Results From The 2016 WordPress Industry Survey

Last month the WP Engine publication Torque conducted a WordPress industry survey with 300-plus participants. While a whopping 27 percent of websites are powered by WordPress (and growing), this survey aims takes a deeper look at WordPress’ thriving industry to better understand the challenges WordPress professionals take.

Thousands of professionals, bloggers, entrepreneurs and more have built their online presence through WordPress, including 37 percent of the most popular 100 websites and 62 percent of the top 100 fastest growing companies in the U.S.

To learn more about the industry, here are some key insights based on the results of the survey:

the WordPress Community

There are many professionals that make up the WordPress community. The participants from this year’s WordPress industry survey ranged from freelancers to agencies to theme and plugin developers, and more.

According to the survey, developers made up 43 percent of the survey results and 29 percent of them are owners or founders of their own WordPress company.

Sixty-two percent of respondents have participated in a WordCamp and 31 percent of respondents have at least one person from their company who contributes to WordPress Core. This adds to the reputation that WordPress has one of the best open-source communities in the world.

There are many reasons to love WordPress

Seventy-one percent of respondents claimed to use WordPress because of its ease of publishing, 67 percent because of its ease of use and 59 percent because they enjoy the theme and plugin marketplace (people were allowed to choose more than once choice).

Plugins topped the list for the favorite feature, along with the REST API and themes.

Even though there are many reasons to love WordPress, the CMS is always looking to improve. Respondents want to see better custom fields, new media management, improved integration, better visual editors, and app development.

WordPress marketing will only get bigger

Fifty-one percent of participants expect an increase in their marketing budget in 2017, with 82 percent of them using word of mouth marketing. Other ways WordPress professionals use marketing is partner referrals (42 percent), social media (39 percent), and organic traffic (49 percent).

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