As a B2B marketer responsible for managing your company’s website, you know its importance when it comes to attracting customers, generating leads, and driving sales. Yet many find this valuable sales tool to be a hurdle when implementing marketing strategies to drive key initiatives. The problem? Websites that aren’t constructed from the start with scalability in mind hinder growth for ambitious marketers. So, if you’re ready to embark on a new website project, read on for some key tips to make a B2B website in WordPress that’s ready to grow alongside your business goals.

Why Create a B2B Website in WordPress?

When developed well, a WordPress marketing site has the potential to be a scalable and flexible tool for businesses looking to expand their online presence over time. WordPress is the most popular content management system, so you may have even worked on a WordPress website in a past role.

Aside from being familiar, a WordPress site has the potential to be extremely user-friendly for marketers. The WordPress backend can be configured to create new pages with unique layouts without the need for a developer. This ensures you’re not spending lots of time or money building new marketing landing pages, publishing posts, or making SEO optimizations.

Another benefit to marketers is that it’s easy to configure a separate testing environment for WordPress sites. A testing or staging site is a clone of your website, which allows you to get approval on changes before implementing them on the live website. This is especially useful when working with many stakeholders to gain content approval.

Lastly, because of its popularity, WordPress has a massive community. There is no shortage of online resources available to help marketers and developers troubleshoot issues or find answers to common questions. The WordPress platform is also well-supported, so new features and updates are regularly released. You can count on the constantly evolving platform to remain a competitive content management system for years to come.

The Importance of a Custom WordPress Theme

When building a new marketing website on WordPress, it may be tempting to look into one of the thousands of premium themes available as a base template. However, we encourage you to think twice if scalability is a top priority.

While a premium WordPress theme can be well-done, there are also many that contain bloated code, security vulnerabilities, or compatibility issues with other plugins or themes. These cons can dramatically hinder your goal of scaling your website in the future since your website will likely be slower and less secure.

Many premium themes also rely on page builder plugins like Elementor, Visual Composer, or WPBakery. Page builder plugins are like the Swiss Army Knife of website design. But while they offer a wide range of design flexibility, that isn’t always good if your goal is to create a cohesive brand and design. Unlimited customization can lead to design inconsistencies like variable amounts of padding or non-branded color schemes throughout the site. These page builders also contain a lot of code bloat, which will lead to a slower and vulnerable website.

For these reasons, growing B2B companies should seek out a website developer who will create a custom WordPress theme designed with their design needs and business goals in mind rather than using a premium theme.

Be Judicious About Plugin Usage

Along with thousands of premium WordPress themes, there are also an endless number of WordPress plugins that a marketer or developer can add to a website. A plugin is a piece of software installed on a website to add specific functionality. While WordPress plugins can be beneficial, if you excessively install plugins, they will dramatically impact the speed and performance of the website. Especially if a plugin has many features, that’s often a red flag that it will add lots of code to your website, which will affect performance.

It’s best to find a WordPress developer who has the ability to write custom code functionality for most features but turns to reputable plugins for features like language translations, forms, or SEO.

A Good Website Host is Key

It’s essential to select a reliable web hosting service for your B2B website. A great website deployed onto a low-quality host will not perform well and can also be vulnerable to major security issues. You’ll want to choose a modern web host that includes tools to keep your website safe, prevent it from going down, and prevent bad actors from exploiting vulnerabilities. Some top web host recommendations for WordPress websites include Pantheon, WP Engine, and Flywheel.

Page Templates vs. Page Components

There are many ways to build a WordPress site for marketers looking for the ability to create pages without a developer. Two common methods include using page templates, where there is a core set of layouts used to build all pages, and using page components, which allow each page to use a unique layout of custom components.

Both of these options, when done well, can work for growing B2B companies. Page templates can be beneficial if you’re going to be building lots of similar pages with similar layouts. However, if you want even more flexibility in page layout, requesting a custom component structure is the way to go.

Either way, make sure to speak to your WordPress website development team about how you will build pages in the backend of the new site to ensure you know what you’re getting and how it’ll affect your content creation workflow on the new website.

Let Motion Tactic Create Your B2B Website in WordPress

At Motion Tactic, we specialize in B2B website design and WordPress development for ambitious marketers. We build all of our WordPress websites using a custom component structure, which allows B2B companies to have more control over their content creation process while keeping the website design intact. Our professional development standards and workflows also ensure security, reliability, and performance on the websites we create.

Our custom development process empowers us to build creatively unique and technically complex systems that scale. Schedule a consultation to learn more about how we can create a B2B website in WordPress for your growing business.