We were excited to see the publication of the first ever State of Enterprise WordPress report earlier this week. Spearheaded by our friends over at Big Bite, the research provides a fantastic picture of how WordPress is viewed by its enterprise users from around the world.
We aren’t going to provide a blow-by-blow account of it here – you can see all the findings and some commentary over on the SoEWP site – but we have pulled out a few themes that stood out.
1. Enterprise WordPress users are happy
The most obvious conclusion to reach from looking over the report is that enterprise users of WordPress appear to be very satisfied with the platform.
Most obviously, there’s the 91% of respondents who reported their organisation was going to continue using WordPress as their CMS of choice. Only 9% suggested that they were likely to leave the WP ecosystem in the near future. There can’t be many tech platforms able to boast such satisfaction levels.
It’s clear that the enterprise users working with WordPress recognise – as many of us do in the community – that it can be put to great use in the enterprise setting.
Given all that positivity, it’s no surprise to hear that 74% reported WordPress was delivering either ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ ROI. Fourteen percent didn’t know, and only 9% reported that it was not delivering the returns they’d hoped to see.
Perhaps even more standout – 72% of those surveyed said they would be ‘very likely’ to recommend WordPress to other enterprise organisations.
72%
‘very likely’ to recommend WordPress
2. WordPress delivers the functionality enterprises need
There’s a great section in the report asking buyers to reflect on how important a series of factors are in terms of their decision to choose WordPress – this is particularly interesting for any of us charged with selling and promoting WordPress.
‘Functionality’ is the most important buying consideration for
70%
Overwhelmingly, the most important element of the decision process is around ‘functionality,’ with 70% citing it as being ‘very important’.
Factors such as scalability, extensibility, usability, and performance all returned good numbers too, with between 48-54% stating they were ‘very important’ factors. Interestingly, only 40% reported cost as being a key consideration (cc: sales!). Meanwhile, the platform’s multilingual and multisite capabilities fell to the bottom of the list.
Somewhat surprisingly, the fact that WordPress is an open source solution was a very important factor to only 22% of respondents, and was ‘not important’ to a significant 37% chunk of respondents. I’d have thought data ownership, and the ability to easily bring in new agencies, tools and partners, a more noteworthy benefit of the platform, especially when compared to the less flexible offerings of some proprietary competitors.
3. The unanswered question
It’s great to see how enthusiastic WordPress’ enterprise user base is about the platform. But, rather than feeling like celebrating, all the positivity made me question whether we are doing enough in the WordPress industry to highlight the benefits our platform offers enterprise organisations.
If 91% of enterprise organisations using WordPress really are that happy with it, everyone should know about it. We should be seeing greater adoption, more household logos migrating to WordPress, and we should be celebrating capturing larger chunks of the addressable market. After all, the functionality, performance, and ROI it’s delivering are all apparently must-haves for these companies.
One stat hidden in the report that highlights an area for improvement in terms of winning hearts and minds focuses on the length of time respondent organisations have been using WordPress. Fifty-nine percent had been using the platform for more than five years, while only 12% had been using WordPress for less than two years.
This should be seen as a call to arms for everyone working in the enterprise WordPress space. Let’s get loud. Let’s take these amazing stories of satisfaction and success out to the enterprise CMS market, and bring more organisations with us.
By the time next year’s report is published, I’d love to see an increase in the number of respondents in their first year of WordPress use. That would be a real cause for celebration.
One final thought: another thing I’d like to see in the report next year is contributions from enterprise buyers who aren’t currently using WordPress. Questions exploring the reasons they’re shopping elsewhere, and attempts to understand what we could do better to bring them into our world – whether from a marketing or technical point of view – would be hugely beneficial for us all.
Enterprise WordPress at Human Made
It takes experience and technical sophistication to get the most out of WordPress for enterprise organisations.
Human Made is a leading agency within the enterprise WordPress space, and with over 13 years’ experience building some of the web’s largest, most complex WordPress deployments, we’re ideally positioned to help enterprise users deliver amazing digital experiences.
Enterprise WordPress at Human Made
It takes experience and technical sophistication to get the most out of WordPress for enterprise organisations.
Human Made is a leading agency within the enterprise WordPress space, and with over 13 years’ experience building some of the web’s largest, most complex WordPress deployments, we’re ideally positioned to help enterprise users deliver amazing digital experiences.