CookieDev
Why WordPress is a bad idea for you MVP?
5 min to read
No matter how brilliant your idea is, you never know whether it will work or not unless you test it with users. Creating a full-featured product is not only expensive and time-consuming, but it's also risky. That's why the idea of creating a minimum viable product looks like a wise decision if you want to build something product customers will love. There are a lot of ways of doing it, and it is up to you which one to choose. One of the most popular ways to do this now is running your MVP on a ready-made solution, like WordPress, and today I've gathered the top thoughts on why it's a BAD idea.
1. Design
WordPress offers a great variety of website designs called Themes. There is a front-end styling of your website, which is installed into your WordPress account. It contains a color scheme, widget locations, page templates (layouts), fonts, and other stylistic details. Generally, free WordPress web development themes offer a simple design and limited functionality, and premium themes include more features together with stylish design.
The weak aspect of such themes is that you download the theme and it can easily turn out that it does not suit your brand identity as it is supposed to. And later, when you decide to customize the bought theme, you have to hire a developer, even if you tried to avoid it in the very beginning. If the chosen theme contains too many functions that you will not use, be prepared to get an extremely slow website. On top of that, you miss out on a chance to highlight your brand uniqueness and increase your brand awareness. Chances are that the same theme can be used by several companies and your website will look quite basic.
2. Functionality
Extending the functionality of your WP website is very easy – you just need to install plugins. The market is full of different plugins that can add any needed function to your website. But don't be so happy and relieved, installing numbers of them on your page. The sad truth is that plugins slow down your website, and the more plugins you install, the slower your website will work. Also, plugins can come into collision and stop working together. That's why sometimes you need to spend time and money on customizing each plugin in order to fit your website.
3. Insecurity and vulnerability to hacking
As WordPress is the most used CMS platform, it regularly becomes the target of hackers' and spammers' attacks. Even downloading reliable security plugins will not surely protect you from security hacks and malicious activities. If your website is actually a web platform with thousands of users, security is of vital importance, because any vulnerability can affect the users and bring a negative impact on your credibility. Considering the security issues, developing a web portal based on WP is quite risky.
4. SEO
WordPress positions itself to be an SEO-friendly platform but in fact, almost every open-source CMS is SEO-friendly. Though it has to automatically optimize your website and improve your search ranks, WordPress gives you only the basic optimization. WordPress is also known for messing with the sitemap due to its category system and special tagging that creates duplicates. To fix all these issues you need to learn SEO or hire a specialist who will manage all the optimization. It can be better to invest in a custom website from a financial perspective. Yes, it can seem expensive, but you will save a lot of money in the future.
5. Slow page speed
For a number of reasons, WordPress remains a very slow platform. The page load speed is pulled down with additional processes running because of heavyweight plugins, crowded databases, and a frustrating codebase. At the same time, page load speed is crucial for both user experience and SEO ranking. Modern users hate slow websites and aren't ready to wait more than 2 seconds for a web page to load. Meanwhile, Google and other search engines rank websites according to their speed.
6. Hard to scale
There are, of course, large WordPress sites that handle a great amount of traffic, but making this possible requires a lot of effort and money. In particular, you'll need to hire a WordPress expert who can set up the environment and do the rest of the work, so it may even cost you almost as much as the custom web development would.
On top of that, there is no guarantee that if you invest in scalable WordPress website development, you'll receive the results that satisfy your needs no matter what. In addition, the user experience that such a website delivers may not be so great either. So if you envision your business growing, WordPress is definitely not the best choice of technology for website development.
7. It is not cost-effective
Although many people tend to use WordPress for their business websites and consider it quite easy and understandable, WordPress is, in fact, loosely designed and this triggers many breaks of plugins and technology in general. What does that mean? Only that you will have to spend an additional $300 or even up to $3,000 on developers services. The specialist will perform various checks to make sure that everything on your website works well and that all plugins function without any compatibility issues. Such an approach is absolutely ineffective for small businesses which need to invest more in their brand awareness and not into constant tech updates to keep their website running smoothly.
This covers the complete process of building your MVP on such a ready-made solution like WordPress, developing it from an idea to a full-fledged, pitch-ready product. That is totally our piece of cake - book a strategy session to learn more.
https://calendly.com/cookiedev/30-min
No matter how brilliant your idea is, you never know whether it will work or not unless you test it with users. Creating a full-featured product is not only expensive and time-consuming, but it's also risky. That's why the idea of creating a minimum viable product looks like a wise decision if you want to build something product customers will love. There are a lot of ways of doing it, and it is up to you which one to choose. One of the most popular ways to do this now is running your MVP on a ready-made solution, like WordPress, and today I've gathered the top thoughts on why it's a BAD idea.
1. Design
WordPress offers a great variety of website designs called Themes. There is a front-end styling of your website, which is installed into your WordPress account. It contains a color scheme, widget locations, page templates (layouts), fonts, and other stylistic details. Generally, free WordPress web development themes offer a simple design and limited functionality, and premium themes include more features together with stylish design.
The weak aspect of such themes is that you download the theme and it can easily turn out that it does not suit your brand identity as it is supposed to. And later, when you decide to customize the bought theme, you have to hire a developer, even if you tried to avoid it in the very beginning. If the chosen theme contains too many functions that you will not use, be prepared to get an extremely slow website. On top of that, you miss out on a chance to highlight your brand uniqueness and increase your brand awareness. Chances are that the same theme can be used by several companies and your website will look quite basic.
2. Functionality
Extending the functionality of your WP website is very easy – you just need to install plugins. The market is full of different plugins that can add any needed function to your website. But don't be so happy and relieved, installing numbers of them on your page. The sad truth is that plugins slow down your website, and the more plugins you install, the slower your website will work. Also, plugins can come into collision and stop working together. That's why sometimes you need to spend time and money on customizing each plugin in order to fit your website.
3. Insecurity and vulnerability to hacking
As WordPress is the most used CMS platform, it regularly becomes the target of hackers' and spammers' attacks. Even downloading reliable security plugins will not surely protect you from security hacks and malicious activities. If your website is actually a web platform with thousands of users, security is of vital importance, because any vulnerability can affect the users and bring a negative impact on your credibility. Considering the security issues, developing a web portal based on WP is quite risky.
4. SEO
WordPress positions itself to be an SEO-friendly platform but in fact, almost every open-source CMS is SEO-friendly. Though it has to automatically optimize your website and improve your search ranks, WordPress gives you only the basic optimization. WordPress is also known for messing with the sitemap due to its category system and special tagging that creates duplicates. To fix all these issues you need to learn SEO or hire a specialist who will manage all the optimization. It can be better to invest in a custom website from a financial perspective. Yes, it can seem expensive, but you will save a lot of money in the future.
5. Slow page speed
For a number of reasons, WordPress remains a very slow platform. The page load speed is pulled down with additional processes running because of heavyweight plugins, crowded databases, and a frustrating codebase. At the same time, page load speed is crucial for both user experience and SEO ranking. Modern users hate slow websites and aren't ready to wait more than 2 seconds for a web page to load. Meanwhile, Google and other search engines rank websites according to their speed.
6. Hard to scale
There are, of course, large WordPress sites that handle a great amount of traffic, but making this possible requires a lot of effort and money. In particular, you'll need to hire a WordPress expert who can set up the environment and do the rest of the work, so it may even cost you almost as much as the custom web development would.
On top of that, there is no guarantee that if you invest in scalable WordPress website development, you'll receive the results that satisfy your needs no matter what. In addition, the user experience that such a website delivers may not be so great either. So if you envision your business growing, WordPress is definitely not the best choice of technology for website development.
7. It is not cost-effective
Although many people tend to use WordPress for their business websites and consider it quite easy and understandable, WordPress is, in fact, loosely designed and this triggers many breaks of plugins and technology in general. What does that mean? Only that you will have to spend an additional $300 or even up to $3,000 on developers services. The specialist will perform various checks to make sure that everything on your website works well and that all plugins function without any compatibility issues. Such an approach is absolutely ineffective for small businesses which need to invest more in their brand awareness and not into constant tech updates to keep their website running smoothly.
This covers the complete process of building your MVP on such a ready-made solution like WordPress, developing it from an idea to a full-fledged, pitch-ready product. That is totally our piece of cake - book a strategy session to learn more.
https://calendly.com/cookiedev/30-min
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