WordPress is one of the most straightforward platforms you can use to start a website. You install it, configure it, add the required plugins and themes, and write the content. After that, you’re pretty much good to go. However, if you’re looking to elevate your website or need expert guidance, choosing the best WordPress consultant can make a significant difference. The right consultant can help you avoid common pitfalls. They will ensure your site is optimized for performance, SEO, and user experience.
However, things drastically change when we talk about a business website. This usually means adding custom functionalities, launching complex platforms and integration, security, compliance, and optimizations. In the following article, I will show you how a WordPress consultant can save you thousands of dollars and months of research and testing.
First, let’s see exactly what a WordPress consultant is.
What Is a WordPress Consultant?
As it may sound, a WordPress consultant should help you make the best decisions for your business based on their experience and past projects. People often mistake them for freelancers, but that’s far from the truth.
A WordPress freelancer is someone who can help you with specific WordPress tasks or a particular project to be completed. They can assist with installing WordPress, configuring plugins, optimizing the website, completing small tasks, and more.
On the other hand, a WordPress consultant provides a more holistic approach to your business. If you’re unsure how to choose the best WordPress consultant, look for someone who can advise on the overall strategy of how your website fits in with your business goals. Their experience typically goes beyond just WordPress. It includes development, system architecture, website security, performance, search engine optimization, and business growth.
You’ll get the help of a WordPress consultant when you want advice from someone with vast knowledge and experience in WordPress. Sometimes, if your goals are too complex, you may need to bring two or more WordPress consultants together. For example, a WordPress developer and an SEO specialist could collaborate to implement the best technical SEO strategy.
Before going further, let’s discuss the benefits of hiring a WordPress consultant.
The Benefits of Hiring a WordPress Consultant
If you want to take your website to the next level, check out the following three benefits of relying on a WordPress consultant:
A Multidisciplinary Approach at Your Disposal
Most WordPress consultants have extensive knowledge in multiple areas connected to WordPress. For instance, a WordPress agency like WPRiders has an in-house staff of developers, digital marketers, security specialists, and designers, to name a few. If you’re looking for expert advice, choosing the best WordPress consultant can provide you with a comprehensive team that covers all aspects of your website’s strategy, from development to security, and ensures its success in the long term.
By hiring a WordPress consultant, you will have at your disposal someone that can help you with the following:
- WordPress development – recommend a WordPress plugin stack, estimate the costs of custom work required, etc.
- SEO – do an SEO audit, analyze your website structure, review your on-site SEO, and create an SEO strategy for your WordPress website.
- Website Performance – do a performance audit, make a list of improvements, etc.
- Security – Security plays a vital role. A consultant should do a complete website security audit, identify issues and make recommendations on fixing them.
- Competition research – staying on top of your competition is critical to the success of your website. A consultant will inform you of your industry’s latest trends and technologies.
- Business development – make recommendations on the MVP costs and features, software stack, integrations, and automation solutions you could use to lower the costs and improve performance.
As you can see, a consultant or a team of WordPress consultants can bring expert knowledge, experience, and the right resources to ensure your WordPress website is well-taken care of.
Getting Answers to Your Specific Questions
You can get WordPress support in many places, including the official WordPress forums, blogs, tutorial sites, etc. However, instead of searching through dozens of websites and trying to find a solution close to your problem, a WordPress consultant can offer you a detailed answer to yours.
WordPress consultants provide one-to-one support. This can save you time and money that you might otherwise spend trying to find the best solution to your issue. By choosing the best WordPress consultant, you ensure you’re getting personalized advice. Expert guidance will be tailored specifically to your needs. This helps you avoid costly mistakes and achieve the best results.
Save Time and Money
Working with a consultant from the beginning can save you money and time. You will establish the right stack of plugins and tools from the start. This will help you achieve your plans effectively. On top of that, you will end up with an optimized stack. It will not break when you need to add new features or integrate with other solutions.
You will address essential matters like security and performance early on. This way, you’ll have peace of mind knowing that, in case of a traffic spike or a security incident, you are covered.
If you decide not to work with a WordPress consultant, all the matters I’ve presented above can cost you a lot when they happen. Or may even put you out of business if we discuss a data breach or a hacking incident.
In the screenshot below, you can see a review on Clutch.co, written by one of our customers we helped with consulting. We researched the right plugin stack for his website, so in the end, he could save over $10,000 by using premium plugins instead of custom coding from scratch the functionalities he required.
In summary, if you have clear business objectives, you can start looking for a WordPress consultant!
How to Hire the Right WordPress Consultant
From the beginning, I would like to tell you that choosing the right WordPress consultant for your business is not an easy task. It requires time, patience, and a good plan.
Here are some tips to help you get started:
Please Make Sure They’re Involved in the WordPress Community
Most of the well-known WordPress consultants are involved in the WordPress community. Some contribute to the WordPress ecosystem. Others you can meet at conferences or local events like WordCamp. Some also run successful agencies, YouTube channels, or podcasts.
Other ways to find consultants include checking out recommendations from popular WordPress sites.
However, most of these consultants have a team they work with. This means you’d be working with more specialists, which may be a better fit depending on the results you plan to achieve.
Check Their Reviews and Case Studies.
At this point, you may have a few shortlisted consultants and companies you want to move forward with. So it’s time to get all the information about them.
Experienced WordPress consultants usually have plenty of reviews and case studies from previous projects. Check those and see if any of them are related to your case. You can take this one step further and ask for references to see what other clients’ experience was like working with them.
You should also schedule meetings with them and ask them relevant questions. And this brings us to the next point.
Ask the Right Questions to See if They’re a Good Fit
Here are some questions to help you narrow the list down to a single option:
- What exactly does my WordPress consulting package cover?
- Can you tell me how the consulting process works?
- What are the results I should expect during the consulting contract?
- Can you share the results you provided for clients, preferably similar to ours, in the past?
- Are you sure you can handle my expectations?
We’ve written an article about the top 10 questions you should ask your future maintenance agency. Some of these questions apply to hiring a consultant so that you may give it a quick read.
Obviously, at some point, you’ll also need to talk about the consultant’s rates. Make sure those fit your budget, but you usually get exactly what you are paying for. So don’t be afraid to invest in a WordPress consultant that can bring your business to the next level with his knowledge and experience.
Conclusion
The bottom line is that hiring a WordPress consultant can be an excellent investment in the future of your business. That’s because the right WordPress consultant can help save you time and money and take your business to the next level.
