Looking at many small business web sites now, I am not surprised to discover that many are using WordPress as their content management system (CMS). From being a blogging platform, WordPress has grown to be one of the most used systems for publishing personal blogs, blogazines, and corporate web sites. And here’s why:

• WordPress is free. You can download the software from WordPress.com and install it on your server for no charge at all. If you don’t have any server, you can have your business domain hosted on WordPress.org for free. This is unlike other CMS in the market like Typepad where you need to pay a certain fee every month just to use their platform. Similarly, there are thousands of free WordPress themes that can be used to create a small business web site.  No wonder then that cash-strapped start-up companies employ WordPress to build their web sites.
• WordPress is user friendly. Aside from the fact that WordPress can be installed into your server with just a click of the mouse, it’s super easy to customize it from the backend. Even the technologically-challenged will find it easy to explore the dashboard and perform such changes as changing themes, installing new plugins, and adding media, links, posts and pages. For small businessmen, this easy-to-use interface means that they don’t have to pay webmasters monthly maintenance fees to make small changes to the site as the need arises.
• WordPress is flexible. Because of the open source nature of WordPress, new plugins and themes are being released every month that extend the capabilities of a small business web site. For example, a web site can be turned into a membership site with the use of a single plugin such as S2 Membership. Should you change your mind and decide that you want an online store, you can utilize an e-commerce plugin and theme and you will have a an operational online store in a matter of hours.  You can even combine these different features in your site. That’s how flexible and powerful WordPress is.
• WordPress is search engine friendly.  Unlike flash-based web sites, corporate sites built using WP are easier to optimize for search engine spiders. There are more than a handful of plugins that can be installed in your WP site to make it easy for users to add meta data into their site, pages, and posts. Using meta data can help your site’s search engine rankings and online visibility.

Conclusion

If you are still using other CMS for your web site, consider building your small business web site on WordPress. For those who still have flash-based web sites, read our article on why you should dump your flash web site so you’ll have a better idea on why you should shift to WordPress soon.