Growing WordPress by Reducing Complexity & Fragmentation€¦ · 50,000+ plugins, 10,000+ themes...
Transcript of Growing WordPress by Reducing Complexity & Fragmentation€¦ · 50,000+ plugins, 10,000+ themes...
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Growing WordPress by Reducing Complexity & Fragmentation
WordCamp PhoenixGabriel A. Mays
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Who Am I?
● Head of WordPress @ GoDaddy
● WordPress Cape Cod Meetup Organizer
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What’s in this talk for you?
● Develop a better understanding of WordPress growth.
● Learn how Gutenberg unlocks new WordPress growth.
● Leverage these learnings to make better decisions with
your site, clients or your plugin/theme business.
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WordPress Growth
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WordPress isbig & growing...
CMS Market Share
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...but growthisn’t guaranteed.
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Competitors make it increasingly difficult to reach 50% - 75% market share.
Competitors Are Growing Fast
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Website Alternatives Are Also Growing (& Don’t Show Up in Our Data)
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The highly optimistic view of market share.
Projections below extrapolated from historical data using non-CMS share as a proxy.
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To sustain WordPress growth, we must
understand it.
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Historical WordPress Growth Factors (2003-2014)
Historical Growth Overdetermined● Open source, community, ubiquitous LAMP
stack, easy install, etc.
Key Historical Growth Factors● Strong Market & Early Product Market Fit
○ Fast internet growth
○ Rise of blogs in 2000’s
■ Six Apart licencing change for MT
○ Evolved into CMS to capture website growth
Total Number of Websites
Plugins Themes & Pages Custom Post Types
20041.2
20030.7
20051.5
20103.0
20144.0
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Current Nature of WordPress Growth (2014 - Today)
Strong Organic Growth...● Freelancers & Agencies →● Plugin & Theme Ecosystem →● Strong Brand →● Open Source Network Effects →● Vibrant Community →
...Across a Large Surface Area● Thousands of ambassadors● 50,000+ plugins, 10,000+ themes● High name recognition & trust● Thousands of contributors● Thousands of WordCamps & meetups
○ 1,000+ WordCamps in 70+ cities○ 1,600+ meetups with 800,000 members
REST API Gutenberg
20154.4
20164.7
20185.0
20195.3
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WordPress Growth is Different
WordPress Growth: Organic
● Network effects of open source
● Trademark limitations for ads, thus hosts compete for existing WordPress users
● WordPress ad spend/investment complex due to asymmetry & opaqueness
Site Builder Growth: Mktg Budgets
● Shopify 2018: $326M
● Wix 2018: $237M
● Squarespace 2018: $150M (est.)
Total: $713M on Sales & Marketing
Top 3 competitors Sales & Marketing spending will soon surpass $1B.
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vs.
Site BuildersPowered by $$$ (inorganic)
WordPressPowered by wind (organic)
Organic vs. Inorganic Growth
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Users
Suc
ceed
New Users Try WP
WP G
rows
Lift → ← DragOrganic Growth (Wind) =FragmentationComplexity
The Nature WordPress Growth
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Users
Don
’t Suc
ceed
Fewer Users Try WP
WP G
rowth Slow
s
FragmentationComplexity
Lack of Ease Holds Us Back
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If websites were cars...
It Also Prevents WordPress from Becoming a Solution to Capture More Value
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Shopify
Customer: “I Want a Car…”
“Here’s your car, dawg.”
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WordPressCustomer: “I Want a Car…”
“Here’s everything you need.”
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We Must Leverage Our Strengths to Grow
Growth Propellants (lift) →
● Large surface area = many new users try WP
● Massive ecosystem serves long tail needs
● Enabling solutions
← Growth Inhibitors (drag)
● Complexity = fewer new users succeed
● Fragmentation reduces value created
We can't create more wind, but we can accelerate by 1) better harnessing the wind that powers our growth and 2) reducing drag.
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How Gutenberg helps us reduce drag & unlock growth.
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WordPress Offers Power & Flexibility...
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...at the Cost of Complexity & Fragmentation
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“I wanted to use WordPress, but it was too hard.”
- Albert Einstein
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Gutenberg Attempts to Wrangle Complexity
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Some real world examples...
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Making WordPress Easy & Performant
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Copyright© 2019 GoDaddy Inc.
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Helping New Users Succeed
How do you create a homepage with this?!
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More Native Flexibility…(demos)
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...Means Doing More with Less Bloat...All that with just 1 theme & 1 plugin.
Gutenberg raises the bar for a “basic” WordPress site.
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Copyright© 2019 GoDaddy Inc.
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…and Better Performance.Results from unoptimized site in demo on $5 hosting.
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Empowering WordPress Companies to be
More Productive &Create More Value
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Example: Page Builders
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30+ Page Builders solving the same problem in
different ways.
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Empowers WordPress Ecosystem to Create &
Capture More Value
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Implications
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Implications
● Provides a modern, common foundation for the WordPress
ecosystem to build upon.
● Puts more focus on value creation with less duplicative efforts
and lower support/maintenance costs.
● Delivers better experiences for WordPress users due to higher
interoperability and minimizing unexpected breakage.
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Summary
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1. How We Grow
Harness Organic WordPress Growth
To grow we must harness the “lift” from the
wind that powers growth & minimize the
“drag” that slows it.
→ ←
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2. How We Do It
We do this by reducing complexity & fragmentation:
● Reduce fragmentation to empower the ecosystem (our unique advantage) to create & capture more value.
● Reduces complexity with a consistent, intuitive approach making it easier for new users to succeed.
→ ←
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3. What We Get
● Make new users more likely to succeed & stick with WordPress.
● Better leverage our unique advantage: our open source ecosystem & network effects.
● Enable solutions to increase the value we create and capture.
→ ←
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How Can You Help?
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How You Can Help
● Not using Gutenberg? Try it every 6 months.
● Consultant? Have clients use it for posts.
● Developer? Try doing things in standardized ways.
● Everyone: Please share feedback!
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Q&AGabriel A. Mays