- Drupal, Web Development, WooCommerce, WordPress
- 12 min
Drupal Vs WordPress: 3 Key Differences to Know Before You Make the Final Choice
In this post, we compare two popular content management systems: Drupal and WordPress.
An MVP website or landing page is an efficient method of testing a business hypothesis quickly, and WordPress is one of the best platforms for building MPVs. In this post, we explain why.
In the business world, a good idea is worth its weight in gold. If you find the right idea and it “clicks” with the target audience, you can make a ton of money. However, building a business is not a simple undertaking.
How do you know that people will actually buy what you want to sell? You need to conduct thorough market research, think over the ways you’re going to promote the product, learn everything about other companies working in your niche, and do many other essential things that may cut your budget in half down the line.
It’s one thing when all these efforts yield some positive results. It’s another thing when they’ve all been in vain. Few people have gotten interested in your offering. You can’t afford to work at a loss. Money is wasted, the dream is dead.
What if instead of putting in so much time and finances into a full-scale business based on an idea, you could simply test this idea first with minimal investments? Positive dynamics? Proceed to building a larger business. Negative? Give up on the idea and start thinking about the next one.
Today, we’re going to discuss a method that makes testing like this a reality and explain why WordPress (WP) is the best platform to apply this approach in practice.
You will find a lot of definitions of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) on the Internet. Regardless of how they are worded, though, all of them convey the meaning of this concept almost identically.
An MVP is a minified variation of a larger product with just enough functionality to test a business idea. It’s very important to understand that an MVP’s key mission is to enable the idea creator to discover if it sounds attractive to potential customers without having to spend a fortune.
Consider the famous example of Amazon, which started as a book-selling website but later added just about every other product under the sun such as electronics, food, toys, jewelry, and the list goes on.
When you build an MVP website, you achieve an optimal balance between viability (finding out if the idea has found response with a user group) and the number of features that allows a business owner to confirm or reject a hypothesis (e.g., “Children from 5 to 7 years old will want to play with this toy”).
You don’t have to add every bell and whistle to an MVP. Add only the features that will enable the audience to use the product effectively. It’s crucial to draw a clear line between the must-have functionality and features that are not essential for testing purposes. Then, when you see that people want to purchase your product or services, you can have another iteration and add more features.
For example, do you need to integrate a payment gateway into your MVP so that you can receive money from customers? Sure. Do you need a feature that will allow the users to share photos of the apartments they reserved through your app if you’re in the real estate business? You might need that later, but it’s just a “nice-to-have” addition to be saved for a later time.
You should remember, though, that when you build an MVP website or create an MVP landing page, you get a working product from the get-go. It simply puts on some new “flesh” with every iteration if the idea proves to have value and the business (startup) continues growing.
Let’s summarize the main advantages you get when you create an MVP landing page or build an MVP website:
Now that you have an idea and defined the features that your future MVP should have, the next step is to choose how you’re going to build your MVP website. You basically have two options here: have a solution developed from scratch or base it on a ready-made system.
When it comes to MVPs, the carte blanche approach had better be avoided. You need to have an up-and-running site in hours rather than in days, weeks, or months. It’s wiser to take the second path: build an MVP website or create an MVP landing page based on an existing platform.
While the market offers an array of systems like these, nothing can beat WordPress. Here are 3 main reasons why you should choose this platform for your MVP:
One of the most compelling reasons why WordPress is an excellent choice for building an MVP website is its comprehensive core functionality. With WordPress, you gain access to a robust set of features that cover all the fundamental needs of a typical website right out of the box.
There’s no need to spend time and resources developing basic functions from scratch, akin to reinventing the wheel. WordPress comes equipped with built-in capabilities to manage users and define user roles, be it administrators, editors, authors, or subscribers. This feature proves invaluable in controlling access levels to your site and ensuring that users can only perform tasks appropriate to their roles.
Moreover, WordPress provides an intuitive and user-friendly interface for manipulating content. You can easily edit text, add images, embed videos, create hyperlinks, and format your content with different styles and layouts. The Gutenberg editor simplifies the process of content creation, making it accessible even to those with minimal technical skills.
Another key feature of WordPress is its built-in database system. This allows you to store, retrieve, and manipulate data related to your products or services efficiently. Whether you need to update product descriptions, change prices, or add new items, you can do so directly within the WordPress platform.
What makes WordPress especially beneficial for businesses is its ease of use. You don’t have to be a tech guru to master the WordPress features. Even if you’re a complete beginner, there are numerous tutorials, guides, and community forums available to help you navigate your way around the platform.
In essence, WordPress provides a solid foundation for building an MVP website, allowing businesses to focus on enhancing their unique value propositions rather than worrying about basic website functionalities.
At the moment of writing the post, the official WP site offers over 59,000 plugins for all intents and purposes. You can pick from these to implement the core features of your MVP. Need to build a custom form? Choose this plugin, for example. Want to integrate a payment processor into your site? Take advantage of this one. The sky’s the limit.
Building an interface for the MVP is also a matter of choosing a theme from over 9,000 provided (at the moment of writing the post). Just replace the dummy content with your own and you’re good to go.
All this enables you to launch your MVP in just a few days or even hours, depending on the number of features you want it to have.
One of the critical advantages of using WordPress for an MVP is that once you’ve confirmed your business hypothesis through this initial version, you can easily scale or modify your website to meet new requirements. There’s no need to switch to another platform or invest in developing a whole new site from scratch.
Though these modifications might require significant changes, one of the key benefits of WordPress is that your main content and data remain untouched. This means you don’t have to engage in a potentially complex and time-consuming migration process, which not only saves time but also significantly reduces the risk of data loss.
One thing to note is that an MVP is not synonymous with bad quality. It’s just a normal eCommerce website that’s supposed to attract visitors and convert them into customers. It should have a pleasant look and feel and load fast. The only difference is in a smaller number of features.
Trying to give your MVP all the required functionality, you might add several plugins that can be incompatible with one another. This will slow down your website and make your visitors’ experience of using it more complicated.
Another challenge that an MVP creator may face is that stock themes may look very much alike. Therefore, there’s a risk that the MVP will be lost among many similar sites.
To overcome these issues, you can contact the GetDevDone WordPress development team. If you’re looking to build an online store then WooCommerce development team is your best choice. With thousands of WP projects successfully completed over the last decade, we are unrivaled experts in all aspects of the most popular CMS in the world.
We can advise you on the choice of core features for your MVP website and help you pick the most suitable plugins to prevent conflicts and glitches. If you need a custom plugin, we can develop that too. Changing a ready-made theme or creating a unique one is also what we can do better and faster than most companies that currently offer WordPress development services.
GetDevDone can take care of building an entire MVP in only hours thanks to our S.W.A.T. team — ASAP developers. Just tell us what you need and see your MVP live soon!