A website is often one of the most important assets of a small business. It helps attract customers, communicates to them what services you offer, provides contact details, allows requesting a quote, and even purchasing products online.
WordPress is a great tool that lets you create a website with little or no technical knowledge. With thousands of themes and plugins, anyone can build a simple website by themselves. But as soon as more complex requirements emerge, the question of whether to hire a WordPress developer emerges.
Should your small business hire a WordPress developer? It depends on your requirements, technical needs, time, budget, and other factors.
What Does a WordPress Developer Do?
A WordPress developer is someone who takes care of the technical aspects of WordPress websites.
Depending on the requirements, a WordPress developer can do:
- WordPress installation and configuration
- Theme customization
- Custom WordPress themes
- Plugin development
- Custom functionality
- WooCommerce
- Third-party integrations
- Performance optimization
- Security improvements
- Responsive design
- Technical SEO
- Troubleshooting
- Website maintenance
A WordPress developer can help you build a website tailored to your specific requirements instead of a generic website built with a blogging theme and some plugins.
When You Might Not Need a WordPress Developer
Most small businesses are better off not hiring a WordPress developer initially.
If you just need a simple website with a few pages, you can build it yourself with WordPress. For a small business, a simple landing page, an about page, a contact form, and maybe a blog can be enough.
There are also website builders that let you build a small business website without WordPress. They also usually have fewer options and customization options for a reason.
However, you should also consider the time and technical complexity of maintaining such a website. Your time is money, and if you need to spend a lot of time learning WordPress, troubleshooting, maintaining plugins, optimizing, and securing the website, it might not be worth it. This is especially true for complex requirements, it can be more cost-effective to hire a WordPress developer to maintain the website for you.
1. You Want a Professional Custom Design
A website is the public face of your business. Having a website built with a generic theme and a few plugins might be good enough for many small businesses. But if you want to stand out from the crowd and invest more in the appearance of your website, you will need a WordPress developer.
A WordPress developer can customize the entire website frontend to match your brand and requirements. They can tailor headers, footers, navigation, typography, buttons, forms, services pages, landing pages, mobile view, and virtually everything else.
Customized design is especially important for businesses with highly competitive markets. It lets you stand out from the competition and offer a consistently branded experience to your customers.
2. You Need Custom Functionality
A reason many small businesses hire a WordPress developer is to get access to custom functionality. WordPress plugins can add many features to a website, but sometimes they are not enough. That is when custom WordPress development is needed.
Custom WordPress developers can add:
- Calculators
- Booking systems
- Membership systems
- Custom search
- Customer dashboards
- Job boards
- Custom forms
- Business directories
- Custom reporting
- And many other features
A WordPress developer can assess your requirements and recommend which functionality can be added with plugins or would benefit from being custom-coded.
3. You Want an eCommerce Website
If you are a small business looking to sell your products or services online, you might think about using WordPress with WooCommerce. It is a great option that offers many features out of the box.
But as your catalog and customer base grow, an online store becomes more complex. Managing it, securing customer data, and providing a seamless buying experience requires someone with technical skills.
A WordPress developer can take care of:
- Product configuration
- Variations
- Payment gateways
- Shipping
- Taxes
- Checkout
- Customer accounts
- Inventory
- Order management
- WooCommerce customization
- And many other features
An experienced developer can help you configure an online store that will scale with your business, add custom features, and offer a pleasant buying experience to your customers.
4. Your Website Is Slow
How fast your website loads can make or break its success. Unfortunately, WordPress websites hosted on shared hosting can be slow, especially as they grow in size and complexity.
A WordPress developer can identify the cause of the slowness and fix it. Common causes include:
- Hosting
- Images
- Plugins
- Themes
- CSS
- JavaScript
- Database
- Caching
- Third-party scripts
They can recommend the best optimization practices and fix any underlying issues that make the website slow.
5. Your Website Has Technical Problems
Sometimes a small business website stops working for unknown reasons. Technical problems can occur for various reasons and can be challenging for someone without technical skills to diagnose and resolve.
Some of the most common technical problems are:
- White screen issues
- Plugin conflicts
- Broken layout
- Failed updates
- PHP errors
- Database issues
- Broken forms
- Login issues
- Compatibility issues
- And more
If you are not technically inclined, randomly searching online for a solution can lead to additional issues. In such cases, it is best to leave technical problems to a WordPress developer.
6. You Want to Secure Your Website
Website security is one of the most important aspects of running a business online.
A WordPress developer can help you secure your WordPress website against threats like brute-force attacks, malware, unauthorized access attempts, and more. They can recommend the best practices for WordPress security, including:
- User permissions
- Authentication
- SSL
- Updates
- Backups
- Monitoring
- Malware scanning
- Secure plugin selection
- And more
They can implement essential WordPress security measures, monitor the website for vulnerabilities, set up backups and more. Of course, no WordPress website is 100% secure, but a professional can make it much harder for potential attackers to find a way in.
7. You Want an SEO Friendly Website
WordPress itself is reasonably SEO-friendly, but a lot depends on your theme, plugins, and overall technical configuration. A WordPress developer can help you configure an SEO-friendly website that will rank well in Google. Some of the most important aspects of technical SEO are:
- Clean URLs
- Responsive design
- Proper heading tags
- Page speed
- XML sitemaps
- Structured data
- Image optimization
- Internal linking structure
- And many others
A WordPress developer can configure most of the technical aspects of SEO. However, a separate SEO campaign will be required to research and target the right keywords and improve the website’s content, authority, and overall presence in the eyes of Google.
8. You Don’t Have Time to Learn WordPress
This is probably one of the most important reasons small businesses hire WordPress developers.
A WordPress website requires technical know-how and can be time-consuming to maintain. You need to constantly update WordPress core, themes, and plugins, keep the database clean, optimize the website, secure it against threats, and much more. This can be a lot for a busy small business owner to handle on a day-to-day basis.
That is why a lot of people hire WordPress developers to host and maintain their websites for them. A developer can take care of everything without a lot of input from you.
9. You Need Website Maintenance
WordPress core updates, theme and plugin updates, security improvements, bug fixes, and performance tweaks are all examples of website maintenance.
Maintaining a WordPress website is important for its stability, performance, and security. The WordPress maintenance process usually includes:
- WordPress core updates
- Theme and plugin updates
- Backups
- Security scanning
- Performance tuning
- Bug fixing
- Technical support
- And more
There are different levels of website maintenance. Some developers offer full maintenance, including technical support, and some only handle updates and backups. You can always discuss your requirements with a WordPress developer.
10. You Want the Website to Grow With You
Sometimes, small businesses build a simple static website and outgrow it over time. As the business grows, more and more pages and features are needed.
At some point, a small business might require an entire redesign with additional services and features. Examples include adding more service pages, landing pages for marketing campaigns, online payments, an eCommerce store, customer accounts, booking system, CRM, marketing automation, analytics, and more. Redesigning such a website can be very time-consuming and challenging.
A professional WordPress developer can help you scale your business with a growing website.
How Much Does It Cost to Hire a WordPress Developer?
The rates vary significantly depending on the requirements, developer experience, location, features, number of pages, and more. A simple project can cost hundreds or a few thousand dollars, and a large-scale custom WordPress website with complex requirements can cost much more.
Developers usually charge per hour, per page, per project, or as a monthly maintenance fee. It is best to compare different proposals and see what services are included. The cost usually depends on:
- Design
- Development
- Number of pages
- Custom coding
- Plugins
- Content
- SEO
- Testing
- Security
- Launch
- Support
WordPress Developer or DIY: Which One Is Better for My Business?
As mentioned above, a small business can often get away with a self-hosted WordPress website. However, you need to consider your own budget, technical skills, time, and long-term requirements. In many cases, hiring a WordPress developer is a more cost-effective solution in the long run.
A professional WordPress developer can help with custom design, custom functionality, performance optimization, security, maintenance, and more. You can always scale the website later and add more features as your business grows.
WordPress developers can also help if you need to migrate a website, fix existing technical problems, or optimize a slow WordPress website.
Conclusion
So, should your small business hire a WordPress developer? It depends on your specific needs, time, and budget. You might be able to manage a simple small business website on your own. A WordPress developer can be a good option if you need a custom design, custom functionality, performance optimization, maintenance, technical support, or security improvements.
Before hiring a WordPress developer, be sure to outline your requirements, review their portfolio, technical expertise, project proposals, and support options.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Does every small business need a WordPress developer?
The honest answer is no. A small business website with a few simple pages can often be managed without a WordPress developer. A WordPress developer becomes a necessity when specific customization, advanced features, technical optimizations, or maintenance are needed.
2. How much does it cost to hire a WordPress developer?
The final cost depends on the complexity of the project, the experience of the developer, the location, the number of required features and pages, and additional services. Developers usually charge either hourly, per page or per project.
3. Can a small business build a WordPress website without a developer?
Yes, a small business can build a simple WordPress site without technical skills. However, more complex requirements and features often require a WordPress developer.
4. When should I hire a WordPress developer?
Hiring a WordPress developer is a good idea if you need a custom design, custom functionality, technical optimization, maintenance and support, or security improvements.
5. Can a WordPress developer improve my website?
Yes, a WordPress developer can optimize your existing WordPress site, improve its performance, security, speed, responsiveness, functionality, frontend appearance, and much more.
6. Can a WordPress developer help with SEO?
Yes, a WordPress developer can help you with technical SEO aspects of WordPress, including responsive design, performance optimization, URL structure, image optimization, internal linking structure, XML sitemaps, structured data markup, and much more.
7. Should I hire a freelancer or a WordPress development agency?
Both options have their advantages, and the best choice depends on your particular needs and budget. An agency is often a good option for more involved projects, while a freelancer can sometimes offer more competitive pricing.
8. Can a WordPress developer build an online store?
Yes, a WordPress developer can build an online store with WordPress and WooCommerce. They can help you customize the store, set up products, payment gateways, shipping, taxes, and other features.
9. Do WordPress developers offer maintenance services?
Yes, many WordPress developers offer WordPress maintenance services. The exact scope can vary, but it usually includes WordPress core updates, theme and plugin updates, security scanning, performance optimization, bug fixing, technical support, and more.
10. Is it worth it to hire a WordPress developer for a small business?
It depends on the situation, but for many small businesses, WordPress development is a worthwhile investment. A WordPress developer can help you get a well optimized, customizable, scalable, secure, and aesthetically pleasing website.
