Got a WordPress Website? Thinking about launching your new WordPress Website?

WordPress is by far the most commonly used website platform today accounting for over 75 million websites. As a free platform this does create the opportunity for some very interesting, less than user friendly website designs, but also some elaborate and beautiful digital experiences.

Hiring the services of an experienced WordPress website developer is the starting point to getting a great website. Yes, your cousin can build you a website. And yes, you can get a cheap website from WIX or YOLA and do it yourself, but is everything there behind the scenes? What about the things you have not thought about; vital components that actually make the website work. It may ‘look’ good, but does it work properly? Will you need anything to keep it up there? (think glider vs jet plane). On the outside, your new website may look smashing but without some important factors it will get lost online.

Here are some features when using WordPress you cannot go without:

1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO); even a simple one page website is just a pretty page without a solid keyword strategy. Using one of the many SEO plugins available for WordPress will ensure that your content has a) context b) clear headings c) relative links and images. Here are some useful plugins: YOAST, All in One SEO Pack
2. ReCaptcha; Google offers an awesome FREE resource to stop spammers filling out your forms. Most WordPress contact form plugins will integrate with ReCaptcha.
3. Social Sharing; AddThis offers an amazing tool to allow users to share your content on multiple platforms. Take a look at these free website tools.
4. Google Analytics; So, you eventually launched and got loads of traffic to your new website! Now to find out who they were, why they came and where they came from (among many other interesting metrics). TRacking website visitors is not built in and Google Analytics is the preferred way to track visits online today. R.I.P website visit counters.
5. SPEED; A clunky, slow website will deter visitors faster than you read this article. WP Super Cache, built by th emakers of WordPress themselves offer a free, easy to use caching plugin that saves copies of your web pages to serve to customers, reducing loads time by over half in some cases.

There you have it ;-) A few of our preferred WordPress plugins that add features to WordPress that you cannot go without. Bar the most important one; a good website developer. Contact EditMe today for expert WordPress theme and plugin advice, development and digital marketing.