What Are WordPress Consultants and What Are the Benefits of Hiring Them?

WordPress consultants are experts in WordPress development projects who can guide you through every step of the process, from planning to the final delivery.

They can help you create customized, scalable, and highly optimized sites that will provide you with a respectable, professional online presence while using the world’s most popular CMS.

Let’s explore what WordPress consultants are, what benefits they may provide to your project, how to choose a WordPress consultant, and how much you should expect to pay them.

Key Takeaways

• WordPress consultants are experts in every aspect of WordPress development.
• They provide services to individuals and development teams trying to make the most out of their WordPress projects.
• Hiring a WordPress consultant will likely cost $1,000 to $3,000 per month.

What Is a WordPress Consultant?

A WordPress consultant is a professional who specializes in helping individuals and organizations make the most out of their WordPress development projects.

WordPress consultants provide expert advice and services for designing, developing, managing, and optimizing WordPress websites.

Their role varies depending on the needs of their clients and the scope of the project but generally includes several key responsibilities:

• Helping clients determine whether WordPress is the right solution for their website.
• Planning and strategies for professional WordPress development projects. 
• Ongoing support for WordPress-related questions and needs.
• Performing technical audits to understand the state of the website and propose potential improvements. 
• Supporting clients when figuring out the details of their ongoing or future projects, such as the ideal plugins and the site’s architecture (headless vs. monolithic, etc.)
• Guiding for implementing specific solutions such as WooCommerce.
• Regular technical consultations to ensure the site is optimized.
• Performing SEO and security audits.

Companies and individuals who hire WordPress consultants benefit from their specialized knowledge to get the most out of their WordPress website.

What Are the Benefits of Hiring a WordPress Consultant?

The main benefit of hiring a WordPress consultant is having a WordPress expert with years of development experience guide your project and provide solutions for your needs.

More specifically, here’s how hiring WordPress consultants may improve your WordPress development project:

Knowledge and Experience

Consultants have deep knowledge about every aspect of WordPress development. This gives you an expert partner you can rely on for solutions to any problems.

Development Services

In addition to consulting, many WordPress consultants also provide website, theme, and custom plugin development services for their clients.

Customization

WordPress consultants know about WordPress themes and can guide a developer or development team through its design.

Scalability

Consultants know that WordPress sites have the potential to grow along with a business and can provide guidance on how to make them future-proof, such as using CDNs and optimizing performance.

Cost-Effectiveness

Consultants can help businesses avoid the lengthy learning curve associated with creating and implementing WordPress development projects. This saves time and reduces the risk of costly mistakes, such as security breaches or poorly optimized sites.

Improved Security

Due to its popularity, WordPress sites are frequent targets for cyber threats. Consultants can fortify a website’s security by configuring security plugins, setting up regular backups, and ensuring the site is always updated with the latest patches and fixes.

SEO and Performance Optimization

Consultants optimize website performance and SEO. This means they ensure the site loads quickly and has a high chance of ranking well in search engines.

Ongoing Support and Maintenance

WordPress consultants can provide ongoing support and maintenance, helping clients resolve issues quickly and efficiently. This includes updating content, managing hosting services, and troubleshooting technical problems.

Training

Consultants can also train their clients to make the most of WordPress and its many functions. This allows staff to handle day-to-day maintenance tasks and minor changes without external help.

How to Choose a WordPress Consultant?

Choosing the right WordPress consultant is crucial for ensuring your website meets your needs and performs optimally. Here are some steps and considerations to help you select the best WordPress consultant for your project.

Step 1: Connect

The first step in any sales flow is the initial connection. You can contact them by email or phone or submit a contact form on their website. This will be your first impression of a consultant, so it sets the stage for all following interactions.

Here’s what you should look out for during the initial contact.

How Long Do They Take to Get Back to You?

It may seem small, but it says a lot about a business. If they take more than 1 day to respond, you can give them some leeway. However, if it takes more than 2 days to respond, there’s a good chance you aren’t one of their top priorities at the moment.

Plus, if they don’t care too much about responding on time on their first conversation with you, you should not expect them to do so in the following communications.

Whether They Read Up on You Before Sending a Proposal

Crafting a proposal and jumping on meetings with every potential client takes some time. Before spending precious time on a prospect, agencies must ensure the potential client is a good fit for them.

Being a good fit involves not only the budget but also the scope of work, time constraints, availability, and expertise in a particular area.

Sometimes, agencies send the first email straight out, asking about estimated budgets or even openly warning about not being able to meet certain deadlines.

Although it may feel too straightforward for some, this can be a sign that they do good work, are busy, and would rather not spend time pursuing potential clients who are not a good fit for them.

Step 2: Discovery Call

The next step in a sales pitch is the discovery call. Here is when you join a meeting with the candidate WordPress consultants to go over details and explain your needs.

Here’s what to look out for during discovery calls.

How Much Effort Do They Put Into Understanding Your Business?

If a consultant is going to help you, they must understand your business. If they do not take the time to ask the right questions and understand your problem, this is a red flag.

Why? Because it’s impossible to design or find a solution for a business you don’t know or understand.

Don’t get us wrong. We’re not saying they should know your business better than you do. And we’re not saying you should only hire agencies specializing in your particular business. However, having a basic knowledge of what you do, what your target audience is, and what you have been doing so far is a must in order to create something great.

Do They Ask About Your Goals?

You are probably hiring a WordPress consultant to help you achieve a set of goals and objectives, so they must take the time to ask you about them. If you don’t have clear goals, then their knowledge should help you set them.

It’s impossible to develop an effective strategy without a clear purpose from the very start, so look out for consultants who take the time to understand your needs and goals.

Do They Bring Ideas to the Table?

It’s essential that you feel comfortable bringing ideas to the table, but so is getting them from the experts you are hiring. It’s a great sign if a consultant can give you at least a few good ideas right away or maybe an interesting point of view about your specific problems on the discovery call.

After all, this is a small demo of how they will work with you later on if you hire them.

How Well Do They Explain How They Work

A consultant must have an ironed-out process that should allow them to easily explain their process and how they work in the meeting.

Step 3: Proposal

The last step in a sales pitch is sending the proposal. This is when all the ideas and propositions discussed in meetings and emails are put into words, and the consultants sell themselves.

What should you be looking out for at this stage? Here are a few tips.

How Detailed is Their Proposal?

A few days after the discovery meeting, the consultant will send you a proposal where they will outline the details of their offer. A complete proposal should include the following:

• A thorough explanation of the services you would be hiring. 
• An explanation of the tech stack to be used and whether or not it would include a custom build or a premade theme.
• A timeline for how long the project should take.
• Pricing. A comprehensive bill will likely not be cheap. Good work takes time, and time is not cheap. If the pricing seems too low, be highly cautious about what you’d be hiring.

Online Reviews and Case Studies

Lastly, if the consultant has been in business for a considerable time, it should have some online reviews, case studies, or a portfolio that you can read up on. 

Here, it would be best if you looked out for real-world examples where the consultant explains the client’s problem and how they solved it. They shouldn’t only show you pretty colors and animations but also walk you through their process and explain how their work has been useful for previous clients. If you find some good examples of how they’ve used their knowledge to improve their clients’ businesses, that’s a good sign they may be the right fit for you.

How Much Does it Cost to Hire a WordPress Consultant?

Let’s start by clarifying how much a WordPress developer charges. There are multiple pricing models for WordPress development projects, but the most common is hourly rates. A developer may charge $20 to $250 per hour, depending on their experience and other factors.

With these development costs in mind, you need to keep in mind that hiring a WordPress consultant is more like hiring a development agency, meaning that a consultant will cost more than an individual developer.

WordPress consultants will likely charge between $1,000 and $3,000 per month for their services. The exact monthly cost depends on the number of hours they have to put into it, the scope and complexity, whether they need to employ additional developers, and more.

WordPress Consultants Streamline WordPress Projects

WordPress consultants are experts in WordPress development projects who can guide you through every step of the process, from planning to the final delivery. They can help you create customized, scalable, and highly optimized sites to provide a respectable, professional online presence.

Whether you need a WordPress consultant depends on your specific needs, but they are more likely to be helpful for complex projects with a larger scope than a personal site. If you have a complex business site you need to launch within a reasonable timeline, there’s a good chance you’d benefit from a WordPress consultant.

We hope these tips help you navigate your next sales pitch with better tools to make the wisest and most informed decision.

If you found this post useful, read our blog for more WordPress insights and guides!