Why WordPress Dominates the CMS Market

WordPress has dominated the CMS market for the better part of a decade. Even as the market is flooded with new platforms, no other provider has come close.

Key Highlights:

• According to Automattic Inc. the parent company of WordPress, over 42% of the Web is powered by WordPress. When you look at only content-heavy websites, the numbers are far higher
• Some of the world’s most popular websites including that of The New York Times and The Walt Disney Company are powered by WordPress
• WordPress is the preferred Content Management System (CMS) for several reasons including the following: ease of customization, mobile readiness, powerful media management, security features, SEO capabilities, and a well-designed backend
• There is also a wonderful community of WordPress developers all over the world. This group of passionate people contributes Themes and Plugins that make the WordPress experience even better

For businesses, a presence on the World Wide Web is no longer a matter of choice. But more important than a mere static website is a dynamic one where content is constantly updated and the website provides more than organizational information. Dynamic content in the form of blogs, videos, and the like drives marketing and promotions to enable businesses to reach out to a wider audience.

Making it easier to build such a content-rich website is a Content Management System (CMS) that takes care of all your web-related infrastructure needs. Businesses need to only add content to the front-end — be it text, images, audio, podcasts, webinars, or video.

A good CMS also makes it easy to build gated landing pages that collect user information before providing access to content like Whitepapers or research reports.

There are many CMS tools available, but the most popular is WordPress. According to W3 Technologies, WordPress powers 65.1% of all websites that use a CMS. And, according to Automattic Inc., over 42% of the overall Word Wide Web uses WordPress.

WordPress offers a wide range of features to meet various customer needs

WordPress was launched as a blogging platform in 2002–03 when blogging became popular, giving the platform a head start. By 2009–10, WordPress and Joomla were competing for the leadership position when WordPress changed the terms of the game by introducing a Content Management System in 2010. It introduced custom post types, which paved the way for other unique features over the years. By 2011, WordPress was racing ahead and being used by 12% of all websites. Since then, WordPress has managed to maintain its dominant leadership position in the CMS market.

Some of the factors that contributed to its consistent growth include:

• A user-first approach: Initially it was launched only as a blogging platform and slowly the other features were added based on the needs of its intended audience. It was a user-first approach that helped WordPress add features by deeply understanding customer requirements.
• Simple and easy to use: Even a non-technical user could install, set up, and use the platform in two to three hours, thereby attracting a variety of people to the platform across ages and profiles.
• Strong developer ecosystem: In addition to being intuitive and packed with the right features, one of the key reasons for WordPress’ popularity is a wonderful community of WordPress developers who continue to build various plugins, that are critical to improving on-site and off-page website user experience.
• Credibility: WordPress powers some of the world’s most popular websites, including those of The New York Times, Tech Crunch, BBC America, and Walt Disney Company.

WordPress is an open-source platform and welcomes suggestions and contributions from developers across the globe. This vibrant community has contributed high-quality plugins as well as WordPress Themes (which are templates that can be customized further) to meet the ever-changing needs of both users and developers. Currently, WordPress offers 55,292 plugins and several themes (or templates) that make it easy to add capabilities or build new websites.

WordPress is also designed to build mobile-friendly websites and integrates seamlessly with social media platforms, analytics solutions like Google Analytics, e-mail marketing tools like Mailchimp, etc.

WordPress and associated plugins like Yoast SEO make it easy to drive SEO

Today, companies are building dedicated teams to drive traffic to their websites, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a critical part of the process. Research shows that sites ranked on the first page get nearly 33% of the clicks, and 75% of all clicks go to the first five listings.

WordPress enables higher ranking through SEO, which can be divided into:

• Technical SEO that facilitates easy discovery, indexing, and display of the website by search engines.
• Content & User Experience (UX) that lets visitors access high-quality information easily.
• On-site SEO that optimizes elements on the site and improves search engine ranking.
• Off-site SEO refers to actions taken to promote the ranking of the site.

One of the biggest reasons for WordPress’ popularity is that — its platform is designed for SEO. Plugins like Yoast can be integrated into the WordPress admin and content editors are now adding keywords and meta descriptions as and when they add new content.

Additionally, it is also easy to add content blocks into current WordPress pages. This is block-based design capability is a key benefit of using WordPress to manage content.

Security and Regulatory Compliance with WordPress

The Internet is not only facilitating the sharing of information but is also being used extensively for commercial transactions. This has put a premium on security and companies need to abide by stringent data privacy and data protection guidelines.

With WordPress, developers are able to build robust security features into websites. While WordPress constantly delivers updated versions, including security patches, it is important to make sure that only proven plugins are added from trusted sources.

There are also plugins like Akismet, that are designed for spam protection for WordPress-based websites.

Merit Group for WordPress Development

Though building on WordPress is fairly intuitive, to derive the maximum benefit from the world’s most popular CMS, it is best to partner with an expert to leverage the full capabilities of WordPress.

At Merit, we could also help you build your content-heavy website using WordPress VIP,which is ideal for high-traffic websites that need a combination of content management, commerce, and analytics.

Each industry is unique and each business has a different requirement. Understanding the themes and plugins that best help you achieve your business goals is important to leverage all the good WordPress promises. An expert like Merit with cross-domain experience can help you with a custom-developed website that helps achieve these goals.

If you have an existing website, we can also help you migrate, retaining the design and features you need, and integrate new requirements.

We use a process-oriented approach, right from requirements gathering, analysis, WordPress website designing, app development, website testing, feedback gathering, revisions, and delivery.

Merit delivers quality in a cost-effective manner and believes in long-term engagement, providing maintenance and support.