WordPress (WP) development and WP support and maintenance is one of our complex web services, which also include WP themes and WordPress plugins. Many clients also need a setup for e-commerce stores using WooCommerce (Woo, WC), as well as WooCommerce themes and Woo plugins development.
WordPress is contantly changing, improving, and we try to stay up to date with the trend. It’s market share is amazing already, but it’s still growing!
WordPress market share stats (updated Dec. 2018 – Jan. 2019)
WordPress is currently leading the web market share – about 32-33% of all websites in the World are based on WordPress CMS! And this market share is constantly improving, so it seems WP isn’t in it’s peak yet!!!
WordPress is a CMS, but not all websites has CMS backend, or there are websites with custom CMS/CRM. Considering only CMS systems – WordPress has about 59-60% CMS market share!
It’s interesting to note, that WordPress is used for all types of websites – from small to popular websites (check the stats for top 10k, 100k and top 1 million). The market share is pretty much the same in all website sizes. For comparison, Drupal CMS has higher marker share (compared to its average share, not compared to the WP share) in top 10k websites, but smaller share in top 1 million, which means – it’s harder to use for the mass, but could be very good choice for professionals and big organizations.
WP WooCommerce Market Share
WP WooCommerce Market Share is a sub-division of the WordPress Market share. WooCommerce is a WP plugin for electronic commerce – online stores, eShops, online shops. As such, it’s competitors are the other eCommerce CMS and CRM systems, incl. self-hosted and SAAS (usually paid as price per month).
WP+WooCommerce leads the eCommerce platforms (about 15-20% share), but with tiny advantage of 2-5% ahead of 2nd ecommerce competitor Shopify. That being said, by further investigation of the stats, most Shopify gains are at high traffic and popular websites, where it isn’t sure who’s the leader…, but for the most people, the WooCommerce is cheaper alternative (*price also matters) and inside top 1 million ecommerce sites Woo leads well above all competitors.
* In fact, WooCommerce is a free WP Plugin (Zero price), but it has to be set up, you may also need additional plugins (free and/or paid) for payment methods, shipping calculation and so on, so it doesn’t result to be free at the end. It’s good it’s free, but because it covers all possible scenarios, and should work for really many people, the WooCommerce plugin is quite complex, especially when you need to set up additional plugins for extending it’s functionality and/or set up a wordpress theme.
WordPress themes design and development
WordPress themes design and development is a web service for developing a custom (unique) theme design or just changing existing theme to achieve the similar unique design look and colours. WP theme design is part of graphic and web design service and is managed by graphic designers. WP theme development is part of Web development and programming service and is managed by web developers and programmers, particularly developers, experienced with WordPress development.
Most businesses just need redesign of existing theme, which is usually made as wordpress child theme. WP child theme development is a bit complex at first and there are chances that mistakes could happen… When managed by senior developer, mistakes are avoided and the website should load very fast – about a second or so…
WordPress plugins development
WordPress plugins development is a web service for developing specific custom functionality or changing existing functionality of another plugin or WP Core. Often the work is quite hard to plan and develop, and could be time consuming. The tests are also extended – not only tests for functionality, but also test for WP core compatibility and compatibility with other plugins.
Some plugins could only be developed by senior WP developers as a mistake in the architecture design could extend a lot the time to correct the mistakes at a latter date. Developing a plugin often includes backend and frontend work, so full-stack WP developer is needed.
WooCommerce ecommerce stores
WooCommerce ecommerce stores are the most popular software for selling and buying online (as of December 2018 and January 2019). At the same time, the prices for WooCommerce ecommerce store are cheaper than the rest available options and even can’t be compared to the custom CMS or CRM development, where the prices would be some tens thousands Euro or US dollars. The trend is woocommerce popularity to continue to raise in the next years.
WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin, but it can handle a lot of cases – selling simple or complex products and services, selling physical or electronic redistributable products, paying with many payment methods and payment gateways… That means, the plugin is complex and there is a need for experienced developer or person, to set up the module and to provide technical support and maintenance. Usually, an online store would need 5+ more WooCommerce-related plugins, for different purposes.
WooCommerce themes – design and development
Our team provide design and development for WooCommerce themes – for WooCommerce online shops. Most often it’s more effective to use an existing theme (free or paid) and redesign what you don’t like and what you want to brand in your colours and shapes. Wordpress and WooCommerce existing theme redesign and development should be done as a WP Child theme or in some rare cases – as a wordpress plugin.
In some rare cases, there is a need for clean HTML5 and CSS3 code, unique and/or responsive web design for great work on all devices, SEO optimization (the clean code is for SEO), custom theme functionalities and so on. In these cases there could be a need for custom wordpress theme design and/or development for Woocommerce store (or multiple online stores). It costs a lot, but still you save a lot by using WordPress Core and WooCommerce plugin, which are both free to use and you only pay the set up and the additional functionalities.
WooCommerce plugins development
WooCommerce plugins development is a part of WordPress plugins development, but specifically related to the WooCommerce plugin and it’s extension with new functionalities. There are a lot of paid and free wordpress and woocommerce plugins and if they can do the work (secure, fast, fully-functional) – then better use these plugins. In case there aren’t appropriate plugins or you want clean code for SEO optimization purposes, then you need custom wordpress and woocommerce plugin development.
WordPress and SEO
There are frequently asked questions about: Whether WordPress is best for SEO? Is there another CMS, which is better for SEO? Is a custom CMS best for SEO (and how much more would cost compared to WordPress CMS)?
The truth is there isn’t a CMS, that is best for SEO. A custom-made CMS could be best for SEO, but that also depend on the developers… in most cases you won’t get a custom CMS, which is very well optimized for SEO. Different people should work as a team – a SEO expert and one or more developers. The developers are making a functionality, the SEO expert investigates the generated code and proposes improvements. The same is repeated for all modules and functionalities (on the frontend only).
The best for SEO and the best for fastest page loading is a Custom CMS, but in most cases – the investment isn’t affordable or at least it’s not worth is for a company website or even a small ecommerce online store. If the SEO optimization and SEO strategy is important for you, consult with a SEO specialist or expert and you’ll find out:
- What is SEO optimization?
- How SEO works? – OnSite, OffSite, Feedback
- Could you rely on SEO for your project or website, or it’s better to invest in direct marketing instead, for example Google Ads campaigns.