"WordPress is basically just a blogging platform, right?"
It's incredible how hard it can be to shake outdated notions. I know I've done it.
When Ted Lasso first came out, all I could think about was that my favorite person ever to do the running man dance was starring in what had to be a shallow, silly sports sitcom. Put another way, I did not "Believe in Believe."
Fast forward a couple of episodes, and I was hooked. But that was my experience in a bit of a pandemic-induced vacuum.
It wasn't until I realized the *impact* of the show, and in particular how much of a driving force Jason Sudeikis was to its success, that I happily broadened my perspective. I mean, it won a Peabody Award, for goodness sakes.
Explaining why the judges bestowed the show with such an honor, the website cites the depth and complexity of Ted Lasso's character, driven by the endearing, radically optimistic qualities of Sudeikis. It concludes with examples of how Lasso lifts up the whole by elevating those who could easily be overlooked:
"Those who typically would be treated as minor or marginalized characters such as Keely, the soccer star’s model girlfriend, and Nate the Great, the diminutive South Asian locker room assistant, become significant change agents of Ted’s philosophy—the Lasso Way—that when we “BELIEVE,” all manner of positive things will happen. For offering the perfect counter to the enduring prevalence of toxic masculinity, both on-screen and off, in a moment when the nation truly needs inspiring models of kindness, Ted Lasso wins a Peabody."
That's what happens when people are positioned to succeed, and their strengths match the needs of those working with them.
Similarly, it's not difficult to think of WordPress as its own optimistic engine that could. Through its embrace of an open-source community, WordPress continues to provide new and sometimes unexpected features and functionality as it's grown to power more than 40% of the world's websites.
Over the years, Unleashed has embraced WordPress for several of our clients. We have worked to ensure that we leverage the right plugin or custom development approach in a manner that positions the website for success. And while we've certainly stood up more traditional blog-focused websites with it, our WordPress work has included the following tasks and features:
- Efficient migration of content from multiple CMS platforms to WordPress
- Applying new themes based on clients' updated brand guidelines
- Interactive home and landing pages that dynamically pull in a range of information and connect with a variety of third-party tools
- Serve as a strategic and technical partner to our clients' Web and Marketing teams
- Ensure baseline analytics and goal tracking are properly developed to provide comprehensive measurement of user engagement
- Increase organic traffic (in part) through properly formatted schema.org structured data markup
- Build in A/B testing model capabilities to support targeted email campaigns
- Develop intuitive, brand-aligned page building components that ensure client-created content adheres to design best practices
- Developed decoupled WordPress sites (separating the backend from the frontend) to enhance site performance
- Implemented mobile-first and responsive sites as a standard, default practice
- Coordinate with client marketing teams to ensure optimal lead generation and trackable user journeys through the site
- Leverage a mixture of default and custom fields to support robust, faceted internal site search
- Build in proper metadata fields to support SEO as well as proper display of shared posts on social media, with admin tools that guide less-experienced editors and content creators through the process
Clearly, there's a lot that we can do for you with WordPress.
That said, we're still working out the kinks around how it can make us delicious biscuits every morning that our boss becomes addicted to.
