The digital world is changing, fast.
Only today I had a meeting that will potentially change our entire web strategy for the year.
In fact, I am starting to wonder whether the concept of a ‘digital strategy’ is redundant. At the present rate of technological development, how far can anyone hope to gaze into the future and predict trends – especially when you are based in Yorkshire, a place not renowned for trend setting!
So much emphasis is being placed on the fast developing digital landscape it often seems hard to keep pace. Game changing devices are constantly bursting onto the market that mean agencies like Punch need to reconsider what they had previously thought was best practice.
How will your website react to each new device? Which device is your target audience most likely to use? How do you stay ahead of this curve?
One development that has evolved with our needs over time is WordPress, a blog tool, publishing platform and CMS that we have built many websites on over time.
At the most simple level, WordPress allows people to create a simple blog site. However, WordPress can also be used to create totally bespoke, responsive, visually stunning, user friendly website design that encourages client ownership.
Our own site was created on WordPress, this allowed us to make a clear judgement, from a client point of view. For me, the main benefits of WordPress websites are the fact it is in tune with Google in terms of SEO. It allows us to structure the website to be highly visible, but also really easy to use.
We have only had really good feedback on any website we have created on WordPress. If you are considering how to structure your next website here are some points that might help you out.
1. Accessibility.
You can make changes or add content to your website from anywhere in the world
2. Speed.
As a client, you dont have to wait days for a design team to make changes to your website – so you can give your visitors the most current information possible.
3. Consistency.
Once a design has been established, the WordPress CMS makes sure any subsequent pages you create all follow the same rules, which makes for a less confusing user experience!
4. Time Management.
You can schedule your posts to go-live on your site whenever you want. We recently did a seasonal promotion for a client, all pre-set and just waited for it to go-live while we were on holiday.
5. Social Media.
You can easily link any social media platform to your website, so any news or blog post can populate Twitter, Facebook and Linked-In etc. This allows you to make far more out of the content you create, in a fraction of the time.
6. New Media Integration.
It is really easy to add a variety of media such as video or audio content, this is increasingly important for the visibility of your website.
7. Multi-user Control.
Bigger companies can allow an entire marketing department access to the site, or assign different levels of access to different people.
8. No HTML or FTP Needed.
WordPress is self-contained. This means you dont need to mess around with any third party software to make updates of any nature.
OK, so there are loads of different ways to build websites, and if you sit in front of 10 web companies they will tell you 10 different ways that are definitely ‘best practice’. We use a variety of platforms to build our sites, depending on the project of course.
But, if you are after a website that will grow with your needs, offers you all the access you need and can be updated quickly and remotely then speak to us about how our WordPress websites can work for you.