We make our living from WordPress, so once in a while we take our head out of the sand and look around. As part of a different research that I was doing, I stumbled upon a big warning light.
Try it, to see what I’m talking about:
https://www.google.com/search?q=business+website
https://www.google.com/search?q=restaurant+website
https://www.google.com/search?q=website+for+my+hotel
Even though WordPress powers 25% of the Web, WordPress is nowhere to be seen in any of these results.
Today, clients find WordPress because Web agencies use and recommend it. But when clients already come to agencies with another platform in mind, this can quickly change. It’s happened before to other ex popular platforms.
The only way to reverse this trend and put WordPress back again in the mind of prospects is by getting together.
We’re trying to do our bit by launching a new WordPress Marketing podcast.
Are you interested in helping? Please leave your comments with your thoughts.
I do think WordPress should be more faster and secure but i work with it my projects in 99% of times. Hope wp will evolve and become more popular
I Agree.
interested. Please, keep me up to date.
Sure, we’re in!
Martin*
Hi, interesting approach. I think WP is no better or worse than any other CMS. Only it has the image of the small kid at the block. Might it get better with the introduction of Gutenberg? Maybe that will change the accessibility and ease of use. And the reporting of security issues might get better …
Agree that the WP ecosystem needs to evolve, it is still my preferred platform.
I’m ready. Tell me the next step 🙂
WordPress is nice to simple sites (only for information and other small things), but internally is very bad optimized, for this reason is losing market.
You can’t force to the people to use a technology that not support enough resources or stability to their needs. (I use wordpress too, but for informative and with few visitors).
Definitely interested, and I have a few idea’s that could possibly work to get WP out there even more (in combination with WPML and a few other plugins). Keep me up to date!
The problem with WordPress is that they are dying to legacy.
When platforms become so mature that keeping backwards compatibility becomes absolute priority, then it’s easy for them to become stale.
I am working with a plethora of platforms, I have noticed that it’s not just WordPress. Other PHP CMS / blogging software seem stuck to the “PHP 4 era”. Not even PHP 5.
As a backend developer I’d suggest to create a coherent, new API that enforces proper development practices (without making it too hard or elitist on them), slowly switch everything to PHP 7.X brain.
Last but not least, do something like Laravel, that is, provide “widgettable” ways to implement VUE.js or React interactive elements. Most simple websites don’t even try using a sophisticated theme, WordPress should implement at least one “pro looking” theme.
Needless to say, these things take man years to develop, I am not sure they want to do this.
I like WordPress overall. The great thing, and the reason I use it, is that I can get good plugins for my complicated international e-commerce site. I have very specific needs for billing, shipping, language, marketing…the list goes on and on. WordPress gives me that flexibility.
I am not a developer, so I need these plugins or I have to hire someone to develop. Because I am in Europe (Romania) other platforms will not work (Shopify etc.). Magenta is great for larger stores/sites but way too expensive and complicated for me. There are other platforms but they do not have to very specific features I need. WordPress can do this with carefully selected plugins. Plus I get great support.
Performance can be an issue I agree, setting it up is far more difficult than most imagine etc.
I am very happy with my choice of platform!
-Adam
I don’t understand why u made this post.
First, You give a chart without source. So we can’t hold it.
Second, If you based the “decline” of WordPress about 3 searches with “WIX” everywhere, it’s not a real problem… We all know what is WIX and the real product. Clients who came with a CMS in head doesn’t know advantages and disavantages about a CMS and WIX isn’t a CMS. It’s a “builder”.
People who make theses types of searches want to make a website by himself without any configuration, installation and in a few hours (maybe less). They don’t care about the multilinguage, the code, good communication, etc.
So with this post, you target the wrong public.
WordPress may decline with time because it’s a PHP solution and it’s not Object Oriented. That the only major problem in the future for WordPress and major actors on this CMS.
Here you go:
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=wordpress
First because of that you can say that there is no real cms in the list.
No WordPress, no Drupal, no joomla, no… Only wix.
Second in the link you sent if you scroll down, you will see that even that “WordPress” is down, “WordPress websites” is up in the last months.
I don’t say that is nothing to do better, but its absolutely no panic!
If we can help in improving awareness about all the plus points of WordPress we are glad to help. There are so many reasons not to use a SaaS platform for your website and why WordPress is better. Count us in.
The biggest issue with wordpress is performance. It hogs both server and client resources. It’s a problem that i don’t think they can fix anymore.
You are right. But WordPress trend is declining because of performance issue comparing to new technologies.
For example: New technologies like AngularJS, ReactJS, VueJS, etc, giving faster performance comparing to What we have with WordPress.
This is reason, most of the New developers trying to pick the one, which is easier and giving faster performance.
Hi, I’ve been using wordpress for years and I’m pretty happy with it… except some performance issue as somebody else said just above… but I think it’s nothing that couldn’t be solved in a short time.
Anyway I think it depends on the project you are working on. A simple project maybe can be realised with other platform (maybe even better than WP), but if your website is quite articulated then WP wins!
What’s in your mind?
Ciao!
WP is not meant to be a CMS or Framework to build apps or complex sites. For my agency WP is the essential development tool for graphic websites that need to be updated with text or images. If you try to evolve your site (cms, categories, slugs, seo) WP is not strong or capable to guarantee a valid solution. WP is born to be a blog and still remains a blog with a text editor.
Make joomla great again!
Interested, keep me up to date
I spend a lot of time at work watching youtube to learn more about design, graphics and other web/design related content. Yet before just about every video I watch (on a public wifi network) I get hammered with Wix adverts. It drives me nuts quite frankly. Maybe it’s time for a collective $1-2 a month from a million designers to start our own campaign that would support designers throughout the world with youtube advertisements as to why you should employ a local designer, because the money goes back around the community, and would you want someone to buy from somewhere else like Wix/Amazon rather than you if you are a small business? So why are you using Wix instead of a local developer/designer? I’d contribute $2 per month to help the cause (in the same way that I do for Wikipedia at the moment).
We know WordPress drives more than 25% of the web. Maybe I have heard of even bigger percentages recently.
So it is not declining as a platform. I would say it has become such an obvious choice that we forget to mention it.
You want a website? Aha, you need a WordPress!
Don’t let the commercial platforms grab you. You want to be the owner of your own data.
So let’s start by mentioning these obvious points again and again where we see fit.
And do contribute to the community.
Very interesting observation and I completely understand your position. How can you sell an awesome product like toolset when 70% of the users are developers….
We need more end users. I learned everything from WordPress, HTML,CSS, jquery, a little php all in just under 2 years whilst running a internet marketing agency which I also launched using WordPress and so I am really up for helping market it to the masses. Keep me posted. 🙂
Actually, our sales of both WPML and Toolset are doing fine. Of course, everyone (including us) wants to grow. I wrote this because I’m genuinely concerned for our platform. Together, we have a great product. As a community, we’ve built the CMS, great themes and plugins.
We work with many other authors on compatibility. I want us to work more also on promoting the platform.
It is my preferred system and my intentions are to stick with WordPress.
I don’t think that wordpress is under pressure. Who should be the competitor? Wix isn’t it for real. So who else? Drupal, no. Typo3, no. Craft, no. Kirby, no. … oh maybe it’s Joomla! No. It’s not the clients business to come with a CMS in mind. Where we are, when the client tells us, what is good in our natural habit?
But if you are looking for a dish to eat/cook you don’t search for “pots and pans”
I have seen that in the search results there are many pages of Wix. Sign that they are investing a lot in the project. However, I remain of the opinion that WIx IS NOT A CMS.
Wordpress is much superior and if someone is looking for a professional solution, they will definitely choose WordPress.
(sorry for my english) 🙂