Wordpress Blog for Magento Store?

[Jseddon92]

Magento is fantastic for e-commerce although the blog capabilities are limited and our web development fees are just ongoing. I have great experience with wordpress sites and I don't have a bad word to say about the CMS, there are plugins available for everything you possibly need to develop the blog. Would it be a good idea to integrate a wordpress blog for our e-commerce store? To keep both the transactional website and the blog on the same domain, but have a different style for the blog so we're not trying to 'sell' to people looking for home improvement advice and DIY guides, our main priority with the blog is to grow the website authority.

[BlueprintMarketing]

I would say it is one of the best things you can do for your site.

By adding a blog you can become an authority on your company's product or industry.

It's easy to update and Google loves fresh content. Without a decent amount of content you cannot become a true authority on anything

a WordPress blog would easily allow you to update your content whenever you like.

I recommend them over ghost and other platforms because WordPress makes up over 20% of the web is capable of

so much it would be a perfect addition.

companies like authoritydev.com  Gregreindel.com,  Pagely have helped larger sites integrate WordPress blogs same thing goes for companies like flywheel and Pantheon.

I hope this is of help,

Tom

[kwoolf]

Magento Wordpress installs are my specialty. From a marketing perspective, a blog will definitely be helpful for your visitors seeking relevant info. Most clients I set up tend to neglect their blog, so make sure to approach this with a plan. From the feedback I've collected from customers and clients, a consistent brand image tends to build more trust.

From a technical perspective, there are several ways to integrate Wordpress and Magetno. Fishpig http://fishpig.co.uk/magento/wordpress-integration/ will take a lot of work out of the project if you select to run Wordpress "inside" Magento. This extension basically uses your Magento template and puts Wordpress content into Magento, but you administer Wordpress through the traditional back end. If you have multiple languages/blogs, this gets a bit tricky. You can visit www.88k.com.tw for my site example running a Wordpress multi-site inside a multi-store Magento instance on a custom LEMP stack.

Anyway, to answer your question, a blog would be good if done right. Be careful not to cannibalize other site pages by adding the same keywords, and also make sure to link related blog posts to products. I personally agree with you--the purpose of your blog should be to inform visitors, not to sell. However, consistency is good, too. If you want to sell on your blog, there's nothing wrong with that, as long as you have a good plan.

[BlueprintMarketing]

Of course the speed of your site  really makes the huge difference. But integrating

WordPress with Magento  if powered by the same server or by different servers is extremely easy

AuthorityDev.com  has experience  if you need a Dev

Keep in mind HubSpot is an  amazing Blog/CMS tool for this as well

http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/wordpress-integration-3795.html

https://wordpress.org/support/view/plugin-reviews/magento-wordpress-integration

All the best,

Thomas

[Jseddon92]

Hi Kevin,

Great response, I will check out the Fishpig wordpress integration. I discussed the idea with our web development team and they dismissed the idea, although I do have a lot of experience with Wordpress and I feel that it has much more to offer than Magento from a blogging perspective. We already have a blog by the way but it's a Magento extension which doesn't really have much to offer. We will be keeping the blog and e-commerce site on the same domain to increase the domain authority although we was unsure whether to keep the same theme throughout.

We could either have a different theme for our blog and keep it 'information based' rather than keeping our product category navigation, although if someone adds an item to cart then decides to visit the blog, they cannot continue to checkout until they return back to the transactional website. It's a tricky one and an expensive mistake if we make the wrong decision.

[kwoolf]

Hi Joshua,

Glad I could be of some help. Sorry to hear your dev team dismissed the idea of Fishpig's integration. Using this integration method, you wouldnt have to pay for a custom theme development to match your Magento site--in fact your Wordpress content would appear inside Magento resulting in a big performance boost. Imagine visitors navigating from your store to your blog and back loading all those resources. That's a few second delay at least depending on your set up. If your dev isn't in-house, consider the motivation not to use Fishpig integration, like profits on a custom Wordpress theme and maintenance of two sites Instead of just one.

If you have any othe questions about Magento performance, feel free to ping me. FYI, just finished New Relic integration and seeing sub-second page loads on my Magento/WP BBQ site. If you like how this site performs on both mobile and desktop, I can point you in this direction.

Cheers!

[kwoolf]

Hi Thomas,

While just a bit off-topic, I was curious about your Hubspot experience. While I'm seeing great performance from my current application set up, I've been eyeing Hubspot for some time now, but I just can't justify the cost. Does Hubspot allow you to do anything to increase conversions that couldn't be done with Wordpress? Any thoughts, please do share.

Thanks!

[Everett]

Hello Kevin,

Wordpress is a blogging platform and I'd define Hubspot as more of a marketing automation platform. It does provide the ability to blog, but sometimes people using Hubspot still choose to blog from Wordpress and run their content offer campaigns on Hubspot. Comparing the two would be comparing apples to oranges.

But to answer your question, yes Hubspot allows you to do lots of things that increase conversions, especially if your site is geared toward lead generation (i.e. filling out a contact form, as opposed to adding products to a cart).

[BlueprintMarketing]

I'm sorry to reply to you so late and  I have used both WordPress and HubSpot beginning in 2006.

Everett I respect your opinion this is how I feel about it.

HubSpot is a excellent blog however is had some recent restrictions on the amount of traffic you can receive without having to go up to a higher plan.

With that said their blog is spectacular. There CMS designed for people that would use WordPress however it cooperates a lot of search tools and marketing Information e.g. landing pages, social media, spectacular analytics, keyword research, you will know if you're doing something wrong on HubSpot it will tell you.

I would not say WordPress and HubSpot are apples and oranges but I can see how someone would feel that way.

HubSpot and WordPress far much more than your average blog. I would have to say that WordPress has more in common with HubSpot than it does with Ghost ( a pure blogging only system)

I think hub spot offers a lot of value and who rule their ROI-you will agree.  They  coined "inbound marketing" and make fantastic additions to websites as well as great websites themselves.

The best way to learn about it is to do a 30 day free trial NO credit card needed http://offers.hubspot.com/free-trial-blogging-tool

http://www.hubspot.com will show you what is possible in their CMS.

Sorry for the delayed response I hope this helps,

Tom