WordPress is definitely one of the best CMS platforms to build a website cost-effectively. But as we know all the good things in this world come with some responsibilities.
The same is the case with WordPress website development too.
When you create your website using WordPress CMS, there are a few things that you or your website builder needs to take care of.
In this blog post, we have shared 9 common mistakes that you should avoid on your WordPress website.
Are you ready to go through them? Let’s dive in!
#1 Not choosing a right theme
A theme is an important part of your WordPress website because it determines the way your site should be displayed.
A WordPress theme consists of several template files along with the CSS files that make up the structure & look of your website.
Although there are hundreds of free & paid themes available that you can use to build your website, there are a few things that you or your WordPress developer need to take care of.
A bad WordPress theme can ruin not only the performance of your website but also the reputation of your business.
Below are some of the critical things to check in a WordPress theme, other than its design, before using it:
- The last updated date of the theme must not be too old.
- The existing users of that theme must have posted positive reviews for it.
- The theme must be responsive to all kinds of devices.
- The theme must be compatible with all the major browsers.
- The loading speed of the theme must be optimized. In other words, it shouldn’t take too long for the webpages to load.
Recommended post: 6 Reasons to choose a paid theme for WordPress web development
#2 Not choosing right plugins
Similar to the themes, the plugins also play a vital role in the development of a WordPress website.
Your website builder may use a few plugins to incorporate different features into your website.
There are tons of plugins that you can use to add any kind of feature to your website. You name the feature and you will find a plugin to add it to your website.
But if you don’t choose the plugins carefully, it can affect the performance of your website, and sometimes even worst, it can even cause several security issues on your website as well.
Therefore, before installing any plugin on your website, your developer should take care of a few things such as:
- The plugins should be from reliable sources/developers.
- The last updated date of the plugin should be recent.
- The plugin must be compatible with the WordPress version.
- The plugin must be compatible with the server specifications.
- The plugin must have positive reviews from existing customers.
Recommended post: 7 Essential plugins to build a basic WordPress website
#3 Not securing your website
The security of your WordPress website is as important as its development. No matter how good your website looks, if it’s not secured, it won’t help you much.
Especially with the rapidly increasing cases of hacking, it’s even more than important for you to take care of your website’s security.
If you don’t take care of your website’s security, you may have to face a few serious consequences such as hacking, virus infections, malware injections, loss of SEO rankings, etc.
Recommended post: 6 Reasons for you to secure your WordPress website
Since WordPress is one of the most popular and commonly used CMS platforms on the planet today, most hackers know about the architecture of a WordPress website.
But you don’t need to worry.
Your website developer can protect your website by following a few norms or standards.
Below are some of the checklists that your WordPress developer can follow in order to make your WordPress website secured:
- Ensuring that all the passwords (admin, FTP, cPanel, etc. ) of your website are stronger and hard to guess.
- Changing the default username and URL of the backend section of your WordPress website.
- Making sure that the WordPress version on your website is always up-to-date.
- Regularly updating all the plugins and theme of your website.
- Restricting access to critical files.
Recommended post: 11 Ways in which a WordPress developer in India can secure your website
#4 Not taking backups
Taking regular backups of your WordPress website can help you to avoid chaos.
No matter how secured your website is, sometimes it may stop working or start producing errors because of some unknown issues or even server issues.
It is therefore always recommended for all the website owners to take regular backups of their websites.
If you are not a technical person like the most website owners, you may find it difficult to go into the control panel of your website and backup all the files and databases manually. Isn’t it?
But fortunately, WordPress makes it easier for you to backup your website.
There are several great plugins that you can use with your WordPress website to backup all the files and databases.
Some of those great plugins are listed below:
- UpdraftPlus
- VaultPress
- BackupBuddy
- Duplicator
- BackupWordPress
Recommended post: 5 Best WordPress plugins to backup your website
#5 Not customizing permalinks
There are many WordPress websites that don’t have user-friendly & SEO-friendly URLs. They instead use the default URL structure of WordPress.
This small mistake can affect the website in 2 major ways:
- The navigation & URLs of the website doesn’t seem to be intuitive.
- It can make it difficult for your website to rank on search engines.
There is no rocket science behind it. You just need to activate the permalink settings from the backend of your WordPress website. You don’t even need the assistance of your website developer to do this job.
All you have to do is go to Settings > Permalink and choose the custom permalink.
#6 Not setting up analytics
When you create a website, you expect your target users to visit your website and perform the desired action such as buying a product or submitting the form.
And to track the behavior of users on your website, you need to integrate an analytics tool with your site.
Especially, if you intend to run marketing or advertising campaigns for your website, you definitely need a robust analytics system to track the clicks & measure the results.
Google Analytics is perhaps one of the best, reliable yet free tools that you can integrate with your WordPress website in just a few clicks and start tracking the visitors and measuring the results of your marketing campaigns.
With the help of the Google Analytics tool, you can get useful insights about your website such as:
- How many users visited your website.
- How much time did each user spend on your website.
- Through which source the visitors are coming to your website.
- From which country or city, the visitors are coming to your website.
- Which page(s) were visited by the users on your website.
- How many users got converted on your website (for some purchase or lead submission).
- & lot more…
#7 Ignoring the updates
As we mentioned already that a WordPress website runs through several plugins. The developers of these plugins keep updating their plugins from time to time.
Whenever there is any change in any of the plugins or themes of your WordPress website, your admin dashboard will prompt you to update those plugin(s) or themes.
If you don’t take any action or simply ignore the upgrade message, your website may experience some errors or security issues soon.
In other words, if you don’t upgrade your website regularly, it may affect the performance & security of your website.
But before you even try to upgrade any of the plugin(s) on your WordPress website, do consult with your WordPress builder in order to ensure that there is no consequence of upgrading the plugins or theme.
Not only do the themes & plugins of your website need regular updates, but the WordPress version of your site also needs to be updated whenever there is a newer version available.
#8 Not installing SEO plugin
SEO is one of the best, effective, and yet affordable mediums to get traffic on any website.
If done properly, SEO can bring a lot of sales & conversions to your website. Although there are many SEO activities that need to be done on any website, SEO starts from the website itself.
In other words, your website must be SEO-friendly in order to achieve higher rankings on search engines and get quality traffic.
Most website owners never install any SEO plugin on their website. As a result, their chances of ranking on search engines diminishes gradually.
Don’t let this happen to you.
You must ensure that your WordPress website has an SEO plugin installed. You can consider installing the “SEO Yoast” plugin with your website.
SEO Yoast plugin allows you to:
- Define a unique meta title and description for each webpage.
- Create and verify XML sitemap
- Manage robots.txt
- Write SEO-friendly content
#9 Not testing the website
Last but not the least, this is the most crucial mistake that many webmasters make. They never check their website.
If you are really serious about your online business, you must make sure to test your website for all the important areas.
Below is a quick checklist for you to test your website on:
- All the forms on your website must be functional.
- There shouldn’t be any broken links on your website.
- Your website should look good on all mobile devices as well as desktops.
- Your website must be compatible with all the major browsers.
- Your website should load quickly.
Alternatively, you can hire a professional website builder who would check your website for all the important areas before making it live.
