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In today’s world, having a business and no website is like trying to drive a car with no engine. Sure, you can reach your destination if you get out and push your car, but wouldn’t it be a lot easier if you just had the engine in the first place?
We can say the same about a business that doesn’t have a website. Yes, your company can survive without a website. However, if you want to branch out and accomplish something more with your business, then you need a website.
The good thing is that coding skills are no longer a necessity when building a website. All you need is a domain, hosting, WordPress, and a handful of plugins. Once you have all of these components, creating a great platform for your business will be a piece of cake.
But we all know that businesses come in all shapes and sizes. This essentially means that each business will have different needs and requirements when it comes to websites.
Luckily, there are many WordPress website categories, and today, we’ll look at a handful of them:
Marketplace
Online shopping is on the rise. eMarketer estimates that e-commerce retail sales grossed a total of $4.280 trillion in 2020.
WordPress is the ideal platform for building an online store or adding a storefront to a personal blog.
The platform has plenty of e-commerce plugins, like the ever-popular WooCommerce, to make it easy for you to sell your products and run a successful business. Shopify, a standalone e-commerce giant, also integrates with WordPress so that you can have a mini storefront on your website. With endless customization options, your users will never have to jump between your website and the storefront. If you want to sell your products and services online, then you need a marketplace. Just like the name suggests, this kind of website where you or other businesses can sell goods.
As with most specialized online platforms, you will need specific plugins, widgets, or integrations to make your website work as a marketplace. In this specific case, you will need to install WCVendors or Dokan, or any marketplace plugin. Having people purchase goods from your website means you’ll need to have an invoicing process set up as well. Luckily, when it comes to invoices, there are plenty of plugins that can help you, WooCommerce PDF Invoices & Packing Slips being some of them.
Drop-shipping Website
Drop-shipping is a type of eCommerce store that doesn’t keep the products in stock. Instead, when a customer purchases a product, the store owner places the order with a third-party vendor who ships the item directly to the customer.
WordPress has some excellent drop-shipping plugins that help you easily add third-party products to your website.
Business Website
Among the primary uses of WordPress and a pretty obvious answer to “what can you do with WordPress?” is to build a website for your business.
No matter the niche your organization operates in or the type of website you want to create, WordPress has got your back.
Using plugins, you can add functionality to your websites, such as live chat for quick customer support, a rating and feedback system for a store and social media plugins to integrate with tools like Buffer — a social media account management tool.
Businesses dealing with large and complicated data — like WordPress.com and Cheapflights — can also create a WordPress multisite network, an entire network of websites managed on a single WordPress dashboard, to simplify website management.
You can use a business website to supplement your brick-and-mortar store with online sales and contact forms or to start an e-commerce venture.
Membership Website
Membership or subscription websites are some of the most popular kinds of websites you can get with WordPress. The premise behind this kind of website is simple. You can give access to certain sections of your website (webinars, e-books, podcasts, blog posts, infographics, etc.) only to the people who paid for a membership.
To get your membership website, you just need to find a membership plugin, such as MemberPress or WooCommerce Memberships, and figure out:
What you’re offering
Your payment methods
The membership plans
The access rules
Signup and login forms
Pay-Per-View Website
A pay-per-view website allows you to sell exclusive content on your website on a pay-per-view basis.
You’ll be able to directly sell content to users. Instead of relying on advertising revenue, affiliate links, or other ways to make money. You can sell subscription plans, digital passes, set levels of access based on pricing, and more.
Job Board
People will always look for work, so starting a job board can prove to be pretty beneficial in the long run. As the name hints, on this kind of website, people can post and apply for jobs.
If you have experience in your industry and want to help out others within your community, a great WordPress idea is to create a job board to list open positions.
Use your experience to weed out bad jobs with unreasonably low rates or suspicious requirements and gain credibility among your peers and juniors. Starting a job board is also a great way to build your network since companies might reach out to you to list their open jobs.
There are many examples of job boards that you can find online, both local and international. Monster, for example, is a more general job board, where you can find all types of jobs. To get the job done for this kind of website, you will need plugins such as WP Job Manager.
Coupons Website
Want to earn affiliate commissions from thousands of websites offering special discounts on their products and services? Then you can use WordPress to make a coupons site.
With the right plugins, you can easily add coupons to your site. You can control the expiration dates and other details, and your users can even rate and vote for their favorite coupons.
Portfolio
Still wondering what you can do with WordPress?
Consider hosting a portfolio.
A portfolio website is one of the best uses of WordPress. Artists, photographers, and designers can show off their work to attract new clients.
You can use one of the best WordPress portfolio plugins, such as WP Portfolio and Go Portfolio, to highlight your work at a reasonable price. Most of these plugins also have premade templates and a plethora of customization options to help you develop a portfolio that resonates with you.
Directory
Having a directory might not prove to be useful right off the bat, but directories are definitely worth investing if:
You’re a small, local business that wants to grow.
You want to prove yourself as an expert in your field.
Spoke or Selling the Couch are two great niche examples of directories. While one of them deals with subjects revolving around businesspeople and companies,
the other offers psychologists the opportunity to improve their practices.
To start building a directory, you will need to install plugins such as GeoDirectory or Business Directory Plugin.
Community Website
You can easily strengthen the relationship between you and your clients through a community website. Creating an online community isn’t at all hard if you have WordPress.
To start building your community, you will need a plugin like BuddyPress or Peepso.
You can make things even more exciting by integrating a live chat where people can talk about your business, products, or your field. For the live chat function, you can get WP Live Chat or any plugin similar to this one.
Final thoughts
Long gone are the days when WordPress was just a blogging platform. With such a great array of plugins, widgets, and integration options, you can build a complex and highly functional website.
Among the hundreds of uses of WordPress, we’ve covered just a few popular options. While your WordPress website can be as simple or complex as you want, WordPress has all the features to help you set it up and keep going. Unleash the best of what you can do with WordPress with us.
