August 2021 - TILL IT CLICKS

5 Sureshot Strategies for a Successful E-Commerce Website

With the growing number of internet users, worldwide e-commerce sales are expected to grow to 5.4 trillion US dollars by 2022, according to a report by Statista. The rising preference of people to buy products online is boosting profits for many e-commerce businesses. These online stores initially catered mostly to Gen Z and millennials with personal care, electronics, wellness, etc products. However, e-commerce businesses have soon expanded their customer base by becoming the backbone for supplying essential items as well.

To successfully sell products online, it is important for your store to have an effective digital presence. A strong online presence gives your brand the perfect platform to communicate with your target consumers and compel them to buy your products. Here are 5 simple yet highly effective tactics that you can implement to build and manage a successful e-commerce website.

1. Keep Your Website Design Clean and Simple

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Design is an important element of your online store’s website. Without a clean and clear design, visitors are likely to lose interest in your e-commerce website. On the other hand, a smartly designed website with a simplistic colour scheme and elegant fonts can compel visitors to stay longer on your online store.

Your e-commerce website can also prevent the use of heavy elements such as extra-large images, files, and too many ads to ensure faster load times. Besides, simple web design also makes sure that visitors are not distracted but are fully engaged while exploring the range of products you are offering. A fast-loading website not only appeals to your website visitors by reducing bounce rates but also increases your conversions.

2. Make Navigation Easy for Visitors

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Everyone loves online stores that are seamless and easily navigable. It is thus important for the navigation of your e-commerce website to be clear. You need to make sure that various sections, categories, sub-categories on your website are properly described and visually defined. This enables website visitors and shoppers to find their preferred goods quickly and without any hassles.

You can include your online store’s main navigation menu at the top of the page or on the left-hand side of the page. Further, you can organize product listings using meaningful categories, subcategories, and labels. Most importantly, your e-commerce website should also have an in-search feature that not just helps users find the products they are looking for but also shows relevant items.

3. Use High-quality Product Images and Graphics

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Adding good-quality images to your e-commerce website is a simple and effective way to improve your site’s user experience. It is therefore recommended to always use professionally clicked product images in your e-commerce website. Such high-quality images let visitors have a closer look at the product and strengthen their purchasing decision.

Ensure that the product images that you use on your online store are not too small or pixelated. Use of high-resolution images can also help in driving longer visit times and reduce bounce rates, thereby boosting your site’s SEO. This helps in improving the credibility of your brands and increases the chances of visitors willing to buy products from your online store.

4. Ensure Your Site is SEO-friendly

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You have spent a great deal of time setting up your e-commerce site. Yet your website fails to rank higher on the search engines and witness increased traffic? How can you overcome this obstacle? Search Engine Optimisation. Having a strong SEO strategy in place is a must so as to witness higher brand impressions and clicks and thus, better sales.

While optimising your e-commerce website for search engines, it is important to take into account relevancy as well as ranking difficulty. Using internal links can be a great way to enable search engines to crawl and index your pages. Faster load times and a responsive design can also help your website appeal to both, searchers and search engines, and thus, improve your website traffic significantly

Establishing and maintaining a website for your e-commerce business can be a daunting task. But it is possible to achieve your desired web traffic goals and boost your sales with the help of above mentioned simple steps. By following these tactics, your e-commerce website will not only witness increased visitors but will also convert like crazy. So, what are you waiting for? Implement these strategies and give your online store the sales it deserves.

Website Design and Development Trends | Till It Clicks

6 Web Design And Development Trends Dominating the Industry In 2021

Design and development have become the most important aspects of building a website today. The reason being, most brands across the globe have now realised the necessity of building an online presence that is attractive and which delivers a seamless user experience. However, to achieve this, it is important to always stay on top of the latest website design and development trends.

The pandemic outbreak in 2020 has highlighted the significance of strengthening online presence for better reach. As a result, brands and businesses are focusing on making their websites more appealing and user-friendly. To make this easier for businesses, we’ve put together a list of the biggest and most effective web design and development trends in 2021.

1. Progressive Web App Development

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Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are websites that combine the best of both – mobile applications as well as web-based applications. These websites are intended to deliver a high level of performance regardless of device or network condition. PWAs are comparatively more interactive and responsive than conventional responsive websites. They are built in a manner that enables them to behave like native apps.

The advent of PWAs has been beneficial for global brands like Amazon, Twitter, Forbes, etc in order to improve the loading times for their users. Features such as push notifications are helping brands in making their websites more interactive, thereby increasing conversions and decreasing bounce rates. PWAs are also proving to be a great asset for businesses by boosting their time on-site and significantly improving re-engagement rates.

2. Dark-Themed UI

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For a long time, a white background was considered to be the only option to create empty spaces on a website or an app. However, a few years ago, mobile applications started offering dark-themed UI options which garnered a lot of appreciation. Owing to its popularity, website designers have also started creating dark-themed user interfaces and we believe that this trend will continue to rise throughout 2021.

As far as user experience is concerned, dark themes are extremely useful for users as they help in minimising digital eye strain. The dark mode utilises minimal device energy and saves a lot of your device’s battery time. By increasing contrast, the dark theme UI makes design elements more visible, which is crucial in making your website look more appealing.

3. AI-Powered Chatbots

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Artificial intelligence based chatbot is a software that is designed to understand and simulate human conversations. These chatbots help businesses in speeding up their operations through voice or text chats and also improving the customer experience. By collecting data, answering frequently asked questions, and providing solutions for various other customer concerns, AI-powered chatbots are useful in reducing customer drop off rates.

Powered with speech recognition techniques and cognitive intelligence, AI-driven chatbots are capable of replicating human conversations with precision. The interactive feature of AI-powered chatbots makes the users feel valued and enhances customer satisfaction rates. As a result, prominent B2C businesses have started adding AI-powered chatbots to their websites and we believe many more companies will continue embracing this trend in 2021.

4. Single-Page Websites

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Long and extensive web structures no longer attract users. Brands today are compelled to build single-page websites as they are much easier to navigate and utilise less time of site visitors. Visitors of single-page websites can find everything – right from the brand’s offerings to contact details, on the same page. With no new URL to navigate to on the website, these websites consume less space on servers.

The simple and creative design layouts used in single-page websites deliver faster and seamless user experiences. These websites enjoy a simpler deployment process and are also extremely cost-effective. Moreover, designers also get to try their hands on minimalistic yet responsive designs that offer user-friendly interfaces and are also more attractive.

5. Voice Search Optimisation

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From Siri and Alexa to Cortana, voice-controlled digital assistants are one of the easiest ways to make internet searches today. Owing to this technology’s user-friendliness as well as accuracy, more and more people are making voice-based searches. This has highlighted the need for websites to optimise their websites for voice searches, so as to not miss out on valuable traffic and leads.

Users these days show a great interest in voice recognition technology and so, businesses have started adopting this feature to ensure higher customer satisfaction. This will also prove to be quite beneficial when it comes to serving multilingual customers. Big organisations such as Apple, Google, and Android have already incorporated voice search into their UI/ UX design process and many more global enterprises are likely to follow suit.

6. Motion UI

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Customers today don’t only expect websites to be faster and mobile-friendly but also want their digital experiences to be visually rich and interactive. As a result, Motion UI is quickly gaining prominence as a great tool to deliver a more engaging user experience. Motion UI is a front-end framework that is useful in developing fully responsive websites as well as mobile applications.

With Motion UI, businesses are able to add complex animations, dynamic transitions or even interactive elements such as slide, spin, bounce, etc on their website. The apt use of such effects and elements can be a great way to draw visitors’ attention to an important position on the page, such as the call-to-action button. Motion UI is compatible with all web technologies and can be used anywhere on a web page – header, footer, or menus.

Staying abreast of the latest web design and development trends, even amid a constantly changing landscape, is indispensable today. The above mentioned design and development trends are dominating the industry in 2021 and are likely to continue doing so in the future as well. Incorporating these trends into websites can help brands attract more audiences and stand out in the market.

Dos-and-Donts_WordPress_Website | Till It Clicks

7 Do’s and Don’ts to Streamline Your WordPress Website Development

When it comes to building a website, marketers are no longer dependent on IT professionals. The advent of content marketing systems (CMS) has simplified and made it possible for anyone to develop attractive and effective websites. The most widely used and beneficial CMS platform that can serve businesses in creating compelling websites today is WordPress

WordPress.org is one of the most user-friendly CMS platforms with numerous features on offer. By choosing to use WordPress for your website development, you’ve taken the first step towards building a great website. However, there are still many challenges that you need to counter, plentiful lessons that you need to learn.

To help you through this website development phase, here’s a comprehensive list of 7 do’s and don’ts necessary for the successful creation of your website with WordPress.org.

Do’s of WordPress Website Development:

1. Purchase a High-Quality WordPress Hosting

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Always choose quality over cheap hosting. They might charge you more but are certain to match your website requirements. High-quality WordPress hosting can ensure speed, scalability and security with increased uptime. With these and many more dependable features, top-notch WordPress hosting allows you to focus on your business effectively.

2. Go Premium, Explore More

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The premium plugins of WordPress can provide a host of benefits to users. For a small licensing fee, users get access to better features, dedicated support and regular updates with premium plugins. This can be beneficial for users in having a high-quality and well-performing WordPress website.

3. Setup a Permalink Structure

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Permalink structure is one of the most important parts of your WordPress website, mainly delivering excellent SEO benefits. Using keywords in your permalinks and keeping it concise can reap great returns for your website in terms of search engine rankings. WordPress auto-generates a URL for your website by using the post ID number. It looks like this –

https://mynewwebsite.com/?p=123

But adding relevant keywords can help search engines and visitors identify your page’s content easily. The ideal permalink structure will look like this –

https://mynewwebsite.com/services

4. Choose the Right WordPress Theme

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Make sure that the theme you pick for your website is compatible with all the web browsers. It is also important to check if the theme supports various plugins, which can be useful to add new features to your website. You must also ensure that the theme comes with support services so that you get professional solutions quickly when there are any problems with your website.

5. Carry Out Regular Backups

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Your WordPress website might encounter catastrophic situations like sudden crashes or even data breaches. Creating regular backups of your WordPress website is the best thing that you can do to save your hard work. There are many free and paid WordPress plugins available that are pretty easy to use and can play a key role in keeping your website secure.

6. Utilise SEO Plugins

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WordPress offers many plugins specially designed for search engine optimization. These plugins can be useful in augmenting your site’s loading speed, improving content and boosting overall performance. Using the right WordPress SEO plugins can provide you with information related to the number of backlinks, keyword rankings, organic traffic, etc.

7. Use the Right Taxonomy Terms

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Taxonomy is a useful way to group similar posts and other content elements together. Taxonomies are helpful because they provide some context to your content and make it easier for readers to find related content. You can also index and make them available for search engines.

Don’ts of WordPress Website Development:

1. Crowd Your Website With Unused Widgets

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WordPress comes with some default widgets. These widgets help you perform basic actions like adding videos, text and images to your website. But a few of them are of no use and they often make it difficult for you to find the necessary ones. Hence, you can get rid of such widgets so that only useful widgets are visible on the widgets page.

2. Stick With the Default Title and Tagline

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WordPress provides a default title and tagline for every website. While building a new website for your brand, make sure that you change them according to your website needs. If you forget to change the default title and tagline, they would appear in search results and make our website look unprofessional.

3. Let Your Website Become Outdated

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WordPress does wonders for your website, but it also needs timely updates. WordPress constantly upgrades its tools and services. It is important for your website to also evolve by incorporating these updates. Using the latest WordPress features can play a pivotal role in helping your website grow.

4. Compromise On Website Security

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There are several ways in which your website can be exploited. To protect your website from data breaches or cyberattacks, it is essential to take efficient precautionary measures. Update regularly, keep strong passwords, guard against attacks and install security and backup plugins to save your website from the hands of hackers.

5. Install Questionable Themes or Plugins

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WordPress offers an endless amount of free themes and plugins for its users. However, some of these plugins and themes may be developed with the intent of exploiting websites. Outdated plugins are also one of the common causes of WordPress website security breaches. Hence, it is important to always read reviews and only download themes or plugins from reliable sources.

6. Add Too Many Tags

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For a WordPress.org website, too many tags can lead to duplication issues. Search engines may assume some of your tags are the duplicates of categories and may not consider your content relevant while displaying results. This can ultimately have a disastrous impact on your site’s performance.

7. Ignore Slugs

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A post slug or page slug is the part of your website’s uniform resource locator (URL) that can be edited. The slug is always auto-generated based on the title of the post. A good slug has the potential to positively impact your site’s SEO efforts. Being editable, slug enables you to include the exact keyword that you want to rank for, in your URL.

The journey of developing a website can be full of obstacles and hurdles. But the right strategies can carve the way out of these roadblocks towards success. Mentioned above are some of the most important do’s and don’ts that you must consider while building your WordPress website. Following these methods will be helpful in developing your dream website without getting bogged down by any problems or concerns.

Website Design and Development | Till It Clicks

9 Signs Your Website Design And Development is in Need of a Revamp

Your website is the online face of your business. It should have all the elements necessary to convey your brand’s message appropriately and make visitors stay longer on your website. Attractive design, responsive UI, up-to-date content, seamless site performance, etc are some of the features that appeal to site visitors as well as help your website rank higher on search engines.

However, if your website is facing issues such as increased bounce rates, lesser conversions, slow load times, decrease in sales, etc then it is a clear sign that you need to update it. It is important to assess your website regularly in order to identify the areas that need to be revamped. We’ve compiled a list of 9 signs which indicate that your website’s design and development needs to be updated. Read more to find out.

1. Poor Navigation

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Higher bounce rates or single-page visits are generally caused due to poor website navigation. When Google learns about your website and its increased bounce rate, your website drops down in the search engine rankings. A better navigation menu allows your website visitors to quickly access the information they are looking for. Thus, if your site lacks user-friendly navigation then it needs to be revamped.

2. Reduced sales

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Businesses, especially e-commerce companies, are most likely to experience reduced sales due to issues in website design and development. In order to compel customers to purchase your products/ services, it is important to first have high-quality graphics and relevant content so that visitors spend more time on your website. Even if you have a great range of products to offer, your website must portray them in an attractive manner so as to convince visitors to make a purchase.

3. Slow Load Times

Image Source: Synapse SEM

In his blog on ‘how loading time affects bottom line’, Neil Patel has stated that even a 1-second delay in page response can lead to a 7% reduction in conversions. Slow-loading web pages increase bounce rates considerably and affect the overall performance of your website. Hence, it is important to test your website speeds regularly and make necessary changes if your page load times are higher.

4. Non-responsive Web Design

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A majority of search queries today are made through mobile devices. Hence, it is important for businesses to build mobile-friendly websites with responsive designs so that visitors are not forced to abandon your website. If your website content including font sizes, image dimensions, and element widths do not automatically “respond” to different screen sizes, it is a sign that you need to work on your website. This requires you to make changes to design and development so that your website can easily adapt to different devices.

5. Site is Not SEO-friendly

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While businesses strive to rank higher in search engine rankings, they often miss out on ensuring SEO-friendly web design. An SEO-friendly website lets search engines efficiently crawl each page on the website, interpret the content, and index it in their database. Once they index your website content, it becomes easier for your website to rank higher and reach maximum prospects easily. Thus, an SEO-friendly web design is imperative.

6. Inconsistent Branding

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Your online marketing strategy might go in vain if your website lacks consistent messaging throughout your website. Moreover, inconsistent branding may also make it difficult for your business to attract the right prospects and improve your conversions. This makes it essential for you to revamp your website to have a matching voice, colour palette, and visual style across all the web pages.

7. Security Concerns

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Website security is one of the most prominent concerns among businesses today. Many websites contain valuable information about their business as well as their clients and customers. This makes it extremely important to ensure that your website is always protected against data breaches. If your website is not updated as per the latest coding standards and security patches, then it can be vulnerable to cyber-attacks. This makes it necessary to redesign your website to protect it against cybersecurity threats.

8. Low conversion rates

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With an SEO-friendly website, businesses are enabled to attract target audiences to their websites. However, if these visitors are not converting into customers, it is very likely that there is a problem with your website design or development. An outdated and unattractive website results in very fewer conversion rates. Make sure that your website consists of updated content, captivating graphics and clear call-to-action (CTA) buttons. If your website lacks any of these aspects, then it means that the look and feel of your website must undergo modifications.

9. You Don’t Use a CMS

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Constant website updates are necessary to display accurate information and stay in line with the latest design trends. A content management system (CMS) can help you to easily update websites without requiring any coding skills. A good CMS lets you create, manage, modify and add necessary content to your website in a hassle-free manner. It also allows you to customize the design and functionality of your website with numerous templates on offer. This makes it quite essential for you to redesign and redevelop your website using a CMS.

Do you see any of these signs on your website? If yes, then it’s a clear indication that your website design and development needs modifications. Start analysing the different areas of your website from time to time so that you can take better steps to rebuild your website. Regular website revamps can help your website to deliver the best user experience, attract more prospects, and rank higher on the search engines.

If you need any help with updating your website design and development, please feel free to get in touch with us. Our expert designers and developers can weave their magic and take your website to new heights.

Build Standout Websites | Till It Clicks

5 Exceptional CMS Platforms to Build Standout Websites Seamlessly

Most businesses believe that they need a certified coder or a web developer to build a website. But the truth is, websites can be built without hiring a web developer. This is possible with the help of a Content Management System platform. Content Management System (CMS) is a software that helps marketers create, manage, and modify content on a website without the need for specialized coding knowledge.

A CMS allows you to add, update, delete web pages and other website content without having to know HTML, CSS or other programming languages. It isn’t limited to a backend management interface but also helps you deliver the best user experience. CMS stores all your web content in one place and supports collaboration across teams, offers templates to simplify website building, and also enables customisation. With numerous tools, plugins, templates, etc on offer, a CMS saves a lot of your time and money.

What Makes CMS a Go-to Tool for Building and Managing Websites?

Image Source: Elfsight Magazine

CMS is easy to navigate and use without the need for any training.
A CMS lets marketers customise their website including elements like design, look, and layout.
Users with limited technical knowledge can also build a compelling website in a short period.
CMS provides effective tools and plugins that are designed specifically to strengthen your website’s security.
Updating a website becomes much faster and easier with the pre-designed templates and user-friendly dashboards of a CMS.

Before choosing a CMS to build your website, you must consider a few things including – What features are you looking for? Do you want to spend time on development or go ahead with a ready-to-use template? What are the plugins that you are looking for? Apart from this, it is important to assess if you will require a blog section, photo gallery, online store (eCommerce), contact form, SEO and social media features, etc.

Depending on all these factors, you can start hunting for a CMS that best suits your website requirements. Here are the 5 of the best CMS platforms that can assist you in your website building efforts.

5. Drupal: Helping You Deliver Excellent Digital Experiences

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Drupal is a customisable content management system that can help users by effectively providing multichannel, personalised experiences to connect with their customers. With its flexible taxonomy system, Drupal users can easily manage websites stuffed with large amounts of content. It also comes with a built-in user access system that gives users plenty of control over their website.

With Drupal’s scalability, you can be sure of delivering a great user experience even during extreme traffic bursts. Drupal also enables users to build complex multilingual websites easily and much quickly. It also consists of specialised tools for content management, workflow and publishing to streamline the job of content creators. However, in comparison with most other CMS platforms, Drupal has a limited number of third-party modules, which can be detrimental to website performance.

4. Squarespace: Reliable CMS to Build Feature-rich Websites

Image Source: Squarespace

Establish and maintain an excellent digital presence by building your website with Squarespace. With numerous templates on offer, Squarespace makes it possible for users to create a customised website that is in line with their style and business needs. It has had an additional e-commerce plan which allows you to add an online store to your website.

Squarespace offers limited integrations with third-party services which might act as a hurdle in growing your business. With Squarespace, you can use the drag and drop feature to perfectly create your desired layouts on the website. The payment gateway options available with Squarespace are also quite limited – such as Stripe, Apple Pay, and PayPal.

3. Shopify: Creating Customised E-commerce Websites is Now Easier

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Shopify is an extremely useful CMS platform that is exclusively used to build online stores and eCommerce websites. Comprising a wide range of features, Shopify enables you to have complete control over your website’s navigation. It is one of the most preferred website building platforms as it offers an integrated payment solution called Shopify Payments.

You can add your creativity personalised creative elements to your e-commerce website as Shopify comes with numerous editable themes and design layouts to choose from. But, when it comes to pricing, Shopify is a bit more expensive than most other website building platforms. Also, Shopify users face troubles when trying to transfer their website to another domain or hosting.

2. Joomla: Offering Unparalleled Solutions to Build Your Dream Website

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Consisting of thousands of templates and extensions, Joomla is an open-source CMS that makes sure that the power of your website is always in your hands. This efficient CMS platform comes with a powerful admin interface that is user-friendly and easy to customize. It can manage a large number of articles and also help you monetise your website with ads.

With the Joomla platform, migrating to any other platform requires minimum time and effort. It also supports more than 70 translation packs for multilingual content management. However, when it comes to setting up an attractive website without a lot of development costs and hours, it is always better to choose WordPress over Joomla. This is because even though Joomla offers great flexibility, most users, especially non-developers, prefer going with the more user-friendly CMS platform.

1. WordPress: The Most Powerful and Popular CMS Platform

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WordPress is the most used open-source content management system that powers 30% of all websites across the world. With highly effective features and ease of use, it is the perfect CMS platform to develop websites of any scale. Right from a simple landing page to an eCommerce store, WordPress.org can help you build any website without any hassles.

With numerous themes on offer and pricing plans suitable for every budget range, building a top-notch website with WordPress is extremely easy. The thousands of WordPress plugins also help you add effective functionalities to your website such as an online store, contact forms, shopping cart, social media tools, etc. WordPress also provides a drag and drop page builder feature that enables users to streamline their website creation process.

With powerful SEO tools, online store integration, user-friendly interface, and many more functionalities, these CMS platforms can be quite useful in building amazing websites. However, after comparing the features and offerings, we feel that WordPress.org is far more superior to all other CMS platforms. Being a user-friendly, customisable and open-source platform consisting of thousands of plugins and themes, WordPress is the most used platform across the world. Hence, when it comes to choosing a CMS platform to build your website, we would highly recommend using WordPress.org so that your website development process is seamless and stress-free.

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