WordPress User Training Vs. Outsourcing: Which Is Better For The WordPress Economy?
Is it better to encourage WordPress end-users to outsource their website’s needs or train and empower them to use their websites more effectively? Which option is better for the sustainability of the WordPress economy?
If cars were built only for professional racers and mechanics instead of giving everyone a vehicle they can learn to use to drive themselves wherever they want to go, the global automobile industry would not exist.
Similarly, if WordPress focuses only on serving a community of technical users (e.g. web developers) instead of giving users a digital vehicle they can learn to use to drive their businesses wherever they want it to go, will there be a sustainable global WordPress industry in the future?
This article explores the importance of training and empowering end-users to learn how to use their WordPress websites more effectively, versus encouraging users to “leave it all to the experts” and recommending that they outsource all their WordPress website’s needs.
Consider this…
WordPress Is The World’s Leading CMS Platform
WordPress now powers around 40% of the world’s Content Management System (CMS)-driven websites. No other platform even comes close to the market share that WordPress currently enjoys.
Millions of websites around the world are being powered by WordPress.
As the above shows, WordPress is not only huge on a worldwide scale, but it also supports a global industry of web service providers (e.g. web hosting companies, web developers, freelancers, digital agencies, etc.)
According to a recent study, the WordPress economy is currently valued at over $600 billion.
But…
Without Non-Technical End-Users, There Is No WordPress Economy
The WordPress industry relies on end-users continuing to choose to use WordPress to power their sites.
The sustainability of the entire WordPress economy, therefore, relies on end-users choosing to use the WordPress platform.
The largest sector of WordPress end-users, however, are non-technical end-users.
Non-technical end-users own or work in businesses with WordPress-powered websites, but have no interest in learning “techie stuff” like web development, coding, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc., and their businesses are typically unrelated to areas like web development.
Non-technical end-users also don’t want to learn how to build, configure, customize, or optimize their websites. Most don’t even care what platform their websites are built on.
Most WordPress users simply want an online presence that will help them grow their businesses.
So, they hire website developers to build and manage their websites.
But…
Non-Technical End-Users Need To Feel Empowered and In Control Of Their Websites
Let’s go back to the automobile industry analogy.
Imagine someone walking into a display showroom and purchasing a vehicle, only to discover that they can’t drive it anywhere without also hiring and bringing along on every trip a full-time chauffeur to drive them from A to B, full-time mechanics to keep their car running and optimally serviced and maintained, and a navigator on their passenger seat continually looking at maps and instructing them where to go.
This is the situation that many WordPress end-users find themselves in, especially those who are encouraged by their service providers to “leave everything to the experts” and outsource all their website’s needs.
That’s a lot of additional expenses that WordPress end-users have to incur to be able to drive their own vehicles.
If other people are continually driving, managing, servicing, and looking after their digital vehicles, would users even know or care whether their website runs on WordPress? It would probably make no difference to them what platform their website runs on because they are completely disassociated from driving it.
WordPress end-users are just like anyone and everyone who buys an automobile. They want to feel empowered to drive it wherever they want to go and be in control of their own vehicle.
This requires not only building WordPress end-users a great digital vehicle that can take them anywhere they want to go but also giving them the keys to drive it.
Effective and empowering WordPress end-user training is the key.
Why Training Non-Technical WordPress End-Users Is Vital For The Growth Of WordPress
The challenge facing the WordPress industry can be summed up as follows:
If the growth and sustainability of the WordPress economy depend on non-technical end-users choosing to keep using the WordPress platform for their websites, then the WordPress industry as a whole needs to commit to training and empowering non-technical end-users to use WordPress more effectively.
Think about it…
“The more you empower non-technical WordPress users, the more WordPress products and services they will want to use.”
So, it’s vitally important that all WordPress businesses should make every effort to educate, train, teach and empower their non-technical clients to use their WordPress websites more effectively.
As we argue in other articles, however, not only is WordPress end-user training very challenging, it’s also the invisible elephant in the room.
Most of the WordPress industry encourages users to “leave it all to the experts” and outsource their website’s needs to technical and professional service providers…everything from building, setting up, configuring, optimizing, and managing their websites, to SEO, content creation, and digital marketing.
Building a global industry on the back of millions of completely disempowered users, however, is like building the proverbial house on the sand as told in the biblical parable of the wise and the foolish builders.
We believe there’s a happy medium for the WordPress industry as a whole, where non-techies can outsource areas of their website to experts and professionals while also being trained to feel empowered and in control of their web presence.
WordPress Outsourcing vs WordPress User Training
There’s no arguing with the fact that encouraging non-technical WordPress end-users to outsource their websites’ needs to WordPress service providers is vital to the WordPress economy. Outsourcing web services can create new opportunities for many thousands of businesses worldwide in WordPress-related areas like web development, web design, content creation, digital marketing, managed web hosting, etc., and allows users to focus more time and resources on other areas of their businesses.
While all areas of a WordPress website can be outsourced…from WordPress installation, setup, configuration, and customization, to website management and maintenance, content production, content management, online marketing, etc., outsourcing is not always a viable option for many end-users, however, especially many small businesses.
WordPress allows end-users to manage just about every aspect of their website themselves if users only cared to learn and were properly trained and shown how to do it.
Many WordPress end-users, however, are not shown how to take over simple areas of managing and running their own websites. Many users, in fact, are actively discouraged from doing so by their service providers for various reasons (e.g. fear that clients will ‘break’ their sites if they click buttons and change settings in their admin or just purely financially-driven motives).
The key is to provide end-users with choice.
We believe that users should have the choice of deciding whether they want to outsource areas of managing their WordPress websites to their service providers or manage some of these areas themselves.
Before end-users can even make this choice, however, they need to be:
- Educated about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress.
- Explained the pros and cons of outsourcing or managing areas of their websites themselves.
- Trained on how to use their websites effectively.
While the usual arguments for outsourcing focus on “saving time vs saving money,” the WordPress industry is not geared toward educating, training, and empowering end-users to make their own choices.
Since most non-technical end-users rely on their service providers to build their WordPress-powered web presence, they are effectively steered towards outsourcing their needs to the services provided by their own advisers. In short…a self-serving conflict of interest.
The WordPress industry, then, seems to be growing on the backs of more and more disempowered WordPress end-users.
This is unsustainable in the long term for the WordPress economy.
We believe that educating and teaching non-technical end-users about the benefits of using WordPress and training them how to use their websites more effectively not only empowers them and gives them more choices and options, it also helps them improve their results, builds client trust and customer loyalty, and allows them to make informed decisions about outsourcing.
Based on our experience, even after providing users with comprehensive and detailed step-by-step WordPress training and documentation, many clients find that they are simply too busy to do most things on their websites themselves and will choose to outsource these areas anyway.
The difference is that they feel empowered and in control of their websites, and can decide for themselves which areas they will manage on their own, and which areas they will outsource to experts, professionals, and external service providers.
This will ensure the continued growth of the WordPress industry and the sustainability of the WordPress economy.
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Updated: February 19th, 2022