Summary

In this article, we’ll outline the end-to-end steps of what takes place in a thorough user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) web design process and discuss what modern web design requires to be successful.

—

You may have read our in-depth guide to creating a brief for a web design and development project. A brief can be used to capture all your ideas and requirements before discussing your project with any web design and development agencies. 

Once you’ve completed your brief, and evaluated your options for agency partners, you’ll be ready to launch into your website project. 

An end-to-end website project is typically organised into phases, which will usually be structured as follows: 

1. Design
2. Development
3. Quality Assurance Testing
4. Migration and Launch.

We’ve provided a detailed breakdown of these phases in a recent series of articles. This series is intended to give you a clear understanding of the full end-to-end process involved when working with an agency to design and develop a website. This will help you remove any apprehension heading into this kind of project and set you up for success.

The Current State of Web Design

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

Steve Jobs, Co-Founder and former CEO of Apple.

While web design does focus on the visual aspects of the site, there’s a lot more to it than just the aesthetic elements like colour schemes and typography. 

Web design is a complex blend of branding, user experience (UX) design, user interface (UI) design, graphic design, content creation, layout and structure, accessibility, and much more.

The design of your website needs to be visually attractive but, more importantly, it also needs to be simple and easy-to-use. Your website needs to find the perfect balance between supporting your strategic objectives and serving your clients with a seamless experience. Of course, that’s much easier said than done, which is why it’s so important to find an experienced partner you can trust to guide you through the process. 

Outlining the Web Design Process 

Phase 1 – Research and Planning

The phase that underpins  EVERYTHING!

A good agency will have absorbed everything in your project brief. They should also have worked hard to understand your perspective and your requirements from your website, before you’ve even agreed to work together. 

Once you’re preparing to launch the project, the research and planning phase will then go beyond that initial information gathering exercise. 

The objective of this phase is to define the full scope of the website, including its design, its features and functionality, its content, and everything else involved. 

Your site will be discussed in extensive detail, and then research will be conducted into some key areas that will inform your design and development, such as:

• Strategy
• Website Data 
• Target Audience
• Industry Landscape
• Competitors.

Whether you’re making small updates to an existing design or completely rebranding your business, it’s equally important to use this research to inform every decision you make. That’s because every element of your site’s design must be made to support your business goals and serve your target audience with a great user experience (UX). 

This research and planning phase is essential in enabling you and your agency partner to do that. 

Phase 2 – Visual Exploration

This exploratory phase involves defining the most appropriate and effective visual direction to take with your site. 

The main tool used to help determine the right visual identity for your website is a set of mood boards. These are a visual compilation of different options for colour, typography, structure, images, and other visual components that are used to tell your brand’s story through your website’s design. 

A good agency partner will usually present around three mood boards to help shape the direction, then collaborate with you to narrow it down to one final version. 

Visual exploration, like most processes within web design and development, will be collaborative and iterative. You’ll be presented with ideas by your agency partner, then given the chance to provide feedback across several rounds of revisions. 

Phase 3 – User Experience (UX) Design

The UX design process is the phase in which you work with your agency’s UX specialist to create a blueprint of the website functionality. 

This involves creating wireframes (either low-fidelity or high fidelity) that help you visualise the design and outline your website visitors’ flow through the pages into your main calls-to-action. This is the way the website’s design works strategically to drive outcomes that align with your business goals.

This phase takes place before working on the site’s visual design to ensure the two separate aspects complement each other. 

Phase 4 – User Interface (UI) Design

From there, your user interface (UI) will be designed. The styles, fonts, and look and feel of the site from the mood boards will be applied to the wireframes. 

Your agency will likely present you with a design for your homepage before moving on to the rest of the site. This will typically be done on a desktop screen size, but it can be done on mobile if you want to take a mobile-first approach. Once this is complete, it will then be designed across the relevant breakpoints.

After completing this process, your agency partner will be ready to enter into developing your website.

Making Complex Processes Simple

As technology continues to become more advanced, more and more of our daily lives now take place in a digital-first context. This means:

• Your target audience now has a shorter attention span, and less patience when browsing websites and services online
• Your target audience also has more choice of options than ever before when choosing who to buy from. 

In order to succeed, your website’s design requires careful planning, research, and a strategic approach if it hopes to meet the demands of the modern client.

Working with a specialist design and development agency is a proven approach to ensuring you gain a website that meets your requirements and delivers on the expectations of your target audience. 

Completing a process like the one outlined in this article will enable you to design a website that can become your clients’ go-to online source when they have a need. 

As mentioned earlier, we’ve provided a step-by-step guide to each of these phases to make the process even easier for you. 

To learn how to easily navigate the research and planning phase of a web design and development project, read our next article here.

Would you like these insights straight to your mailbox?

Your emailSubmit

I consent to my submitted data being processed and stored by SoBold in compliance with Privacy Policy

As part of our web design series, we recently explained the process we follow when designing the UX of a website. If you’ve not read that already, it will be useful to go and have a look first before reading this article.

A study by Forrester Research has found that a well-designed UI has the potential to increase your website’s conversion rates by up to a 200% while UX design could raise conversion rates by a staggering 400%. 

Whether you’re working with a web design and development agency or an independent designer, this process is equally important. Nailing the UI design process is a crucial step towards producing a website that will maximise engagement with your target audience and help you achieve your business goals. 

So, let’s take a detailed look at how to run a successful UI design process.

User Interface (UI) Design at a Glance

The UI design process is the creation of the visual design elements of your website. Think about UI as the way in which you convey your brand’s visual identity and bring your UX to life. The UI is there to facilitate the UX.

How Does the UI Design Process Work? 

As mentioned in our related article, UI design is typically the fourth phase of the end-to-end process of web design.

Earlier in the process, we recommend conducting a visual exploration exercise, using mood boards to gain a clear understanding of how your brand will be conveyed and how your website will look and feel.

That visual exploration phase of the project is a pre-cursor to your UI design, as it creates the visual identity of the website, including use of colour, font, blank space, buttons, and more. Some agencies do this as part of the UI phase, but here at SoBold we like to keep it as its own stand-alone phase. You can learn all about the visual exploration phase and how it works here. 

After you’ve been through the UX design process, you’ll have approved a set of wireframes, which give you a blueprint of your website’s structure and flow before anything is built properly.

Once you’ve approved those wireframes, then the visual design created with the mood boards will be applied to bring them to life. This is essentially how you create your UI.

Your agency will typically begin with the design of your website’s homepage. Like each phase previously, you can expect this UI design process to be collaborative. Be prepared to have all the stakeholders available to provide feedback to your agency, and work with them to perfect the design when it’s combined with the wireframes.

Once the homepage is approved, your design will then be applied across all the pages of your site. Again, this is an iterative, collaborative process based on feedback and revisions.

Responsive Design Testing 

On completion of the desktop designs, your agency partner will work on designing the site across multiple break-points. To ensure your site is responsive across all the most popular devices, the following break-points should be tested as a minimum:

• 1,920px – This covers most external computer monitor sizes
• 1,366px – This covers most laptop screen sizes
• 992px – This covers most Notebook and iPad devices
• 768px – This covers most other tablet devices
• 375px – This covers most smartphones.

You’ll then reach the exciting part, where your website is fully designed for you to view, test, and play around with. Once you’re happy with the design across the different break-points, your agency partner will be ready to prepare the design for a development handover. 

What Does Effective UI Design Involve? 

Good UI design is something that should feel seamless and almost invisible to your visitors when they land on your website. The aesthetics and visual style should be simple and engaging, while not distracting from the UX. 

These days, you only have a matter of seconds to make a positive impression that can retain your visitors’ attention, so it’s crucial you don’t over-complicate things. But what differentiates good UI from bad UI in practical terms? 

Like with UX design, there are some best practices you can follow to ensure your website has an effective, attractive UI. 

Follow these guidelines to create a UI that delivers the desired experience for your visitors and supports your website’s strategic objectives: 

• Keep your design simple and your content succinct
• Prioritise the preferences and best interests of your target audience
• Make your design elements as clear as possible 
• Maintain consistency
• Ensure your brand, and your company’s identity, have been accurately represented through the design
• Use power of visual imagery to capture and retain your visitors’ attention 
• Make your call-to-action as strong and compelling as possible
• Don’t create anything that interferes with the goals of your UX.

Check out our related article for seven helpful tips to ensure your website is designed with great usability here for additional guidance. 

The Importance of Accessibility 

Accessibility is the practice of making technology as easy to use as possible, and fully accessible to everyone. While web accessibility is largely intended to help people with disabilities gain better usage of technology, it’s also much broader than that. 

There are people who have difficulty using certain types of, or aspects of, technology who don’t have a disability. For instance, someone with deteriorating eyesight may find it difficult to read small text on a smartphone screen.

It’s also important to ensure your website is as easy to use as possible for the average person as well, because you should always strive to deliver the best possible UX for all your visitors. Accessibility is a key driver of this.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which are used to define what constitutes good accessibility, lists four key principles of web accessibility that should be followed by all websites. 

This means your website must be:

1. Perceivable
2. Operable
3. Understandable
4. Robust.

Web accessibility is an important topic, so we’ll talk more about that in a separate article. For now, it’s worth noting that any web design and development agency you work with should consider accessibility a top priority when designing the UI of your website. If they don’t, you should challenge them and ask why not.

Here at SoBold, this is built-in to all our design processes. We believe that all technology should be inclusive and equally available to everyone, regardless of their physical ability, location, personal background, or any other factors. 

Some design best practices that we’d recommend you always follow to ensure your website is fully accessible, from a UI design perspective, include: 

• Use contrast and blank space to make your content easy to perceive
• Use bold colours 
• Use font sizes no smaller than 14px for desktop and 13px for mobile across the whole site (although, this does depend on the font you use)
• Use headings and structure correctly to organise content clearly on each page
• Make all your content easy to both see and hear
• Write all your copy in plain, simple language
• Avoid any flashing or blinking imagery or video content 
• Write simple, clear, and helpful error messages.

Preparing Your Website for Development 

As you can see, UI design is mainly a case of applying the visual design that was created with the mood boards to your UX wireframes with the agreed flow. Good UI is no more than a clean, simple design that accurately represents your brand identity. While it sounds straightforward, it’s important to remember this is just one phase in the holistic, end-to-end process of web design. 

To conclude the design process after the UI is complete, your agency will prepare your site’s designs for development. To learn how this process works, understand what to expect, and ensure your own web development process runs smoothly, read our next article in the series here.

Would you like these insights straight to your mailbox?

Your emailSubmit

I consent to my submitted data being processed and stored by SoBold in compliance with Privacy Policy

SoBold are delighted to announce that they have been awarded the world’s most recognised Quality Management System Standard, ISO 9001.

SoBold have worked incredibly hard over the past few years to set and follow processes and procedures as a company that ensure they are providing quality work to their clients. 

As the number of enterprise clients grows, SoBold’s ISO 9001 certification will be able to give their clients the assurances they need around SoBold’s consistency and quality services in the work they produce. 

ISO 9001 is one of the most commonly used management system across the world and SoBold believes this is going to open up considerably more opportunities with winning tenders and contracts to ensure SoBold continues to be one of the leading WordPress Website Design and Development Agencies in the UK.

As SoBold continue to scale as a business, the need for efficiency has never been greater. It is absolutely essential that all internal communication works to the same processes and agenda and the ISO 9001 certification allows this to be possible.

In order to achieve our ISO 9001 certification, SoBold worked closely with QMS International, who provide expert consultancy to businesses looking to achieve their certification. QMS have a team of over 50 consultants and auditors and they ensure the experience they provide is streamlined and uncomplicated. 

SoBold Technical Director, Sam Phillips said:

We are delighted to have been issued with our ISO 9001 certification, recognising our commitment to quality. Over the past 12 months we’ve spent a great deal of time improving and documenting our internal processes to help streamline delivery of projects and ensure we continue to deliver on the high standards we set for ourselves. Achieving this certification is a reflection of all this work.

Would you like these insights straight to your mailbox?

Your emailSubmit

I consent to my submitted data being processed and stored by SoBold in compliance with Privacy Policy

Penetration testing, often abbreviated as pen testing, is an essential process to ensure you maintain a safe and secure website. But what exactly does pen testing involve, and how can you rest assured your agency partner is covering all potential vulnerabilities for you? 

This article will provide a detailed guide to penetration testing, helping you minimise your security risks and ensure your website is fully protected. 

In a recent series of articles published in our resource library, we provided an in-depth explanation of the end-to-end process of building a high-performance, enterprise-grade website. (If you’d like to read that series first before learning about pen testing, you can start here). 

After you’ve worked with your agency partner to successfully build your website, you’ll also need to ensure your site is protected from cyber security threats.  With that in mind, you should understand the important role that pen testing plays in effective website security and maintenance. 

What is Penetration Testing? 

Penetration testing is a form of website testing that’s used to identify security vulnerabilities When conducting pen testing on your site, your agency will simulate a range of cyber attacks that could be used by cyber criminals or malicious software (malware). 

The purpose of this is to identify security weaknesses within your site and take action to prevent them from being exploited in the real world. This approach goes beyond basic tests, as it doesn’t just list the vulnerabilities, it examines how they could be exploited and helps to prevent that from happening. 

Why is it Crucial for an Agency to Conduct Penetration Testing? 

Website security is critical in today’s digital business landscape. Cyber security threats have become highly intelligent and sophisticated, now capable of penetrating even the strongest security networks. 

For instance, global technology giant Acer was the victim of a cyber security attack that demanded a ransom of $50 million USD in recent years. 

The outcomes of a cyber attack on your website could be catastrophic, either through sensitive data being stolen, lengthy losses of business continuity, or even reputational damage. 

Remember, your site’s security isn’t just vital to you as a business, it’s also something your clients need assurance with when they agree to work with you. You should be taking as many proactive steps as possible to ensure your security measures are rigorous enough to match high levels of risk. 

Covering All Bases for Robust Security (in WordPress)

It’s useful to be conscious of the common security weaknesses and pitfalls cyber criminals typically aim to take advantage of. 

Security vulnerabilities can be created when your website is running on outdated versions of your platform, or if something hasn’t been configured or integrated properly. Other common pitfalls include weak authentication measures and insufficient protection from the perspective of your users. 

With platforms like WordPress, there are some areas in which less experienced agencies could allow security vulnerabilities to creep in as well. For instance: 

• Auto-updates – When your platform’s software is automatically updated, changes in the code can cause new security weaknesses to arise. 
• Plugins – Using WordPress plugins from untrustworthy sources, or neglecting to update and maintain your plugins properly, can also cause security issues. 

This is one of many reasons why it’s important to work with an experienced agency partner who has proven platform-specific knowledge and expertise. Your agency should know your CMS of choice inside out, and should therefore be well aware of all the most common security pitfalls and targets for cyber attacks. 

What Does Effective Penetration Testing Involve? 

To conduct pen testing, your agency’s security experts will run through a process that attempts to penetrate your site’s security measures. 

This is usually done in stages, as follows: 

1 – Planning and Preparation

1. Review the results and analysis of any previous tests (if there are any)
2. Define the scope of the testing, including which tests will be performed
3. Gather all necessary data and information on the system to conduct the testing
4. Determine the criteria of success or failure for the tests.

2 – Running the Tests 

1. Use automated tools to scan for vulnerabilities and identify weaknesses 
2. Attempt to exploit the identified weaknesses 
3. Repeat the tests with different types of user roles and permissions
4. Measure the outcomes against criteria for success or failure 
5. Create a report on the outcomes and results of the tests. 

3 – Post-Testing 

1. Review the reports and analyse the results 
2. Remediate and resolve the vulnerabilities that were able to be exploited
3. Re-test the vulnerabilities to ensure remediation was successful.

The Benefits of Thorough Penetration Testing

Working with an agency partner who can support you with ongoing pen testing is a necessary step towards gaining enterprise-grade security for your website.

Technology changes so quickly today. Your platform receives updates regularly, your site is always growing, and cyber criminals are constantly finding new ways to breach your defences and gain access to your data. Penetration testing allows you to keep the pace with new emerging vulnerabilities. 

Conducting regular pen testing can also help improve client relationships and create competitive advantages as well. In certain industries, a demonstrable commitment to security will be greatly appreciated by your target audience. This can help to differentiate you from the competition and provide the trust required to attract more prospective clients to work with you.

Website Security is a Never-Ending Battle 

While every business with a website faces tremendous security risks today, this is a proven process that can help to minimise that risk and give you the confidence you need in your site’s security.

Any agency partner you work with should have the knowledge and expertise to understand the importance of pen testing, and should insist on making this an integral, ongoing part of your site’s maintenance. 

Would you like these insights straight to your mailbox?

Your emailSubmit

I consent to my submitted data being processed and stored by SoBold in compliance with Privacy Policy

Summary 

Despite being the most popular content management system in the world, many large businesses and organisations in strictly regulated industries are still asking, “Is WordPress secure enough for us?”

This article will give you a detailed explanation of how WordPress can provide enterprise-grade security, to help you make your own decision about whether it’s secure enough for your own business. We’ll also share some helpful tips to enhance the platform’s security and reduce its risks even further.

As technology has become more pervasive in our daily lives, cyber security concerns have intensified, especially in the workplace. Each year, we read about more high-profile cases of global brands becoming victims of malicious cyber attacks, most often with sensitive data being the real target.

As a business, you should be increasingly careful and vigilant about the technology solutions you deploy today. This is even more important for large businesses and organisations in industries with strict regulations, where the consequences of security issues can be catastrophic.

When you’re choosing a content management system (CMS) to build critical digital assets like your website, security must therefore be a top priority. 

Despite being the most popular CMSs in the world today – powering almost 45% of the world’s websites – WordPress is still seen by some as the platform for smaller organisations. You’d think its popularity alone would be sufficient evidence that WordPress is secure, especially as a large fraction of that user base includes enterprises across both the public and private sectors. However, when it comes to WordPress security, there are still some question marks.

So, is WordPress secure? 

Yes, absolutely. 

But there are certain factors and potential pitfalls you should be aware of if you’re considering WordPress as your CMS of choice. 

Understanding Security in a CMS 

As business challenges with cyber security and data protection continue to grow, selecting a platform that offers robust security is crucial. But how does that work, exactly?

Ultimately, a CMS like WordPress is just a piece of software, and all software can be vulnerable to security issues in a variety of ways.  

The most obvious of these is a cyber security attack, either by hackers, a virus, or malicious software (malware). Any CMS used in a business environment needs to be built to withstand these attacks on a daily basis, and WordPress is definitely capable of doing so.

Another significant risk is when software has accidental weaknesses, issues, or vulnerabilities – known as bugs – built into its code. Bugs are common in software, and they can manifest as anything from a box appearing in the wrong place on your website to a platform vulnerability that leaks mission-critical data to cyber criminals.

Bugs aren’t difficult to fix, and we’ll explain later in this article why WordPress users can be confident that these kinds of risks are minimal with the platform.

However, when it comes to a CMS’s security, it’s important to understand the following point: 

The biggest security risks, and the greatest opportunities for cyber criminals, are unsafe user behaviour, lack of best practices, insufficient maintenance, and poorly built sites. Not the platform itself.

Your behaviour, and the behaviour of your end-users, is an area that can be exploited or cause problems if you don’t prioritise security. That’s why it’s necessary to take a proactive, rather than reactive, approach to protecting your data. The rest of this article will help you do that, and remove any concerns you still have about WordPress security. 

Is WordPress Secure? 

The misconception that WordPress isn’t secure enough for large businesses still lingers, but why? Well, the main reason is because the platform is free-to-use, and so it was initially most popular among B2C blogs and smaller independent businesses. 

Today, however, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Industry-leading enterprises such as private equity advisory firm Rede Partners LLP, global investment firm Coller Capital, and global research and advisory leader Forrester use WordPress for their CMS, just to name a few. This goes a long way to proving the apprehension towards WordPress security is unnecessary. 

So, let’s explore the WordPress platform in more detail to understand why these global enterprises have full confidence in the security of their data, as well as the data of their clients and partners. 

WordPress is already a secure, stable platform out-of-the-box.. You can rest assured its core code is highly secure, because it’s overseen by a team of security experts who thoroughly test and quality-check it on a continual basis. They regularly release updates and reinforce any potential weaknesses before they’re exploited to protect you against any new-found threats. 

A team of security analysts study the ever-changing cyber security landscape and respond to it with speed and precision.

While WordPress may be seen by some as a CMS for small businesses, the speed at which security updates are implemented is arguably the best in the world when compared to other platforms.

WordPress is also open-source software, which means all the code it’s built on is available to the public. Anyone from outside the WordPress team can view it, download it, and make adjustments to it. Users often suggest their own changes and updates to the code by submitting them to the WordPress moderator team for approval. If improvements are made to the WordPress code, these updates will be released to the global user base.

These people are part of a global community of dedicated, passionate users who work hard to ensure the platform is always developing into the best version of itself possible. Anything WordPress’s own team misses, the developer community will catch. This means users are often fixing bugs and shutting down potential opportunities for cyber criminals, keeping the platform safe for everyone else. 

WordPress Security Vulnerabilities

While WordPress does have the support of some of the brightest developers in the world, who keep it as secure as possible, they can’t take care of everything for you. As mentioned earlier, your biggest security risks will probably lie within your own business, regardless of what CMS you’re using.

Additional security vulnerabilities can arise in certain scenarios, often caused by ignoring best practices or failing to take responsibility for simple maintenance of the platform.

Web Hosting 

Your hosting environment is an important factor that can influence how secure and protected your data will be. Your WordPress websites will be hosted in a server that stores your files and data in a data centre. 

WordPress, like any platform, should be hosted in a secure environment, with an experienced provider who prioritises security as part of their services. This should include putting proactive security measures in place for scenarios like unplanned down-time or even natural disasters.

Secure hosting should also involve automated monitoring for malicious activity and vulnerabilities in your servers and software, as well as incident response.

Before choosing your hosting service, be sure to carry out some due diligence and look into the security best practices of your host. In many cases, it’s wise to work with an agency partner who will help you with this, but more on that later.

Plugins 

While the WordPress community is one of the platform’s greatest strengths, interacting with unsafe additions to the software can also be its downfall for some businesses. It’s important to be cautious of the constant stream of new features, updates, and plugins being made available, because some of them could create issues for you.

To avoid these problems, you shouldn’t download plugins unless they come from recognised, credible sources. Furthermore, you should always ensure all your plugins are correctly tested, maintained, and updated.

We appreciate this may sound complicated. For that reason, you should entrust this responsibility to a partner. When using WordPress to build and manage websites, a good agency should help you ensure everything is secure and up-to-date.

Software Updates

When you’re running a website or application on WordPress, you’ll regularly receive software updates from the platform. Any time an update comes through, it’s because certain bugs have been fixed or some improvements have been made.

It’s crucial that you keep up with WordPress updates because they’re there to keep your site secure. By leaving your site running on outdated versions, you’re at risk of a known issue being exploited by cyber attacks. Again, this should be taken care of by your agency partner so you don’t need to worry about keeping your web platform up-to-date.

Tips to Strengthen WordPress Security 

If you still have doubts, there are some simple steps you can take to further strengthen the security of the WordPress CMS. Some of these more general tips can also be applied to most website platforms and other software software products in general as well.

Use a managed hosting service that offers enterprise-grade security. 

You wouldn’t rent an office in a building that leaves its doors unlocked at night. Why would you place your sensitive data in a data centre that isn’t fully secure?

Some things you should consider non-negotiable for a web hosting provider to offer include: 

• 24/7 support
• Back-up and disaster recovery
• Fully-managed service
• Automated monitoring and alerts
• 99.99% up-time
• 100% pass-rate for data centre audits.

Put back-up and disaster recovery services in place to ensure you’re protected from all potential risks.

To build on the above point, ensure your hosting service has measures in place for back-up and disaster recovery. This fail-safe measure will give you a way to save and recover all your data in the event of any losses. 

Do not use, or allow your agency to use, any plugins from unrecognised sources. 

As mentioned earlier, only use plugins from sources you trust. You should also keep all plugins and additions to the platform up-to-date, and make sure they’re rigorously tested – or, rather, make sure you can rely on your agency partner to do this for you behind the scenes.

Use plugins alongside security-specific enhancements.

You can further bolster the security of the WordPress platform by leveraging security-specific plugins such as WordFence, Sucuri, and Defender Pro. These can inform you of potential vulnerabilities or incidents so you can respond quickly before they have an impact on your business.

Don’t use tools that enable direct access to your site database from within the dashboard. 

Some digital tools or extensions give direct access to your site’s database or files from within the dashboard, to make managing your website easier. This is something to avoid, because they’re often a major security risk.

Enable SSL 

Enabling SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) introduces a protocol which encrypts the transfer of data between your website and your users’ browsers. This makes it more difficult for cyber criminals to steal information and data online.

Encourage your users to follow security best practices.

You can put all the security measures and data protection possible in place, but they could all be for nothing if a weak password or bad behaviour compromises your website.  

Some  security best practices every business can easily implement include making strong passwords compulsory among all users and introducing additional measures like two-factor authentication.

Rely on an Expert to Minimise Your Security Risks

As touched on throughout this article, another factor which will determine how secure your WordPress platform is will be which agency you decide to work with.

While deciding whether to invest in WordPress is a big decision, don’t underestimate the importance of finding the right agency partner to support you with your CMS, especially when it comes to WordPress security.

Ultimately, you should understand that:

• WordPress by itself, out-of-the-box, is secure enough for most businesses to use. 
• WordPress in the hands of an inexperienced or negligent agency will create significant security risks. 
• WordPress is the hands of a dedicated, specialist partner is a platform you can trust and rely on without any concerns.

Your data will be fully protected if you work with an agency who takes security seriously and prioritises it at the core of every development task they deliver for you.

That means they should be capable of handling secure architecture, testing, monitoring, updates, and ongoing support for you as part of your service. You should always take the time and care to find a specialist agency partner who has a proven track record of building robust, reliable sites, to ensure you’re minimising your risk.

WordPress is a Suitable Platform for the Enterprise 

Cyber security and data protection are critical for businesses of all sizes, across all industries. But it can’t be denied that large businesses often face more severe consequences by falling victim to a cyber attack or data breach. 

Choosing a platform that you have total confidence in is a necessary factor in the process of evaluating your options for a CMS.  

When you have your own role and responsibilities to focus on, the last thing you want is to be constantly worrying about the security of your site. Following the advice and best practices listed in this article will provide you with a highly resilient WordPress platform with enterprise-grade security. That will allow you to spend more of your time creating an outstanding website that differentiates you from your competitors and drives business growth. 

If you need more help understanding and evaluating platforms to deliver a web design and development project, read our comprehensive guide to selecting the right solution here.

Would you like these insights straight to your mailbox?

Your emailSubmit

I consent to my submitted data being processed and stored by SoBold in compliance with Privacy Policy