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Turning your business into a franchise can be a real big step in your professional life. Running a franchise is definitely a challenge in many aspects. Today we will focus on the digital presence of franchises, as this part often is underestimated but highly complex.
Think about it, hosting and running multiple, sometimes hundreds of websites can be a burden. Centralized management, identical branding, specific local elements, security and efficiency in synchronization are just a few problems that a franchise faces with website development.
This is why we will discuss different options to solve these problems and show you the ultimate solution for franchise web development and successfully running a franchise WordPresss website in many different locations.
Important aspects to successfully manage franchise websites
When it comes to the management of a franchise website it really doesn’t matter if we are talking about 10, 100 oder 1000 different locations and websites. Because after all, websites for franchises need to complete the following technical requirements:
- It is crucial to be able to implement central marketing guidelines consistently.
- New content and ongoing optimizations should be played out simultaneously on all franchise websites.
- All processes must be centrally controlled but also highly efficient when coping with a large number of franchisees.
- The individual franchisees must be able to integrate local information and content individually.
Your WordPress options for franchise website
When creating websites for franchises with WordPress you have got three major options and we will explain them to you in detail. So you can figure out which one will be the best for your business and your specific case:
- Single WordPress installation
In case you are in the startup phase of your franchise, single WP installations might be enough. The pages will then solely include custom post types, maybe blog categories and generally spoken elements that are inherent in WordPress.
Although this sounds easy, the backend will probably soon be hard to manage. Since updates, security checks and backups have to be carried out separately for each website, maintenance will cost you a lot of time. And sooner or later you will have scaling issues as well.
So in the long run, you might want to consider investing in a larger scale website. Because signal installations soon won’t do it anymore for your franchise.
- WordPress multisite installation
Setting up a whole WordPress multisite network seems like the more reasonable option for your franchise. WordPress multisite allows you to manage multiple sites in a single installation, making management easier. Also resources such as themes and plugins can be shared across all sites.
However, the best multisite network has limits, so especially for bigger franchises WP multisites won’t be enough. Scalability is a lot easier with a multisite installation, and in combination with Greyd’s Global Content you can even manage every site centrally and still include special elements in individual local franchise websites.
- Multi-tenant website installation
With multi-tenancy all your multiple sites share one codebase but with individual databases. This multi-tenant architecture uses serverless container technology and therefore ensures better scalability and higher security standards than a multisite installation.
With the multi-tenant approach, you can even manage updates and plugins, centrally and also cross-page optimizations are easier to implement. Greyd teamed up with wildcloud, a software and hosting provider, so you can enjoy even more flexibility and freedom while managing your franchise website centrally.
The advantages of centralized management
In case you were wondering why we emphasize so much on centralized management for franchise websites, here are the most important reasons:
Consistency in branding
Centralized management ensures that all franchise websites consistently represent the brand identity. Standardized visual elements, messaging and tone of voice promote a strong and trustworthy brand image, which is crucial for customer loyalty and trust.
Easy implementation of brand guidelines
Furthermore it enables clear brand guidelines to be enforced. This ensures that all locations adhere to the specified standards, resulting in a consistent brand presence.
Efficient updating of content and promotions
Centralized management means that updates to content, new offers or promotions can be carried out efficiently and promptly. This prevents delays and inconsistencies that could occur if each franchise website operated independently.
Optimized data collection and analyses
Moreover, with a centrally managed website you can collect data consistently and analyze it across all franchise locations. This leads to meaningful analyses that let you make more strategic decisions at network level, rather than relying on isolated location data.
Scalability and efficiency
If done right, centralized management also promotes the scalability of the franchise system. New locations can be seamlessly integrated into the network and updates can be coordinated centrally. This makes processes way more efficient.
Using Greyd for your centralized franchise website management
Although the options mentioned above for using WordPress for your franchise website are somewhat useful, they all lack in some ways. No matter what technical set-up it always comes down to one very important function: Being able to upload and maintain content both centrally and locally.
And this is exactly what you can do when using Greyd. The following features will help you optimize the online presence of your franchise website:
- Centralized management
Within the Greyd.Hub you have one dashboard to manage any kind of number of franchise websites. This allows you to handle all IT-related issues and processes such as backups, updates or adding new pages within the same place and therefore in less time.
- Synchronized design
With the Site Connector you can link any number of websites so you can synchronize all the areas you want across all sites. With just one click you can simultaneously upload new content on all the sites you like. This makes it even easier to maintain corporate design settings, templates or layouts across your franchise website.
- Local maintenance
Apart from that you can also decouple individual areas of certain sites. This helps the franchisees to post and maintain specific content on their websites such as opening hours or special offers. Additionally, as administrator you can decide which one of your local editors gets permission to edit certain parts of your WordPress installation and who doesn’t.
- Code synchronization
To ensure a safe testing environment for you, our partnership with wildcloud enables you to test all code-related adjustments (e.g. updates or new functions). When you are sure about them you can then roll them out centrally on all your sites. In case you are not happy with these changes, rollbacks and debugging is possible even on individual sites and at any time without side effects for the entire system.
- SaaS cloud architecture
Remember the multi-tenant WordPress hosting we talked about? Thanks to that your website system can definitely keep up with the growth of your franchise at any time. The container-based cloud infrastructure reacts flexibly to traffic peaks and is suitable for an extra large number of sites.
- Integrate all your existing systems
No matter if you are already using a CRM or some kind of marketing tool, all systems can be integrated seamlessly. There are numerous interfaces and integrations as well as a headless API, that allows you to integrate data from external systems onto your pages.
This system combines all important features for a safe and easy franchise website management in WordPress. The user-friendly interface makes it easy to use even if you haven’t been working a lot with WordPress before.
If you are interested in learning more about using WordPress with Greyd for a smooth franchise website management system feel free to book a demo with one of our experts.
