While you can find quite a few good SEO plugins, they will never give you the same amount of control as you have with a bespoke website.
POOR COMPATIBILITY
If you browse the internet on multiple devices, you will have noticed that some websites do not work on a particular browser or device. It can be very frustrating when you are looking for information quickly! Here at The Creation Lab we take great care in making sure our websites are responsive to all browsers and devices, and we have a system in place to make sure that no site goes live without us checking that first. However, this would be much more difficult if we used WordPress, as we would have less control over how the site would look on different browsers.
SLOW SITE SPEED
Nearly half of people browsing on the internet will leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Google also lists site speed as an important factor to the way it ranks websites. That means that both from a user perspective and a search engine perspective, a slow website is going to slow your business down!
So, why is WordPress so bad for this? Simply put, WordPress has to deal with a wide range of website styles, meaning that every template contains features that may never be used. The result is that under your website’s bonnet is a lot of code that is slowing the website down.
However, with a custom designed website, the developer only codes what is needed.
Take a look and see for yourself…
WordPress vs. Custom Designed
As you can see, a WordPress website is much bulkier, which makes it slower.
TO SUM UP...
Your website is usually the first impression your customers will receive about your business – that’s why we want to make sure it’s a fantastic one!
If you have any more questions about why we don’t use WordPress or other template building software, we’d be happy to answer any questions!