WordPress Review: 4 Areas Where WordPress Sites Fall Short A Bottom-up Analytical Analysis

Richard Feehan

12/17/2014 17:42 PM
Total Views: 54854



WordPress is the original website building tool. Started as a simple solution for bloggers, WordPress has grown to be a giant, powering some of the world's most complex websites. Countless developers build websites in WordPress, which offers hundreds of plug-ins that add features to your website. 


While there is no dedicated support offered, there is a large community of developers available to answer questions. WordPress is ideal for developers because of its powerful abilities to build powerful websites, but can be a complicated and overwhelming solution for the average small business owner.


Similarly, Ocoos is a website builder tool that helps small business owners solve common sales and marketing problems by providing simple-to-use website solutions. Using Ocoos, you'll be able to create websites that integrate sales solutions and other core business offerings, and a basic website can be created in as little as 20 minutes. Once built, the site is optimized for use across devices and browsers. Ocoos's concierge service is helpful and will build the website for the customer. 


Small business owners who choose to build a WordPress-built website may find themselves strapped with a time-consuming, complicated project and need to hire a developer for help -- which will be expensive. 


Automated platforms like Ocoos, Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace offer an off-the-shelf, ready-made solution, whereas WordPress requires a lot of handiwork and money to complete a complicated website. Though a web developer can likely build more complex solutions using WordPress, the costs of startup and maintenance will be significant.


Take a look at a detailed analysis of WordPress and Ocoos:


To evaluate website building products that integrate sales solutions, like WordPress and Ocoos, you have to understand how a website is supposed to “work.” 


A website should succeed at these four things:

  1. Communicate basic business information: a company's services, location and contact information, and business hours, as well as relevant background information -- and be visible to search engines, such as Google.

  2. Implement customer engagement: ecommerce tools for selling products and services, appointment schedulers, forms to capture customer information, analytics tools, and visible partner connections to build trust.

  3. Front-end of business operations: The site should offer a central place for obtaining client contact information and sales information as well as a front-end database to drive future marketing.

  4. Services, support and cost: the site should integrate additional business services, as well as necessary support at a fair price.

Homepage Development


WordPress: WordPress's basic templates are fairly good and often mobile responsive, though many templates have a similar look and feel. Still, it's possible to personalize your website to a great degree, which can create problems -- like a site not optimized for mobile devices -- for business owners with minimal background in website design or coding. Upgrading your template or site is left in your hands.


WordPress provides support for tools like newsletters, calendars, and maps through third-party applications, or apps, which have to be maintained and updated by you.


Ocoos: Using Ocoos, business owners can build a website using a core design that is optimized for search engines, and which takes user behaviors into consideration. Tools which drive website traffic like maps, calendars, and newsletters are supported. 


You'll also have the ability to publish both public web pages as well as pages that are private, and visible via passport control so you can selectively publish content to certain customers. Ocoos even has a B2B recommendation engine that gives small business owners the chance to work together, crowdsourcing marketing efforts and building trust. 


Customer Engagement


WordPress: When it comes to ecommerce, the customer must obtain external merchant account services, and the ability to offer discounts, manage and schedule appointments, and message are only available through third-party vendor apps. Complex transactions and complicated documents features are not available.


Ocoos: Ocoos offers a built-in merchant account capability and Square and PayPal access, as well as ecommerce support. It's easy to integrate complex transactions, like allowing customers to pay initial deposits, request a quote, and pay when a job is complete. 


A discount manager creates discount codes, and an online appointment scheduler books everything from appointments to classes, and can be synced to personal calendars, limited to a certain number of people, and published to online calendars.


A customer relationship management system (CRM) integrates and tracks customer interactions outside of email. Business owners who require PDF documentation capability, receipt creation, and the ability to publish complex information will find it with Ocoos.


Business Operations


WordPress: All aspects of business operations, like website hosting, client management, sales tracking, and flexible security are available through third-party apps.


Ocoos: With Ocoos, you'll have direct website hosting, CRM, and sales tracking support. Ocoos also offers flexible security which allows business owners to give marketing and analysis capability to team members without giving up sensitive financial data.


Support and Cost


Wordpress: Only blog support is available through WordPress. While WordPress's basic web building service and templates are free, if you need to hire a developer to integrate more complex solutions into your website, it could be quite expensive. 


Ocoos: Telephone and online support are available to Ocoos customers. Ocoos offers its services at $25 per month. Additionally, Ocoos offers a helpful concierge service which will build your website for you, with the customizations you require. This service comes at an additional cost, based on the level of customization, and generally involves a higher maintenance fee.


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