While WordPress is easy to use and attractive to sole proprietors and small businesses, one should not ignore the value of this framework for small to medium sized businesses (SMEs). A well-conceived and well-designed WordPress site offers an SME the ability to maintain content and update the site using its own staff and resources, thereby saving expense and time. Customers will enjoy fresh content and the business can satisfy its changing requirements and needs.
Many SME businesses ignore the potential of WordPress because they believe that the solution is designed primarily for blogs and small community sites. But, with the help of an expert design, development and configuration team, the many features and tools offered by the WordPress community can result in a swift and dependable design and implementation and deliver a solution that is easy for the organization to maintain and use.
Selecting the right WordPress consultant can add significant value and will ensure that your requirements planning is thorough and comprehensive and that your site is flexible and easy to update.
In order to decide whether WordPress is right for your organization, you will want to analyze y our needs, by answering some basic questions.
- Why is the new site necessary, e.g., user volume, incompetent current site or solution, etc?
- What are the challenges in building a new site, e.g., data and solution integration, or complex features?
- How will the new site benefit the organization, e.g., improve customer service, increase revenue?
- Will this site be used to extend the reach of branding, corporate image and marketing initiatives?
- Who will update the content on this site and how often?
- Does the organization have IT resources and skills to implement, upgrade and maintain the site?
- Is the budget and schedule suitable for a WordPress implementation?
- What unique enterprise, user and customer needs must be satisfied by this solution, e.g., industry regulations, security, customer demands, and vertical industry considerations?
- Are there other systems, databases and data repositories that must be integrated with this solution?
As the organization reaches an understanding of its needs, it can better plan for the tasks and skills it will need to outsource and how its team will work with IT consultants both during and after the implementation.
The benefits of WordPress are numerous and should not be discounted for SMEs. WordPress provides a solid foundation on which the enterprise can build and its extensive developer community offers templates, themes, widgets and other tools that can be leveraged to deliver an affordable solution that is easy for the enterprise to update and upgrade and will allow for flexibility and future growth. The wise SME will select an WordPress expert team to assist in requirements planning, site and application design and development and leverage this solid WordPress foundation to create, sustain and update content and provide a fresh, well-branded site for its customers. This approach allows the organization to achieve a swift, affordable, dependable solution that can be easily leveraged for a competitive advantage.
