WordPress has come a long way from its humble beginning as a blogging platform back in 2003. Since then, it has grown astronomically and now 38% of all websites are built using WordPress. You read that right. More bloggers, large enterprise and Fortune 500 companies use WordPress to power their sites than all of the other options combined.
KIJO specialises in WordPress web design in Birmingham. We have been building bespoke WordPress websites for years and understand first-hand the scope it provides. If you have more questions on how a WordPress website can deliver for enterprise customers, KIJO can help.
A successful website must always be agile. Factors outside of your control can influence consumer behaviour and trends that you need to respond to for your business to thrive. If you want to implement a new marketing campaign, you’ll want to incorporate it on your website. Visual style trends change all the time, adapting your design is necessary to keep your site looking modern and relevant. Adding eCommerce and membership capabilities to your website taps into new sources of revenue. All of this requires flexibility in your website design.
Using WordPress, you can easily adapt and expand your site without knowing a single line of code. WordPress is open-source, so developers have been able to create thousands of plugins and themes that easily extend the functionality of WordPress websites.
Flexible web design is essential for the development of a responsive, up-to-date website. In this article, we explain how WordPress design works and the endless options it gives for customisation.
Theme design dictates the look and feel of your website. The theme you use impacts every element of your visual design, from the colour scheme to the fonts and page layout. Finding the right one is, therefore, essential to achieve the perfect look and first impression.
There are almost 8,000 themes to choose from in the WordPress Theme Directory, so you can find the perfect one to fit your brand’s aesthetic. Theme templates are great if you have a limited budget. They are easy to install and the simple structure allows you to make changes in-house.
If you know exactly how you would like your site to look or your brand has a specific visual style, custom-built themes offer more flexibility and opportunity for personalisation. They are easy to install with the right software and expertise. Page builders are WordPress plugins that enable you to drag and drop elements and fully customise your site- without knowing any code. Everything from images, headers, social media buttons and more, can be easily edited in this way. You have full control over your site and aren’t restricted to the design of a template.
There are lots of page builders available. The three most popular options are Divi, Beaver Builder and Elementor. At KIJO we have been working on web design in Birmingham for years and have learnt a few things about what to look for in a page builder. We specialise in Elementor Pro, which we found offers the best features and most freedom for designers.
Elementor is a live, front-end page builder, meaning that you can see the final result as you edit. There’s no second-guessing whilst writing code on the backend. Every individual element can be fully customised, so there’s no limit to what we can create
We’ve already mentioned how page builders extend the possibilities of your website’s visual design. Page builders themselves are plugins. A plugin is a software program that adds additional functionality to your WordPress website. The WordPress plugin repository has over 57,000 plugins available to download. Infinite combinations of plugins can be used to broaden the scope of your site.
Whether you need to add a contact form to your site, improve your search engine rankings, or create an online store, it can all be achieved with plugins. We’ll show you some frequent plugin uses to give you a better idea of the features and functionality they can provide.
eCommerce is the easiest way to make money from your website. If you want to create an eCommerce site from scratch or begin selling products on your existing platform, plugins make it possible. Add the WooCommerce plugin to any WordPress site to begin selling online in minutes. It offers secure payments, customisable shipping options and more, all for free.
You can customise your eCommerce store even further with additional plugins and extensions. The AR Quick Look plugin for WooCommerce even lets your customers view 3D images of your products. If you’re selling digital goods such as an online course or eBook, there are specialised plugins for this. Try Easy Digital Downloads to get you started.
From scheduling appointments to optimising your website for search engines, without specialised plugins, these jobs would require personal expertise. Plugins that automate complex processes save your business time and money.
Rather than employing an SEO expert, use Google XML Sitemaps to automatically map out your site and make it easier for Google to index and rank your pages. The Yoast SEO plugin goes even further and helps optimise your content to improve organic rankings. Follow the simple steps to improve your content and avoid the need for expensive outside expertise.
If your business requires appointments to be scheduled, take away the need for in-person contact and enable 24-hour bookings with the use of StartBooking. Add your teams working hours, connect to Google calendars and even get in-built payment options. Customers no longer need to wait on the end of a busy phone line but can book appointments easily at any time. With automated bookings your free up staff resources to focus on more important areas of growing your business.
There are plugins to keep you connected with your customers, either through social media, email newsletters or via online chat. Monarch brings all the power of social media sharing to your site without impacting page loading speeds. Connect your site to over 35 social networks, customise sharing buttons to suit your design, then drag and drop them on to your page.
WordPress is an open-source system; the source code it is built from is free and publicly available. This means that anyone can use, change, and redistribute the code. The themes and plugins that add additional functionality to your website are all made possible because WordPress’s code is public. This has kept WordPress relevant, up to date and innovative for almost two decades.
What it means for enterprise customers, is if page builders and plugins can’t achieve exactly what you would like, custom-built programmes can be created instead. You can mix and match between cheaper, already available plugins and bespoke elements created by agency developers. Open source allows you to enjoy the best of both and invest only where you need to.
WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS) that enables businesses to create, edit, organise and publish their content on the web. Built primarily as a blogging platform in 2003, WordPress has always maintained excellent content management features.
With WordPress, even if you’re not a developer, you maintain complete control of your content. You can edit and add content yourself, all through your browser and without any knowledge of code. While it’s always sensible to use an agency for substantial changes, you can easily do small jobs such as uploading content in-house. Page permalinks, content comments and trackbacks, tags and categories can all be controlled by you.
WordPress is the most popular website building platform in the world and with good reason. Creating the perfect visual design for your website is easy to achieve with theme templates. Custom themes can be built by specialist WordPress web agencies and deliver the ultimate in design flexibility and customisation. Plugins dramatically increase the functionality of your website in whatever direction you need. From eCommerce to social media management and search engine optimisation, there’s a WordPress plugin to solve any problem.
As it is open-source, WordPress provides the perfect long-term solution. Developers continually reimagine the code to create and release new features, extensions and updates.
Your business can enjoy the benefits of all of these customisable options without relinquishing control of your site. You own all of the code and files for your website and can easily edit content and design in your browser.
If you want to know more about WordPress web design in Birmingham, contact the team at KIJO. We specialise in building bespoke websites for enterprise customers and would relish the chance to maximise the potential of WordPress for you.
