Every year, enterprise WordPress agency Big Bite combines forces with other agencies to survey over 100 companies worldwide that use WordPress. Among them are household names such as Amnesty International, The Times, and Princeton University.
The 2024 edition of the survey offers insights into how big brands use WordPress in their day-to-day operations.
In this article, I’ll look at some of the key takeaways. We are interested in looking at the possible causes behind these numbers.
And to look at what this means for WordPress professionals that work with small and medium-sized organizations, rather than these huge corporations.
Marketing is a growing use case
The publishing and media industry is a traditional stronghold for WordPress. It makes up for 31% of the respondents.
But my eye is on the marketing and advertising space, up 4% from last year to 16%. This aligns with my experience working with several clients this past year who primarily use WordPress to market their products and services.
When we look at this from the small to medium business angle, that might seem weird. Because here, WordPress was the traditional platform of choice for building brochure sites.
But larger companies need more capabilities than that. They do have more marketing and sales systems in place than smaller companies. And WordPress wasn’t really a good option here.
But this is changing.
First, when we look at the department in which respondents work, 24% are in marketing.
Second when we look at the answers to “Is your WordPress system integrated with any of the following?”, we see marketing tech, CRM, and A/B testing software being popular responses.
What does that mean for WordPress professionals who work with smaller organizations?
These businesses might have a website, but none of the marketing tooling that is common in the enterprise.
We know that brochure websites aren’t in high demand anymore. But if you can deliver a website that is central to a company’s marketing operations, that is in high demand.
But beyond knowing how to integrate different marketing tech with a WordPress website, you often need to know which tools to choose.
Small and medium business owners often struggle with planning and executing a marketing strategy rather than ad hoc marketing actions.
Here, you have the opportunity to position yourself as the expert who can solve this pain point.
More direct monetization
What’s interesting is that 12% of respondents who use WordPress “[t]o directly sell a product / service online”, and the 17% who have a payment gateway connected to their website.
We should consider this, as 80% of the respondents either don’t monetize or only use indirect monetization (like ads or affiliate income). This aligns with a lot of the respondents being part of the publishing industry.
The survey does not enquire about direct monetization like e-commerce, whether physical or digital products. So it would be interesting to see that.
For professionals, this is good news, though. The tighter our contributions are linked to direct income generation, the more valuable they are to clients.
A lot of the focus is on classic e-commerce. This means that customers access a shop, select one or more products, pay, and then get their purchases shipped to them.
But an online shop does not fit every company. But that doesn’t mean that more direct monetization of websites isn’t possible, as simpler alternatives exist. Customers could for example purchase gift vouchers directly from the website. Or they could pre-order and pre-pay for products to collect at the physical store.
There are many ways to tie a website more directly to the income-producing activities of a company. We just need to be creative, and come up with pragmatic solutions.
The block editor is the default
With 59%, the block editor leads before the classic editor at 22%. Interestingly, that number is up from 19% last year. This aligns with the number of companies using both editors, which has lowered.
So what to make of that?
This means that companies are switching to blocks if they can. That’s why the number of respondents using both is down, and the block editor is up.
The still significant percentage of Classic editor users is a sign of companies that have invested in classic editor customizations. And they might not have the budget to migrate to the block editor.
Because 76% of the respondents consider the block editor easier to use than the classic editor, and only 2% have never used the block editor. So, it’s safe to say that the block editor works for many use cases and user profiles.
Doing more with less
When discussing Enterprise, we often tend to focus on the large projects. However, 40% of the respondents had a budget of $50,000 or less to create their website.
There was also a question about why companies chose WordPress, and cost and extensibility were the top two answers.
This is a strength of WordPress, whether we’re comparing it to other enterprise solutions like Adobe Experience Manager, specialized platforms like Webflow, or end-user offerings like Squarespace.
From a certain point on, WordPress is both less expensive to run, and also less expensive to develop for.
If all you’re looking for is a 10-page brochure site that won’t change for the next few years, WordPress isn’t the best in class anymore. After all, it is a content management system.
And there’s quite a number of small to medium enterprises that do need more complex websites, but that also need to watch their spending. WordPress is hard to beat for this segment.
More in-house development
60% of the respondents have at least one in-house developer. At that same time, the number of respondents using agencies was down to 13% compared to 26%.
In addition, 18% of respondents use WordPress “[to] self-build web pages / sites”. Meaning this is part of their day to day operations.
This is in line with the trend that I’ve outlined in Using Full-Site Editing for profitable WordPress projects–given the proper setup, clients are confident updating pages, or even building new ones.
Now, this may sound like bad news for agencies. But it’s not really. In the end, if businesses hire an agency, they do so because they:
- Don’t want to do something.
- Can’t do something.
And there’s earning potential in both categories.
What continues to sell well are productized services. Anything with a fixed price, and a fixed delivery associated with it. Maintenance, also called “care” packages, is a good example of this.
Of course, with clients handling more and more development tasks themselves, that isn’t good news for enterprise agencies.
It was common for businesses to have retainers, meaning they buy a monthly or even weekly amount of development time. Which is then spent on maintenance, adding new features, etc.
As an agency, this was the easiest money to make. So, with internal developers taking over, this income is gone.
But it’s not only ongoing work. Rather than defaulting to agencies for new website builds, clients are looking more for specialized support for their in-house teams.
In the end, I’m not too worried about this. Because specialized knowledge will always be in demand.
However, the situation is different for professionals working with smaller companies. Most small or medium businesses do not need (or want) a full-time developer. So, the demand for professional services is still high.
But what’s even better is that as a freelancer or small agency, you can compete better on smaller projects than large agencies.
To compete for a new site build that is $50K or up, you do not need only need to have a larger delivery team. But also a commercial team that can handle the often weeks to months-long enterprise sales process.
But smaller, ad-hoc projects are often more straightforward to bid for. You usually deal directly with the people overseeing the website, and there isn’t as much red tape.
In addition, many companies want developer resources but can’t finance a full-time employee. So here, you can pitch yourself as a specialized developer embedded into the company for a limited amount of time.
This is an attractive offer, as it is less expensive than an agency and does not require hiring a full-time employee.
Conclusion
We have looked over five key points that stood out, but I still recommend that you check out the full survey. There’s also a Do the Woo episode in which Tom Willmot (Human Made) and Brad Williams (Web Dev Studios) review the survey, with a pure enterprise agency viewpoint.
In general, I remain optimistic about WordPress’s place in the web. Not only in the enterprise, but also for companies with smaller budgets.
What is true, though, is that the era of simple recipes for success and easy growth is over. No matter how well the economy will be doing in 2025.
So this year, we must look at how to respond to these challenges. And modern WordPress, is a key tool that helps us stay competitive in this landscape.
