#WeBuildWednesdays Episode 25: Why Choose WordPress?

Benefits of Choosing WordPress as Your CMS

What’s going on, guys!? Mike Norris here again for another episode of #WeBuildWednesdays. Today I’m going to talk to you about why WordPress is the best CMS but, before I do that, I’m going to introduce you to Lauren, our COO.

Now you’re probably wondering why I chose the COO to talk to you about WordPress because that seems like a weird topic. But we actually have a pretty good reason.

Lauren: I actually started at Youtech as a Graphic Designer and I was a Creative Director for about three years before moving into this job so a lot of what I did was WordPress design and development. So yeah, I’m excited to talk about it.

Mike: One of the first things I think we should probably talk about is that WordPress kind of has a built-in blog!

Lauren: Yeah, WordPress actually started off as a blog. That’s what it was for. A lot of bloggers would set up their account and it was a super easy admin panel that you would log into and really all you could do is blog posts. Since then it’s kind of evolved into something bigger than that and you can actually build out full websites now. So the built-in blog feature is really great.

Mike: Do you think we should touch more on the admin panel? Because I think we’ve seen it evolve so much and now it’s so robust that I think there’s a lot more that people can do with it.

Lauren: That’s fine, yeah. I mean there’s a ton that people can do and let’s be honest: WordPress is not the only CMS out there. But WordPress is absolutely the easiest admin panel for someone who’s not a developer to use. One thing that we really like is that after we build a WordPress website, we can actually provide our clients with login credentials so they can go in, they can make easy text image edits, even change out buttons, without really having to know any code at all. So it’s actually really beneficial post-launch of the project, as well, for all of our clients.

Mike: And I can use it so it’s definitely incredible.

What about e-commerce, though? I know people think of Shopify, Magento… I know Magento is really complicated but what are your thoughts on that?

Lauren: Yeah, Shopify and Magento are great e-commerce choices but the difference with them is they are really focused on the store aspect. That’s what they’re there for. What’s really cool about WordPress is that you can build out a full website with just one small page for a shop if you’re selling something simple like gift cards, for example, by using the WooCommerce plugin. So it’s a lot easier to build off the site as a whole and have the small shopping component as opposed to a Shopify where everything is really product-focused.

Mike: Sure, yeah, and then you’re kind of trying to wedge in all your other pages. What about integrations? Because I know we use a lot of different plugins here, we use a lot of different integrations… can you touch on some of that stuff?

Lauren: Yeah, I mean the most common thing that we use integrations for here is tracking leads. We have clients where we’ve set up maybe a landing page or even something as simple as a contact form and they want to be able to see those leads all the way through. Our solution for that is a plugin called Gravity Forms and it works really well with WordPress. It has a really robust offering and it integrates with essentially everything that you would need, like MailChimp and HubSpot. Those are really the big ones that we’re integrating with, so as soon as someone fills out that form, they’re being filtered into MailChimp into your mailing list or in your HubSpot CRM.

Mike: That’s perfect. One more thing I want to touch on just from the marketing side would be CallRail. It’s the system that we use to track calls, so we switch out a dynamic number in place of your phone number and then every call that comes through there, we have the ability to record it. We can see whether it came from paid search, organic search, direct traffic, social media, whatever it is. So yeah, CallRail is another big one here.

I do have one last bonus question for Lauren while she’s here, since this is the first time she’s been on the show. For those who don’t know, Lauren has an ampersand tattooed on her. She loves ampersands and we used to be called Youtech & Associates with a nice little ampersand in there. We’ve since removed that ampersand. How do you feel about that?

Lauren: Yes, you know, about that, to be able to lose the associates part of the name, I say it’s worth it. Youtech Agency has a much better ring to it for a URL. I’ll live. I’ll get through it.

Mike: This way, people can spell our email address, which is good.

Lauren: I’d say it was a step up.

Mike: Okay, well, thank you!

Lauren: Thank you!

Mike: Happy Wednesday, guys.

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