WordPress is powering more than a quarter of the web, but many businesses have shied away from taking the leap. Overhauling an entire site to move to a new content management system (CMS) can be intimidating. Businesses have a wide variety of concerns that prevent them from making such a big technology shift–even if the shift would be beneficial in the long-term. There are also a wide variety of myths surrounding what WordPress does and how it can benefit a business (or, rather, how it won’t).

I’m here to give you a few reasons that you want your business site on WordPress:

WordPress isn’t just for blogging

Although those of us in the WordPress industry already know this to be true, there are a lot of non-WordPress folk who still believe WP is just for blogging. Many of them aren’t even clear of what WordPress is.

WordPress provides all kinds of opportunities for your entire site, and it’s not just a place to host thoughts scribbled in a blog. Whether you want a member site, an e-commerce store, or a sleek, beautiful design to represent your company, WordPress can do all of that–and more. Since WordPress is endlessly advancing and changing, the bounds of what it can do are determined by the skill and creativity of the person building on it.

The learning curve is a little steep, but it’s worth it

Although WordPress boasts a five minute install, the average person is going to spend a bit longer setting it up. For someone who doesn’t have the technical savvy, getting a WordPress site set up the way that they want can be a challenge.

Don’t let that stop you from taking it on!

One of the best parts about WordPress is that it’s open source software, which means the source code is available to the public for study, alteration, and distribution. Most of the folks in WordPress are deeply committed to advancing open source software and giving back to the public by making it better and faster. The best and brightest professionals are giving their time to make a free software the absolute best it can be–which benefits all of us.

The work developers do requires expertise and skill, and when you hire them to do the work for your business, you pay for their extensive time and effort. In addition to that, they provide a public service by making WordPress, a free tool, widely beneficial and accessible to everyone. You may hire one developer, but when you work with WordPress, you benefit from the community work of countless brilliant minds.

If you stop and think a moment about all the people who generously give their time and knowledge, often without compensation, to create one of the strongest platforms available, you’ll realize it’s a community worth joining.

Since WordPress enthusiasts, professionals and amateurs alike, are so dedicated to enhancing the software and innovating with the tools provided, there are a ton of resources available for learning how to do what you want to your site. Sites like WPBeginner and WP101 aim to educate people on the fundamentals of WordPress, and if you do some Googling, you’ll easily find a wealth of answers to almost any question you have.

If you’re still worried about that learning curve, many WordPress developers and designers offer WordPress education as a part of their services, so the day to day dealings can be handled by you or your staff without a struggle.

WordPress makes content management easy

Yes, WordPress is a content management system, but that doesn’t just refer to blogging. “Content” describes nearly everything on your site–videos, photos, and text.

As a CMS, WordPress is the absolute best. Once you learn the basic terminology and know where things are in the dashboard, updating your site is easy peasy.

Even if you have a staff of Luddites, teaching them how to handle basic content management in WordPress is super simple! This means your staff will be empowered to make those changes and can handle the content on your site as a part of their duties. This means less oversight from you, which gives you time to focus on running your business. Empowering your staff to use your technology allows you to delegate responsibly and allocate your time to where you need it most.

Integrating with WordPress opens up your audience

One of the ways we’ve helped our clients is by building them their own WordPress plugin. This is particularly helpful for companies that offer a digital product or service and have a target audience that is building out their own business sites.

We have an example of this from our own experience:

Quantcast Corporation is a technology company that provides real-time measurement and analysis of advertising and audience engagement. Quantcast hired us to create a WordPress plugin that puts a JavaScript snippet in the header of their users’ sites. This extended their service out to the greater WordPress community and provided a huge benefit to their existing users. Quantcast users with WordPress websites can install the Audience Analytics plugin. Then, their Quantcast account is linked directly to their WordPress site and they can access their site analytics through WordPress super easily.

WordPress can scale–which means it can grow with your business

To make it do so successfully, though, you’ll definitely need the assistance of a professional. This part gets a little technically advanced, but Smashing Magazine took a look at what different developers have done to set up high traffic sites for success. WordPress isn’t the only key component in the fight to keep your site performant, but it’s not going to be what holds you back.

Getting on WordPress means being in good company

There are tons of businesses and major publications that are on WordPress, including:

• WorldPay
• Amazon
• Disney
• Politico
• The NBA
• Discovery Communications
• USA Today
• Microsoft Office Blogs
• FiveThirtyEight
• Airbnb

And many, many more. Big names take their technology seriously, and they’ve chosen WordPress to best serve their massive audiences.

So what are you waiting for?