Question: “When I have a perfectly functional HTML website, why would I want to switch to WordPress?”
Answer: Just because it’s good doesn’t mean it can’t get better.
WordPress opens a world of faster, friendlier web development and site management opportunities, the kinds of which are quite difficult and time consuming to recreate in HTML.
In this post, we’ll take a look at what WordPress has to offer (over plain-ol’ HTML sites) to an average site-owner/admin.
Note: We are WordPress developers, so of course we are partial to the platform. Regardless, I attempted to write this post without bias and prejudice. The following are 4 solid, irrefutable reasons why websites built on WordPress are better than their simple-HTML counterparts
1. Easy to Manage
The first thing you notice about WordPress is its user-friendliness.
WordPress is famous for its handy admin interface. Compared to HTML, there’s practically no additional syntax, tags, or terminology that you’re required to learn in order to perform the most basic tasks and publish content on your website.
Complete content creation and management: from the awesome rich-text WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor to posting, formatting, categorizing, tagging, marketing and more, everything is accomplished in scant-few minutes.
Website management: Overall management of the website is done through an easy to use admin area, where you can also assign roles and capabilities to your employees/ site-users for extra efficiency without any fuss.
It doesn’t end there either. WordPress improves the admin experience with each update it rolls out.
Now compare that to content creation and posting process on an HTML website. Tags, tags, and more tags?
That’s what I’m talking about.
2. Easy to Customize
For developers and general users alike, this is one feature that makes eyes pop.
Developer friendly: WordPress provides tools for faster, smoother web development. The RESTful API (integrates with other services like a framework), templates hierarchy and loop (theme development), taxonomy and metadata (content hierarchy for clean navigation and UX), the built-in PHP debugging constants, the coding standards (maintained by review committees)and so much more help make a developer’s job easier.
User friendly: Oh this list would be practically endless. Thanks to countless free and premium themes and plugins available on WordPress and marketplaces, users are two steps away (install + activate) from changing the entire layouts and designs, adding functionalities like a pro, and more.
Compare this with website development/customization on an HTML website, and you’ll see how much time and effort WordPress saves.
3. Search Engine Optimization
WordPress websites have a distinct advantage in SEO, even without additional plugins or tools.
There are permalinks settings, self contained taxonomies, clean templates and more. Combine that with wholesome SEO-suites like WordPress SEO by Yoast or All-in-one SEO pack, performance optimization tools like caching plugins (W3 Total Cache), image compressors (EWWW Image Optimizer) …
Throw in a beautifully responsive and interactive theme and you are all set for online success without hassle. With HTML to WP conversion, you can simply get a development company to create a theme based on HTML website’s design.
4. Flexibility and Scalability
WordPress is one of the few platforms that can keep pace with rapid growth and change.
This is illustrated by one look at the showcase, which is practically brimming with websites from every major vertical imaginable: business, eCommerce, community, blog (of course), News organizations, portfolios, celebrities, education, and so on…
The purpose of this point isn’t to say that creating amazing websites like BBC America, Walt Disney, Bata, Sony Music, etc. is impossible on HTML. I’m sure skilled developers can work wonders with plain hyper-text. But those wonders can be accomplished faster and more easily with WordPress.
Key Takeaway
Eventually, for the same resources, time, and skill: your developers can create more amazing things with WordPress than left alone with HTML. That’s the only real reason/benefit of HTML to WP conversion.
