Forget Slowing Down: It’s Time to Accelerate Your Digital Business

As we all grapple with uncertainty and adapt to a changed marketplace, one thing remains clear: your business can’t afford to slow down. 

Restaurants are moving quickly to establish online ordering and delivery services, gyms and yoga studios are racing to post online at-home workouts, and conferences and events that haven’t been canceled are going completely virtual. All of these businesses have one common thread: digital has emerged as their lifeline.

As they proceed, adopting WordPress, which powers 35% of the Internet, will be an indispensable part of this strategy, allowing these organizations to go to market faster, and at a lower cost when they need it most. 

At WP Engine, we help our customers move quickly with WordPress every day, and we’re here to support and help you spin up whatever site you need, fast, as you work to reimagine your business in a more digital way.  

Why WordPress? 

WordPress is a great choice for you right now, first and foremost because it’s free from the upfront licensing costs that come with other website software. You can easily spin up a WordPress site right now, and while acquiring a domain name and hosting it online will incur some cost, doing it all with a fully managed WordPress hosting provider is similar in price to popular site builders like Wix and Squarespace, but with way more available functionality. WordPress is simply a marketing powerhouse for your website.

Don’t just take our word for it—WordPress adoption is soaring: It now powers more than 35% of the Internet, and it’s a favorite for many reasons.

Below are a few pro tips to help you get your business up and running on WordPress. 

Pro Tip #1: Use a world-class theme to get your site off the ground. 

WordPress themes can help you stand out from the crowd and get started quickly on the website of your dreams. Even better, when you sign up for a WP Engine account, you get free access to 36 themes including the world’s most popular theme framework, Genesis. These one-click-setup themes offer far more versatility than the templates site builders provide, and they can help you get up and running in seconds. Then, you can easily add all the content your heart desires to a beautifully-designed website that fits your digital vision. 

Get your website started with just a few clicks using all Genesis-built StudioPress themes.

Pro Tip #2: Performance matters.

Given the surge we’ve seen to all things online, you’ve likely got A LOT of traffic coming to your site(s). Maybe your site is dragging, which means lost visitors and lost revenue. At WP Engine, there’s a long list of performance metrics that are top of mind for every site hosted on our platform, but typically, two of the most important factors are speed and security. 

Speed. 

Today, audiences want everything fast. So fast that it’s a generally accepted best practice for your site to load in two seconds or less—anything after that and you’re losing business. In fact, speed affects every business metric you care about, from the ability of potential customers to find your business online (SEO) to lost revenue (even with a mere one-second delay). 

At WP Engine, all of our customers typically see an increase in site performance when moving from one of the site builders over to our platform, and we’re one of the few providers to offer next-generation hardware that will dramatically speed up your site if you’re interested in that type of plan.   

Do you want to find out what shape your site is in? Try our WordPress Speed Test to see how it currently measures up.   

Security.

While speed is important, it won’t matter much without a solid security plan in place. If your website isn’t secure, there’s a flood of bad actors just waiting to break in. 

WordPress’ core software is regularly audited by thousands of security experts, making it highly secure. That said, there are a number of steps you can take to secure your WordPress site even further.  

For the world’s most secure and scalable sites on WordPress today, WP Engine provides Global Edge Security, a high-performance, advanced security solution with a web application firewall (WAF) and DDoS protection to detect, mitigate, and block threats before they affect your site. It also caches your content across Cloudflare’s global network, for security that bolsters performance. Learn more about WP Engine’s Global Edge Security here.

Pro Tip #3: Tap plugins to turbocharge your online business.

Plugins are a great resource for WordPress site owners because they allow you to add functionality, meaning grow your business, without getting into the nitty-gritty of writing code. WordPress is also home to the most extensive, growing list of plugins built by thousands of developers, offering an endless stream of features for your site. From SEO, to interactive forms, to live chat, and eCommerce, the WordPress plugin ecosystem has you covered. 

Many businesses are trying to figure out how to add online shopping to their sites. WooCommerce is one of the most popular plugins for adding eCommerce functionality to WordPress sites. If you’ve already got a WordPress site, all you need to do is install their plugin and follow the setup prompts to begin selling. WP Engine can help you fine-tune your eCommerce site for optimal performance—from improving conversions to your online store to providing one-tap payments for your buyers.

With WP Engine, what is usually one of the biggest headaches and complaints about WordPress—meaning keeping all these wonderful plugins updated without breaking your site—is a snap. With Smart Plugin Manager, we’ve automated the safe update of your plugins so you can get back to business. 

Read more about Smart Plugin Manager here, and for a curated list of some of the most innovative solutions for building WordPress digital experiences, please visit our Solution Center.

Accelerate Your Business with WP Engine. 

WP Engine offers the above (and much more) as part of any available plan. Our industry-leading Digital Experience Platform for WordPress powers more of the top 200,000 sites on the Internet today than any other CMS. In fact, WP Engine powers more than 1.1 million websites globally, which means 5% of the web visits a site on our platform every single day. 

Our award-winning experts act as an extension of your business and are passionate about delivering a world-class experience to drive your success. When you need help, support means everything, and WP Engine’s award-winning support team has you covered, 24/7/365.   

Get started today and accelerate your business online